OWI-430 series
Optical Weather Identifiers OSI’s Scintillation based precipitation, present Weather and Visibility sensor
- Widely used by NOAA / NWS, military, airports, state DOTs, etc.
- Measurement of instantaneous rain rate; Instant notification of precipitation. No lag period Discriminates between rain, snow, drizzle, freezing drizzle, freezing rain, etc.
- Reports over 60 NWS and WMO codes
- Detect rainfall extremely high rain rates > 1000 mm/hr or as light as 0.1 mm/hr; no evaporation errors
- Reduced maintenance. No moving parts; operates 24/7 under harsh field conditions.
- Dust / dirt on lenses does not affect measurement; ultra-low maintenance
- Intelligent sensor; automatic correction and continuous internal monitoring; operates unattended. Algorithms continually refined from over 800 million hours of proven field operation in applications on every continent. Technology field proven for over 30 years (long track record)
- All digital / DSP based design with no temperature sensitive analog components.
OWI-430 utilizes signals from forward optical scatter, in-beam (optical scintillation), ambient light, temperature, and humidity to accurately determine meteorological optical range (visibility), precipitation type (rain, snow, hail, drizzle, etc.) and precipitation amount.
- OWI-430 also reports atmospheric extinction coefficient and ambient light levels required by RVR algorithm
- Transmitter (TX) contains an infrared Light Emitting Diode (LED)
- Receiver (RX) contains two (2) independent optical receiver assemblies, each consisting of a photo diode, lens with dual heaters, and pre-amplifier electronics
- One of the receivers detects present weather (in-beam) and the other detects visibility (forward scatter).
With the addition of the acoustic hail and ice pellet sensor (HIPS) the OWI-430 provides superior snow, ice pellet, hail and freezing rain discrimination, far surpassing all other visibility/present weather sensors
OWI-430 series sensors work on moving platforms
- Eco-friendly – No antifreeze or oil required.
- works with solar power and satellite or GSM communications allowing for easy installation in very remote areas.
- Other sensors can be added without requiring a data logger.
- Extra I/O capability allows the OWI sensors to be used as stand-alone Weather Nodes, which will send out a single string of data to the cloud or an existing software system.
Applications for accurate measurements of Precipitation, Present Weather and Visibility
- Airports
- Road Weather
- Waste Water – Storm Water monitoring
- Irrigation
- ambient air stations (wet deposits vs dry deposits)
- avalanche studies (history of precipitation types)
- railways (icing)
- solar and wind farms (precipitation types)