After reading an engaging article about an exciting project—one that you wanted to replicate or actually did build for yourself—have you ever wondered what became of the author’s project? Well, in this issue, we have an interesting follow-up to an article that ran in 2000.

Six years ago, Gordon Dick shared the story of building his weather station with us (“A Low-Cost Weather Station,” Circuit Cellar 122, September 2000). Building it was something he had always been interested in, but just hadn’t started until a friend gave him the cups he needed for an anemometer. The anemometer was a key component of the overall design. He envisioned a system with an anemometer, a rain gauge, a weather vane, and a relative humidity gauge. When coupled with his outdoor thermometer and electronic barometer, these components created a complete weather station.

As the years went by, Gordon was pretty happy with the results of his original project. Most of its components functioned well, enabling him to monitor various aspects of the local weather condictions. But there’s always room for improvement, right? This month, we’re excited to present a follow-up from Gordon. In “Weather Station Upgrade,” he discusses how his original components fared over time and notes the fixes he implemented along the way (p. 12). He also walks us step by step through his recent modifications that have enhanced the weather station’s capability and reliability.

This weather station has been a labor of love. Gordon has put in countless hours of hard work planning, building, retooling, and enhancing his weather station. If reading Gordon’s first article inspired you to develop your own weather station, you’ll be interested in learning about the modifications he’s made. For those of you who haven’t read it, we have bundled the first article and the original code along with the project files for this month (ftp://ftp.circuitcellar.com/pub/Circuit_Cellar/2006/192/).

Don’t miss this article if you find studying weather fascinating. Gordon provides helpful lessons and advice for building your own unique system to analyze the weather in your backyard. I hope you enjoy building your own system as much as you enjoy reading about Gordon’s weather station.

jennifer.huber@circuitcellar.com