Here’s a project that looks to eliminate the PC necessary for pushing weather station data to the Internet. When you think about it, getting data from your own weather sensing hardware to a site like Weather Underground doesn’t require very much processing at all. The largest chunk of the puzzle is a window to the Internet, and that can be easily accomplished with a microcontroller rather than an always-on computer.
In this case, [Boris Landoni] is using an Arduino along with an RS232 shield and an Ethernet shield. The weather station, a La Crosse WS23xx series, already has an RS232 serial port for grabbing the data. The shield is necessary to step the voltage down to levels that will play nicely with Arduino. It also gives you a D-Sub connector for easy hook up. From there he hit up the documentation for Weather Undeground API, writing code to build the necessary string which is pushed over the Ethernet connection at regular intervals.
If your weather station only offers a USB port you’re not out of luck. Using an embedded platform with USB host functionality you can achieve the same results as we see here.
As a weather junkie, I’m pretty impressed by this.
I will note, however, that it is a PITA to get the sensors to sync properly with the La Crosse WS23xx series base station, even in hard-wire mode. I finally
scrapped all of minesold them on eBay and replaced them with a nice Davis.Also, using a computer (even an old one) makes it easier to multitask a bit — my setup not only sends to WU, but also to my personal web server, local data logger, and my APRS transmitter. I suppose one could get an Arduino to do all that as well, but I generally have more old PCs/laptops around than Arduinos.
Hint: Try using a Nanode instead of what appears to be an Arduino Uno for these kind of projects. Not only is it cheaper as it comes, but it also doesn’t need all these shields because it already has got an Ethernet and a serial port included…
Justsayin’ :-)
ag.
Cool – agtrier, thanks for the tip – a nice looking bit of hardware.
Look at similar, cheaper and much better implementation of weather station – WiFi bridge: http://www.8devices.com/wiki_carambola/doku.php/carambola_pachube_nexus
For this project, a weather-station was used that already had a serial port, right?
I’m wondering how to get the data from cheap radio-controlled weather-stations that come without any external connector. You can get such cheap stations for as low as 10 Euro (or 10 Dollar, I would assume), a station has a clock, internal temperature, humidity and pressure sensors and an external radio-controlled temperature and humidity sensor. But it doesn’t have memory, so it can’t work as a data logger (which is what I want).
I guess there must be projects to connect for example an Arduino directly to the circuit board somehow, maybe someone could provide a link…?
Jon wrote up something pretty close to what you’re after here – http://www.practicalarduino.com/projects/weather-station-receiver – for one of the cheap-ish wireless weather stations available here in Australia.
Thanks for the link, but since I have several of these cheap weather stations, and unfortunately the external radio controlled sensors are the first parts that stop working, I would prefer to read the data from the main devices, by cable.
intercept LCD comes to mind, that is kinda tricky unless it uses LED display or LCD with integrated controller
For a start buy one, open it up and make some pictures so more eyes can look at the problem.
yes, intercepting LCD came to my mind, too, but since I’m not an experienced electronics hacker, I need an example from another person who succeeded first.
I already own some of those weather stations, you are right, I will make some pictures in the next weeks. Will have to see where to discuss them…
I encourage you to read website http://www.simplyclime.pl. Enables connection of the weather station with the mobile application.