This is all really great stuff. I look forward to seeing the code in operation.
By the way, I’m very happy with my personal weather station that I’ve connected to the Weather Underground. I bought an Ambient WS 1400 for $149 http://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Weather-WS-1400-IP-Observer-Monitoring/dp/B00O9YIEJW/ref=sr_1_11?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1438747261&sr=1-11 plugged it in, and its been working perfectly ever since (except during power outages, or when my WiFi network is down). I put it on top of a piece of electrical conduit from Home Depot – the hardest part of the install was just mounting it. It gives me solar radiation and rainfall rate, which I figure is an important micro climate issue to work out runoff issues. 2mm/hr for 24 hrs is way different than 48mm in one hour 🙂 Given California’s El Nino situation, this could be a big issue this winter if we get torrential rains. I also live near the coast, which has a marine layer effect that can be very localized.