Weather Station Turned Data Logger

Home brewing the perfect beer (or root beer in this case) requires a watchful eye and stable temperature, but [Gregory] has a house that is 120 years old. While we are sure it is a beautiful home, it does have its usual historical issues including temperature fluctuations.

[Gregory] suspects this to be the reason why his root beer is not carbonating, but to be 100% sure he grabbed a weather station (and atomic clock) with a wireless remote thermometer and got hacking. After popping the station apart he was able to quickly isolate the radio receiver and figure out the signaling, a few connections to an arduino, and now he can keep track of the temperature as its logged on to his PC.

Hopefully he can find out if this is his issue or not. Join us after the break for a quick video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzqY5HxrZyM&w450]

10 thoughts on “Weather Station Turned Data Logger

  1. from his website…
    “THE RED wire is the data wire. This is where a series of pulses (long for 1, short for 2, LONGEST for data break) is transmitted. This is the data coming from the wireless thermometer.”

    “short for 2” should read “short for 0”.

  2. @John Yeah, sorry about that. I hate people with shakey videos… Now I’m one of them! Next time I’ll ask someone to film for me and I won’t use my Evo. I just wanted to get something out there before I found some other shiney object to work on.

    @1337, Yes, pulseIn() is part of the Arudino library (see http://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/PulseIn). It’s purpose is to monitor a a pin and measure how long it stays HIGH or LOW depending on what you’re looking for.

    In my code the values are thrown into an array to be converted to 1’s or 0’s after the pinTrigger line goes LOW.

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