I was sitting at a coastal restaurant in Belize this January on a too-short but much-needed vacation, waiting for my breakfast to arrive, when my thoughts drifted back to the tomatoes I had left back home in our greenhouse. Ever the worrywart, I pictured a blanket of northern Indiana ice coating trays of frozen seedlings, our dead heaters oozing with icicles. To calm my mind, I checked our iPad. Temperature: 65 degrees! Back to vacation.

The program I used is called Acu-Link: My Backyard Weather, released late last year by Acu-Rite, a manufacturer of thermometers, rain gauges, and other weather-related instruments. The way it works is simple: plug in an Internet Bridge, a small device about the size of a deck of cards, to your router. Then place Acu-Link’s weather stations, or “sensors,” (up to three per Bridge) around your farm.

The Bridge collects data from the sensors and continuously sends it to Acu-Link’s server, which stores it on the cloud. Users can access their weather information at any time, anywhere there is a Wifi signal, by logging into their account on Acu-Link’s website.  Or you can purchase a separate small monitor you can mount in your house. There is also a free iPhone app so you can check in on your farm from your mobile device.

There are many features built into the program, but the most useful from my perspective are the push notifications, or programmable alerts. For each sensor, I can tell Acu-Link to send me a text or an email if, for example, temperatures fall below or above a set number, or rainfall exceeds a certain amount.

The program also uses charts and graphs to display historical data, so I can see precisely the total amount of rain we had in March, or the weekly high and low temperature in a greenhouse.  I never knew how much fun line graphs could be!

The package is pretty slick, but not without a few flaws. The advertised range of 300 feet between the sensors and the Bridge turned out to be exaggerated in our case. Our bridge only intermittently picked up data from sensors that were less that 250’ away across an open field. So we moved the Bridge to a greenhouse, within 150’ of all three sensors, and have had no problems. (Fortunately, we ran Cat 5 cable to this greenhouse four years ago when it was built, anticipating this kind of technology.)

Occasionally the iPhone app won’t connect with the server (on our desktop we have never had problems), and the user interface could be simplified. The product is new, however, and I’m sure there will be improvements.

The best part is that the whole system is very affordable: the Bridge sells for around $80 and the sensors (there are four to choose from) range from $7.50 (for temperature and humidity) to $65 (for temperature, humidity, rain, wind, and barometric pressure). We purchased directly from Acurite.com. This winter, supplies did not keep up with demand — we had to wait more than three weeks for the parts we wanted to become available. With so many feature in such an affordable package, my guess is demand won’t go down anytime soon.

Ben Hartman and Rachel Hershberger own Clay Bottom Farm near Goshen, Indiana. They have a CSA and sell at the Goshen Farmers Market.