Tag Archives: Weather

Two Words That Don’t Mean What You Think They Do

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When you hear “gravity waves” or “sprites”, you’d think you would know what is being discussed. After all, those ripples in space-time that Einstein predicted would emanate from twin, colliding, black holes were recently observed to much fanfare. And who doesn’t love early 8-bit computer animations? So when we were browsing over at SpaceWeather we were shocked to find that we were wrong twice, in one photo (on the right).

In retrospect, the waves we were thinking of are actually “gravitational waves”. Gravity waves are any waves where gravity provides the restoring force — think ocean waves. But did you …read more

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Tiny House Forecasts Weather

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Before the information age, it wasn’t quite as easy to glean information about the weather. Sure, there were thermometers and barometers and rhymes about the sky, but if you lived in or near Germany back then you might have also had access to something called a “weather house” which could help predict rain. [Moritz] aka [Thinksilicon] found one of these antequated devices laying around, and went about modernizing it. (Google Translate from German)

A traditional weather house is essentially a hygrometer housed in an intricate piece of artwork. Two figures, typically a man and woman, are balanced on a platform …read more

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Weather-aware Shoe Rack Helps You Get Ready for the Day

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If you’re anything like us, your complete shoe collection consists of a pair of work boots and a pair of ratty sneakers that need to wait until the next household haz-mat day to be retired. But some people have a thing for shoes, and knowing which pair is suitable for the weather on any given day is such a bother. And that’s the rationale behind this Raspberry Pi-driven weather-enabled shoe rack.

The rack itself is [zealen]’s first woodworking project, and for a serious shoeaholic it’s probably too small by an order of magnitude. But for proof of principle it does …read more

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IKEA Lantern Houses Full-Featured Weather Station

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From plain and utilitarian to the sleek and professional, there are a lot of ways to build a multifunction weather station. We’d thought we’d seen it all here, but building a weather station into an IKEA lantern is a pretty unique presentation.

There’s  an active community over at ikeahackers.net, and the variety of IKEA hacks they’ve come up with is pretty astounding. For this weather hack, [Richard Stevens] chose the Borrby, a $15 candle lantern. While it doesn’t exactly scream “weather station”, the form factor makes sense – plenty of room for electronics, easily replaced windows, and a nice cupola …read more

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Solar-powered Weather Station Has the Complete Suite of Sensors

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There was a time when getting weather conditions was only as timely or as local as the six o’clock news from the nearest big-city TV station. Monitoring the weather now is much more granular thanks to the proliferation of personal weather stations. For the ultimate in personalized weather, though, you might want to build your own solar powered weather station.

It looks like [Brian Masney] went all out in designing his weather station. It supports a full stack of sensors – wind speed and direction, rain, temperature, pressure, and dew point. About the only other parameters not supported (yet) are …read more

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DEFCON Thermometer

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Redditor [mulishadan] — a fan of the movie WarGames — has created a singular thermostat in the form of a Defcon alert meter.

Looking to learn some new skills while building, [mulishadan] tried their hand at MIG welding the 16g cold-rolled plate steel into the distinctive shape. A second attempt produced the desired result, adding a 1/4-inch foam core and painting the exterior. Individual LEDs were used at first for lighting, but were replaced with flexible LED strips which provided a more even glow behind the coloured acrylic. A Particle Photon board queries the Weather Underground API via Wi-Fi in …read more

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Squirrel Café To Predict The Weather From Customer Data

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Physicist and squirrel gastronomer [Carsten Dannat] is trying to correlate two critical social economical factors: how many summer days do we have left, and when will we run out of nuts. His research project, the Squirrel Café, invites squirrels to grab some free nuts and collects interesting bits of customer data in return.

Animals are said to have a predictive sense for natural events, and [Carsten’s] experiment is about verifying this. The hypothesis [Carsten] is trying to prove with this setup is the following:

The amount of nuts taken by red squirrels from a squirrel feeder correlates with upcoming winter

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The Music of a Sunset

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What would you do if you suddenly went blind and could never again see the sun set? How would you again experience this often breathtaking phenomenon? One answer is music, orchestrated by the sun and the Weather Warlock.

Built by the musician [Quintron] (builder and inventor of insane electronic instruments), the Weather Warlock is an analog synthesizer controlled by — you guessed it — the weather. It translates temperature, moisture, wind and sunlight into tones and harmonics with an E major root chord. UV, light, moisture, and temperature sensors combined with an anemometer set up outside feed the weather data …read more

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