Being an old CB’er from the ‘70’s I would tend to think any metal on your roof is a possible lightning source. I used to drive a 6’ ground stake in the ground and attach from the U bolts aluminum ground wire. I remember seeing a static discharge when I connected to the stake. Insulated stand off’s in the house are also needed to keep the ground wire OFF the house or the charge may transfer to the house.
Air: Mounted inside Ambient Weather solar radiation shield (http://bit.ly/2MZlqxV). Go with the $10 upgrade for the metal bracket. It’s 130 feet from the hub in clear line of sight. It is a VERY tight fit, but it will.
Sky: Mounted atop galvanized steel pole. 1.5 inch schedule 40. In the ground 2 feet, in concrete. 10 feet up, 1.5" to 1" reducer and another 18" of 1" schedule 40 galvanized. I did grind the tip down just a bit so the mounting bracket would fit nicely. Filled entire pole with play sand to eliminate any vibration. It’s 200 feet from the hub in clear line of sight.
What I have learned: Sky hates vibration. My first (temporary) mounting location was the side of my kids playset. Numerous false rain events, and I also noticed a higher variation in wind lull. I have only had one false rain event since mounting on galvanized. I suspect a small bird or insect, but I was not home to see it. Wind lull has stabilized on the permanent location. Also, there is a quirk on the Air and Sky both dropping from the hub and the hub turning blue (even though no app is connected via BLE). Reboot of hub fixes it. This has happened twice. There is a thread in community forum (several others experienced it as well). I also opened a support ticket, no word there yet.
I am 98% satisfied so far. Very nice hardware and software!
Station ID: 4716
Questions? Ask!
Put the Sky at it’s new spot.
Had 29.4mm of rain with its movement.
This is the best spot I could find.
There is a small tree at the left. But it’s maybe 0.5 meters wide, so it wouldn’t affect the Sky that much.
Think I’m gonna put the Sky piece of PVC pipe the last 0.5 meter.
With clamps on the steel pole and between that a piece of rubber to minimalize the vibrations.
And it is going o up by 50 cm.
The higher the better.
Pics will follow next week.
5m mast now finished and SKY appears to be rock steady. There is an air gap at the bottom of the aluminium pole so all the force is transmitted through the tripod legs. The top half of the mast above the guy wire clamp, aluminium and PVC, is filled with sand. Note the red tape marking North on SKY unit!
Gable mounted Sky. The roof that it is mounted on is at a high point in the area so unobstructed flow in all directions. Didn’t place it on a higher pole due to subdivision rules on antenna’s. etc.(Pole size 30 inches.) Found installing it harder than it looks having to hang over the edge of the roof. Still need to go back up and tighten one of the bolts and add some grounding protection. So far the wind readings seem to be okay but had an issue when a storm came by last evening. It appears to soak the wind sensor which dropped wind to almost nothing till it dried out. Conversely, got some really high wind gusts during the same storm as well that were fictitious.
I have my SKYs mounted now. On my house I just used a chimney mount and the fiberglass pole from an old pressure washer extension handle. I put part of a rubber hose around the pole where the clamps go. I figured that the foam grip would reduce vibrations. So far I haven’t had any false rain alerts from it so I’m going to paint the pole to protect it from UV damage.
I also have my second one mounted to my RV. I bought a pole mount and tall flag pole from polesandmore.com. The pole is made up of several slightly conical sections of fiberglass poles which friction stick. The first three inner sections have a pin to make sure the pole doesn’t collapse. The base of the SKY wouldn’t fit on the 4th section (3rd and last pinned section) so I have it on the 5th section. It fits a little loose but doesn’t appear to wobble. If I don’t get any false rain alerts from it I’ll put some tape around the pole to snug it up a bit.
David
I just got done with mod 3 for my Sky mount. Initially I used a 10’ antenna mast and the antenna mounts were to the NE corner (left) and camera was mounted on roof gable.
With a 180° lens it picked up too much of the chimney so I moved it up onto the mast and shortened the mast to 7’ so I could get the Sky off for battery changes w/o taking mast down and put a bunch of CDs on top of chimney in hopes of deterring birds. Bird landings continue and the new length created vibrations in 18-20mph gusts that triggered false rain even though I also added neoprene between the mast and sky mount and the camera clamped to mast should also dampen vibrations.
Part of the reason for shortening the mast was to give the HOA less of a reason to have issue but moving to the NE corner would also make it appear to not stick up as high so I relocated the mounts. I also picked up a Nicole satin finish 6’ rod (they also had 8’ and chrome but I figured 6’ would be enough) thinking it would look nicer (HOA) and maybe help with birds (maybe chrome would be better). I filled it with glass bead (because I had it on hand and didn’t want to buy a bunch of sand with no other use) after finishing install I gave it a good tap and no false rain so looks good so far. I stuck a plastic owl up there to see if that will help with the birds.
I tried to just add this to original post but as a new user I can only put 1 photo/post.
I did induce a bunch of false rain while working on it as seen in the overlay from the weather cam. I’m going to move the over lays around a bit and make it so the rain related ones don’t show if zero like I already did for the solar related ones.
pushed your profile 1 notch up might help solve the limitations
Just sharing a couple of photos of my SKY (note! that it is ABOVE the Davis )
Love all the Stevenson screen topics and photos!. I have been watching weather since 1970 and remember my “Cotton Region Medium Instrument Shelter” which finally gave way to rot years ago. Loved those shelters!
Here are a couple of shots of my Sky riding high.
I’ve finally moved my Sky unit to my new pole - 5.5m above ground level now. I installed some Davis bird spikes to it, as I had a spare packet of them lying around.
I took the pic by zooming in on my PTZ camera.
I recorded 106mm of rain whilst putting that up.
Here’s mine … sitting atop a mast I had left over on my Radio Shack (armature radio operator KM4VIG)
just below it is my WXCam…
it’s not a real WXCam without a link so we can see the clouds going by in timelapse
Done.
With the ability to view the past…
My beautiful, not yet mounted mast for the sky. It is a bit more wobbly then expected, so I’m hoping it will not induce false rain readings. But I just discovered I need to buy a very long extension cord to be able to attach the mast to the house. to be continued. When mounted and it works reliable, I’ll try to shine some light in it from below using a solar powered lightsource.
Put the Sky a little bit higher today. Connected a PVC pole filled with sand to the steel pipe.
Put a little piece of rubber between the steel pole and the PVC pole.
Didn’t had any false rain readings because of vibration.
But this is more flexible and virbrations proof. I hope
Sky registered a mm of 6.
Now have to wait for some real showers. And hope the SKY also picks the light rain.
It is sensitive enough.
and done, mounted the sky on a acrylic mast. Looks amazing. Unfortunately I couldn’t mount it on the inside edge of the roof so I’m not sure if I will attach a light at the bottom unless I come up with something really nice. But first step is to see if this mast introduces false rain events or not.
fun fact, installing my sky caused 9.9 mm of ‘rain’
I have forgotten to reset the calibration of the ultrasound sensors. Officially it wouldn’t be needed after a re-install. Let’s hope so.
Nice! Where in the Netherlands are you located?
Let’s hope for some showers tonight.