I've given up on consumer-grade wireless thermometers - either the remote units fail within a year, or they are too weak to transmit through the steel siding we have on the house.  However, I'm not ready to spend the $$ on a Davis weather station either.  I'm wondering if any of the balloonists out there have made their own wireless thermometer that doesn't require a lot of esoteric parts or a lot of time to tweak (any time I spend on this comes out of the time I could spend on balloon payloads). 

 

I'd like something that has a free-space range on the order of 500-1000 ft and can be powered for a reasonable period of time (year?) on the remote's batteries, and the indoor unit can either be on a wall wart or also on batteries.  I think wireless radios like the XBee are probably overkill, but the $4 315 or 434 MHz transmitters may not have enough oomph to make it through the siding reliably.  I'm figuring something like the PICAXE chips would be well suited to be the brains on both ends.

 

Anyone have any thoughts on this? 

 

73 de Mark N9XTN