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February 26, 2008

Wanted: Consumer weather station with an open API

A while back I contacted the top five or so vendors of home weather stations to see if they offered any product that would simply measure various atmospheric variables and allow the home user to poll the station for data via some sort of open API. My search came up empty. Most of the time I felt like I had just asked them if they made pants with four legs.

I know there is a segment of consumers want a weather appliance that sits on their counter and tells them the weather. There is another segment that wants to be able to work with and track the data (for which some vendors provide their own software, usually Windows only.) Still another segments literally wants to just have the information available through an API that I can interact with. That last segment is me; that's what I'm looking for.

If you have a weather station that will:

  • provide basic weather information
    • temperature
    • humidity
    • dew point
    • wind speed
    • wind direction
    • barometric pressure
    • precipitation
  • allow me to poll the weather station
    • when I want
    • for what values I want
    • from on open API from whatever computer OS I want
then I would like to talk to you about purchasing one of your weather stations.

You can reach me at speed-weat@transmit.net.

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February 20, 2008

Yes you can wash (and dry) an SD Card

I recently washed (and dried) an off-brand SD Card full of photos through the washer and drier. To my surprise, all the data was still there, undisturbed and uncorrupted. I'm quite amazed that the technology stood up to that kind of abuse with no glitches. I'm not planning on trying this with my CF cards any time soon, but I wonder how they would fare...

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