Dorothy IX: WFTV's remote weather monitoring station helps track conditions in Central Florida

ORLANDO, Fla. — If you've watched Channel 9's newscast lately, you might have seen Dorothy IX in action.

Dorothy IX is a remote weather monitoring station that helps Channel 9 cover weather conditions in Central Florida.

The system helped out the team by giving viewers live pictures and weather data from the front lines of Hurricane Dorian.

The device, which was anchored to a pylon buried 18 feet into Melbourne Beach, measures air pressure, wind direction and speed, and rain totals.

"She gets left behind, and that's her job. She stays there while we can't," said Adam Strand, a Channel 9 news engineer who built the device in three months. "We needed to find something that could obviously be weatherproof. It needed to be a little bit heavier."

Dorothy IX has three Nest cameras that capture images of inclement weather around Central Florida. Two of the cameras are exterior and one of them is an interior camera.

The system also has two headlights that are remote controlled to help capture images at night.

Strand said some of the parts he needed to build the device did not exist, so he made them using a 3-D printer.

He said the system relies on phone cards.

"We took a bunch of different carriers, cell carriers, and they're all inside," Strand said. "We're using AT&T, we're using Sprint and we're using Verizon."

Strand said he plans to build a second version of the device.

Click here to follow Dorothy IX on Instagram, and click here to follow Dorothy IX on Twitter.

Cox Media Group