Weather Dish?

[Joey Ketcham]

I just stubmled upon a site, weatherdish.com, that you buy the dish plus the software for a one time fee of $600, and then for $29 month you pay for the service.

I was looking at this and was wondering if anyone here uses it? To me that sounds like a hell of a deal, and the coverage on it appears to be good here in the midwest.

And on top of that you get a crap load of products, including SPC products.

http://www.weatherdish.com/dataproducts.htm

If this is legit, to me that would almost seem better than the WxWorx system - and cheaper.

The dish seems a bit big, but you could always just place it in the car and when you want data just whip er' out and get your data and then move on.

Anyways, just looking at stuff for the next storm season and came across this.

 

[mikegeukes]

Check out their main web page:
http://www.weatherdish.com

It says at the bottom of the page
WEATHERDISH HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED

You might want to contact the company
http://www.intelliweather.com/
http://www.itworks.com/

Mike

 

[Dan Robinson]

Too bad this was discontinued, it would be a nice alternative. NLDN lightning data is missing from their package, which is probably why the monthly fee is significantly lower. Although WxWorx lightning data is useful, I could do without it if it would save me $70 a month.

Looks like their lightning add-on package is a stand alone sensor (like a Boltek) that detects its own strikes independently of NLDN. This would work fine, although accuracy would be inferior (no 3-point triangulation) and range would only be a couple hundred miles.

Another downside is if you had this installed in your vehicle, you'd still have to stop to be able to aim the antenna and use the service. Not a huge problem though.

All things considered, if a service like this comes out before next season I will definately give it serious thought. The money saved in monthly fees alone would pay for the unit and then some. The only concern I'd have is the stability of the company. I'd want some guarantee that after spending $600 that the service isn't going to be 'discontinued' leaving me with useless equipment and no data during the height of chase season.

I could also sell my WxWorx unit - and with the recent explosive price increase, I might be able to recover the cost of the unit (or more) in doing so even though the unit is used.

 

[rdale]

Their system appears to have been EMWIN sent via a different satellite... EMWIN is $500-1000 for the satellite dish with no monthly costs - check http://www.big-z.com

- Rob

 

[Robert Dewey]

Or, if you want a more costly solution, try NOAAport... Last I checked with Unisys (several years ago), they were charging $49K for a full 5 channel (its 4 channels, but they add a 5th channel for other datasets not found on NOAAport), that price includes the ingest machines and a few display workstations... :lol:

 

[rdale]

The good thing about EMWIN is that at 9600 baud it can be had on the road with any basic cellphone Internet plan...

NOAAPORT drops in price to about $1000 this winter, which will offer 43MB speeds and any piece of weather data you could ever imagine with a basic Linux PC and BUD (big-ugly-dish)

- Rob

 

[Morgan Palmer]

I will give Rob a wholehearted plug for his program, RealEmwin.

As for Weatherdish.... :twisted:

I bought the whole bundle back in 2001 and was a subscriber for about a year.

The feed was basically the same as EMWIN, with a few of their in-house produced graphics thrown in.

The software was barely OK as far as appearance and maneuverability, but there was a major bug on alarm and auto-print. Those are the two primary reasons I got the stupid thing in the first place.

The software seemed to pick and choose what it would alarm and what it would print. Less than half the products I specified printed, and many of those printouts would come out 2-4 times.

I wrote tech support to figure out when they would have a patch or new build. They said one was planned to come out soon, but the guy who wrote back said he didn't have a date. After a couple of months, I wrote back the same guy and he responded by saying only that he had forwarded on my e-mail to the head of the company. I never heard anything back.

I wrote back again and never received a reply. At that time my one-year subscription had expired and I did not renew. I am not surprised to see that they're out of business. It might have been a good enterprise had the resources and time be spent to improve the product to at least "reliable."

Very disappointing.

Again, I have used Rob's RealEmwin for about a month now and have been ULTRA-pleased. http://sky.radioweather.us/products.htm

As for the Ku-dish I bought, I will figure out a use for it someday. Right now, it's acting as something of a trellis in my backyard.

[Broken External Image]:http://www.newsonce.com/ku.jpg

that's the LNB sticking out.

mp