New weather station & improved wifi

New SYC weather station

SYC has installed a new weather station. It is a Ecowitt Ultrasonic device with no moving parts so hopefully it may last a while in our exposed location.

Improved wifi at SYC

The wifi at SYC has been improved with good coverage in the clubhouse and on the decking.

SYC Weather Station

Here's some details about the new weather station at SYC and how to view and use its data.

The new Ecowitt Ultrasonic weather station is currently mounted about half way up the mast at SYC. It's final location, after proving to be reliable, is likely to be at the top of the mast.

The data from the weather station is available:

• on a new console on the OOD's desk in the Race Box. There is a "Wind" button on the top of the console where you can cycle through current wind speed, current gusts, current direction and values for the last 10 minutes. For the truly keen, here's a link to the manual
• the SYC website weather page has been updated. At the start of the page, there is a "menu" of suggested weather resources (this is "collapsed", by default, on small screens). The main new addition is the "SYC Weather Station" link. More on this below.
• next there is a new, tabbed "SYC Anemometers" section.
  
  • The first tab ("SYC Mast") has gauges displaying the wind strength and direction as recorded by the new Ecowitt Ultrasonic anemometer (currently installed half way up the mast in front of the race box).
    Hover (or tap on mobile) on the wind speed gauge for additional data including
    • 10 minute average wind speed
    • maximum average wind speed today
    • gust speed (in the last 10 minutes)
    • maximum gust speed today
    • the bearing of the maximum gust.
      This data is updated from the anemometer every 10 seconds.
  • The second tab ("SYC washdown area") has gauges displaying the wind strength and direction as recorded by the rather posh but communicationally challenged Gill Ultrasonic anemometer (installed on the pole by the washdown area)
    This displays the same categories of information as the first anemometer but is updated every 5 seconds.
    Getting the data from this anemometer to the SYC server is a tad unreliable at the moment so this may occasionally display speeds of 0 knots and a direction of 0 degrees. This means it is currently sulking. Ways of keeping it happy are being investigated.
  • Please do note the warnings displayed in both tabs about the likely strengths of wind you will encounter on the water when there is any west in the wind i.e. it may be significantly stronger than that shown by either anemometer.
• Next there is a link to the SYC Weather Station (as also mentioned earlier). This displays much fuller data from the Ecowitt weather station with data and graphs including for pressure, temperature, rainfall, solar etc. 
  This data is updated once a minute.
• Next there is a section from WindGuru with two distinct sets of information being displayed
  • First there is a graph of the history of wind strength and direction at SYC. This uses the data from the SYC anemometers that we send to WindGuru (either from the Ecowitt if that is working or the Gill otherwise). So you can easily see how the wind strength and direction has been changing recently.
    It is also displays current wind strength and direction (updated once a minute) but the wind gauges further up the page are more useful for current data.
  • Next there a WindGuru forecast for the SYC location that we've configured to use the UKV (Met Office) to 2Km high resolution model
• Next there is a graphical display of the weather forecast by Windy.com. This is currently configured to use the ECMWF 9km model. If you haven't played with this before, one of its strengths is the ability to click along the timeline to see how the forecast wind strength and direction changes over time. 

Improved wifi

The wifi coverage in the SYC clubhouse and on the external decking area has been significantly improved with the installation of a TPLink "Omada mesh" solution. What this means in practise, is that you should be able to get better than 100 Mbs upload and download speeds pretty much anywhere in the clubhouse and on the decking. This is the teensiest bit of an improvement over the 0.5 Mbs upload speed we were getting when last connected to a copper telephone wire!

The wifi connection details remain unchanged and

• are available on a poster on the club noticeboard
• the same poster can be viewed in the club house window from the decking outside
• and, if you are logged on to the web site, you can view that poster / connection details here