By Cheryl Currid

IMAGINE indoor and outdoor weather stations keeping careful watch over your home, checking weather conditions every minute and making appropriate adjustments.

Consider a system that knows to close the drapes and extend awnings on a sunny day. If rain threatens, it makes sure the sprinklers stay off but keeps the blinds open to provide a nice view. It takes action automatically, sending you e-mail if the attic temperature gets too hot.

While this system sounds futuristic, all the pieces needed to make it work are here today. I just started testing one of the latest components in my home office. Better still, it only took a few hours to get the system installed and running. It even hooks up to a PC and creates a real-time Web page so you can watch the weather in your own little corner of the world.

The "system" is actually a combination of products that snap together like puzzle pieces. It starts with the Cable Free Weather Station WMR968 from Oregon Scientific. This package includes several wireless devices that will measure the wind's speed and direction, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity.

The solar-powered devices have a battery backup. They communicate with the main weather unit wirelessly, which makes for no-fuss installation. A wireless indoor sensor, which can be placed in any room, also is included. You can add up to three indoor sensors, sold separately, to the system.

The main unit consists of a sleek touch-screen LCD display that collects data from each sensor. It displays indoor and outdoor temperatures and humidity, the wind speed and direction, dew point, rainfall speed and totals, and a gaggle of other measurements and historical averages. The Cable Free system is available online at a retail price of $499.95.

To me, the best part about the main unit is the serial port on the back, which connects to a computer. Just install Virtual Weather Station from Ambient Software, and it will take all the information from the weather station and wireless measurement devices and display the data in full-screen color on the PC. You get a real-time monitor of over 50 different weather parameters.
 

But that's not all. Ambient Software goes further. It can publish the current and historical weather information, in real time, to a Web page. So, if you are traveling or away from the home office, you can keep tabs on the weather from any Internet-connected PC.

You can download a 30-day trial version of the software free at http://www.weatherconnect.com/. After the trial period, it will cost from $49.95 to $104.95 to register, depending on the features you want. To see the basic Web page included with the software, check out the weather in my corner of the world at www.currid.com/weather.

The pièce de résistance comes when the Cable Free Weather Station is hooked into an existing home automation system.

In my case, I installed the HomeSeer plug-in from Ambient Software. It connects the Weather Station software and my HomeSeer (http://www.homeseer.com/) automation system.

HomeSeer has been running my house since 1999 and controls about 80 different devices including thermostats, lights, ceiling fans, pool cleaners and pumps, drapes and shades.

With the addition of the Oregon Scientific Cable Free Weather Station and Ambient Virtual Weather Station software, I've made my home office a bit smarter.

Instead of merely automating devices at a particular time each day, the system can do intelligent tasks, including turn on ceiling fans when it's hot and sunny outside or close the garage door, when wind gusts reach a certain speed, to keep leaves and debris from blowing in.

From any connected PC on the planet, I can check conditions on the Virtual Weather Station and control all 80 automation devices from HomeSeer. The home of the Jetson's may not be as far off as we thought.