In this project, I intend to build a weather station from scratch. At the core, this is a set of electronics sensors that I place on my apartment’s balcony to track the temperature, humidity, wind speed, and more. I then intend to automatically record the data and export it to my laptop for analysis.
Goals
| Milestone | Description |
|---|---|
| v1 (MVP) | Capture basic data points. Ruggedize setup for outdoor use. Analyze data. |
| v2 (Extend) | Measure wind and rain. Photograph clouds for image processing. |
| Not doing | Measure other, non-weather behavior in nature. |
<aside> ℹ️ As of October 2022 there’s currently a Raspberry Pi shortage leading to severe price hikes. So I adjusted the project so the image processing component (ie taking photos of the clouds every minute) along with the expensive wind and rain tracking equipment can be done later in v2.
</aside>
My dad is a weather nerd. He loves watching the weather forecast everyday. He also loves tracking the weather at home too.
He has an indoor/outdoor thermometer (see right) that he uses everyday, as well as a basic rain gauge to track rainfall. He’s even tracked rainfall amounts on paper-based spreadsheet.
While I’m not as big a weather nerd as my dad, it is interesting intellectually. Weather is obviously valuable to plan outdoor activities (ie if to go and what to wear if we go).
For me specifically, I see two good points about weather tracking:
This is a passive sensor project. It’s not really an autonomous mobile robot project. Nevertheless, a passive sensor based project does have several advantages:
Robotics principles used
| Sense | Evaluate | Act | Move | Communicate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Analog thermometers and barometers abound. Some offer a very cool Victorian or steampunk look. But they don’t connect digitally of course.
There are also many weather stations with digital displays, such as my dad’s. But few to none offer data export to a computer. These are all less than $100.
Some data logging weather stations exist for consumers. These are more expensive at $150 or more.
If my goal was just weather tracking and analysis, I would choose these. But as my goal is also to use this as a starter project to learn the Arduino or the Raspberry Pi platform, they are not a good fit.
A weather station, and home monitoring in general, is a common Arduino/Raspberry Pi. As such, there are a lot of tutorials online. Below are some slightly more official publications. I intend to read and understand all of these guides, and then combine them into something specific to my needs.
Make: Environmental Monitoring with Arduino - Print
Make: Atmospheric Monitoring with Arduino - PDF
| Milestone | Description |
|---|---|
| v1 (MVP) | Capture basic data points. Ruggedize setup for outdoor use. Analyze data. |
| v2 (Extend) | Measure wind and rain. Photograph clouds for image processing. |
| Not doing | Measure other, non-weather behavior in nature. |
Version 1