Best quality aneroid barometer?

[wrwakefield]

Originally Posted by jsc7

Does anybody know what the best quality aneroid barometer is?

Ideally I am hoping for something designed for a boat, waterproof, etc.

Barometer Handbook [David Burch] will answer all your questions and more...

It is well worth the read...

Cheers! Bill

[artisanmach]

check this out, if you want digital

Bohlken Westerland electronic
marine barograph barographs Barograph Barographen air pressure nmea barographe barograaf

or this if you want aneroid barometer

[Seymore]

Originally Posted by jsc7

Does anybody know what the best quality aneroid barometer is?

Ideally I am hoping for something designed for a boat, waterproof, etc.

Go to the NOAA weather office in the local airport and ask them. Check out the aneroid barometer they use.

They'll tell you that all the barometers that are available to yachtsmen are bottom level junk. The needle sticks and moves in jerks. Set it in one place and at 1 in. to either side it's way off.

They will show you what a good barometer is. On a good barometer the needle moves very slowly and steadily when a high is moving in.

AFAIK none of them is waterproof. It's in the nature of the beast. They have to be open to the atmosphere.

[Scott Berg]

Another is Chelsea; they make a great one...

Brass Finished Ship's Bell Barometer | Chelsea Clock

[Cowpoos]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I use a Maretron WSO100 as a wind instrument which also gives barometric pressure.

.

Sorry off topic.....But, Dockhead....It there a easy solution to mounting a WSO100, anchor lights [maybe even tri lights] and a VHF ariel on top of the mast, without the WSO100 being wind shaded by the other items?

[a64pilot]

I put mine on about a 12” piece of SS pipe. It may only been about 6”

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by conachair

I think if you want accuracy for less than the cost of a beer in London then DIY electronic is really the only way to go with something like a BMP280 & Esp8266/arduino, which means data over Wifi or serial to something to record & display. Which could be Opencpn on a laptop or a webpage created by the esp board.

https://sdfjkl.org/blog/2017-08-09-nanobaro/

Yup, another vote from me for the BME280. I'm also using it with an ESP8266, and looking into ways to analyze the rate of change to give storm warnings.


If you're not the DIY type, no problem; the BME280 and similar devices are built into some smart-phones.



I also have some classic metal analogue barometers on the wall, but the new electronic devices, with no moving parts, are hard to beat. If you don't have an amp or two on your boat to run some instrumentation, you may have bigger problems than knowing when the next front is coming through.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Yup, another vote from me for the BME280. I'm also using it with an ESP8266, and looking into ways to analyze the rate of change to give storm warnings.

Mine gets sent to openplotter on a raspberry Pi which then makes a graph using node-red. I tweaked the barometer down by 1 mb which seems to be plenty accurate. This is from node red online comparing to a local weather feed which seems to tally up very well with the local airport, was easier to get the data from openweathermap.

Shouldn't be too difficult to have node red create a warning, though TBH if you're getting gribs/synoptics often you'll know if any nasty stuff is coming your way anyway. Opencpn is great for overlaying grib with gusts onto synoptics, interesting & hopefully educational.

One unexpected benefit I find from having such accurate graphed data is that I pay far more attention to the data and weather in general than just glancing now and again at the little 1h graph on the battery electronic barometer.



And this is a near miss from small tornado ..

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Cowpoos

Sorry off topic.....But, Dockhead....It there a easy solution to mounting a WSO100, anchor lights [maybe even tri lights] and a VHF ariel on top of the mast, without the WSO100 being wind shaded by the other items?

There is a whole thread on this from five years back or whenever I installed it. It's not so simple to install and there are several methods.

But the wind shadow issue is solved (more or less, probably) by using a long enough pole to get it well above the other things at the masthead. I had a 1.5 meter stainless pole made, then felt how heavy it was, and threw it away, and started over again with aluminum. Had to have that drilled out so that the cable would pass through it freely. Had to paint it so that it wouldn't corrode. It was quite a production. But it has stayed solid for tens of thousands of miles of hard sailing since then, so the solution is pretty decent.

I think that cleaner air is available further forward.

That's another (very serious) reason to use not the Maretron or Airmar sensors, which are not really intended as sailboat wind instruments, but a purpose made one like the LJ Capteurs, which is much smaller and lighter and comes with an appropriate mount which gets the sensor not only high, but forward.

In any case, the Maretron sensors have a fatal flaw and I cannot recommend them -- the seals fail and they get drowned and die. That happened to my first one and I had to cough up $$$ to buy a new one. Actually a kind soul on here LOANED me one so I could finish my Baltic cruise (gear always fails at the worst possible moment, furthest from civilization -- Sod's Law), then I bought him one to replace it.

If this one fails, I will replace it with something different, probably LJ Capteurs.