Seeed Studio Goes Solid-State to Deliver Its Most Reliable Weather Station Yet: the SenseCAP S700-C
With radar for rainfall and precipitation and an ultrasonic sensor for wind direction and speed, the S700-C needs no moving parts.
Seeed Studio has announced it's taking on unreliable weather monitoring equipment with the solid-state SenseCAP S700-C — targeted at, the company says, the world's harshest environments.
"For decades, deploying a remote weather station has meant accepting a painful compromise: high maintenance costs or frequent data gaps," claims Seeed's Zero Zhang of the problem the company set out to solve. "Traditional mechanical sensors — such as tipping-bucket rain gauges and cup-and-vane wind meters — are prone to fail in long-term deployments. They freeze in winter, clog with leaves in autumn, and wear out from constant friction. To break this cycle of high maintenance and unreliable data, Seeed Studio has launched the SenseCAP S700-C, an industrial-grade, all-in-one compact weather station. By engineering a 100% solid-state architecture with zero moving parts, the S700-C redefines what is possible in remote environmental monitoring."
The sensor node is designed to capture readings for temperature and humidity, rainfall, solar radiation and duration, barometric pressure, and both wind speed and direction — all with no moving parts. Rainfall, the company explains, is measured using a 60GHz Doppler radar, which can track the size and velocity of rain, snow, and hail as it falls. Wind, meanwhile, is measured using an ultrasonic sensor that, Seeed Studio claims, "maintains factory-level calibration and accuracy over years of operation" — and which has no spinning vanes to wear out.
"When you are deploying weather sensors on top of a mountain for landslide warning, or in the middle of a 1,000-acre smart orchard, sending a technician to fix a stuck wind vane is a logistical nightmare," says mononymous product manager Jenkin of the company's creation. "We built the SenseCAP S700-C for the 'unreachable' spots. It is a true 'set-and-forget' system designed to deliver high-fidelity data under the most brutal outdoor conditions."
The SenseCAP S700-C is now available to order on the Seeed store at $799; buyers will also need a data logger to go with it.