High schooler [Vlad] spent about a year building up his battery-operated, wireless weather station. Along the way, not only has he learnt a lot and picked up useful skills, but also managed to blog his progress.
The station measures temperature, humidity, pressure and battery voltage, and he plans to add sensors for wind speed, wind direction and rainfall soon. It is powered via a solar panel and can run on a charged battery for a full month. The sensor module transmits data to a remote receiver connected to a computer from where it is published to the internet. Barometric pressure is measured using the BMP180 and the DHT22 provides temperature and humidity values. The link between the transmit and receive sections uses a 433MHz Superhetrodyne RF Kit which gives [Vlad] a range of 50m. There’s an ATMega328 on the transmitter and receiver side. He’s taking measurements once every 12 minutes, and putting the micro controller in low power mode using the Rocket Scream Low Power Library. A 5W, 12V solar panel charges the 6V Lead Acid battery via a LM317 based charge circuit. This ensures the battery gets charged even when the solar panel is not receiving optimal radiation. One hour of sunlight provides enough charge to keep it going for 2 days. And a fully charged battery will keep it running for a full month even when there’s no sunlight.
The server software consists of two parts. The first pushes serial data to a mySQL database. This is written in Visual Studio C# using help from Oracle mySQL connector. The second part publishes the entries in the mySQL database to the web server. This is written in php, and uses Libchart for graphing. He’s got the code, schematics, parts list and a lot of other information available for download on his blog. There’s a couple of items pending on his to-do list, so if you have any tips to offer post your comments below.
I think the hackaday article has caused a DDOS for the server of the blog, I can’t seem to open any of the links.
Or they took it down due to the unwanted attention. Does HaD ask the original authors of the projects that are posted before posting the article?
no, they do not.
Right, because people blog to avoid attention?
People create original content that they might get attention or profit from because they are the original author.
here is the google cache
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YwP46_eIZ0AJ:denialmedia.ca/weather-station/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
damn you are faster xD
google Cache:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YwP46_eIZ0AJ:denialmedia.ca/weather-station/+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de
But cant see the Schematic :(
Im interrest in the Solar LM371 Load circuit
2 low res images of the circuit
http://screencast.com/t/BEZ8Aiqfzle
http://screencast.com/t/m0Pomlp07
Or the “name” is living up to its name. :-)
Try the Wayback archive : http://web.archive.org/web/20150329010550/http://denialmedia.ca/weather-station/
He was hosting his website on his own computer at home, so it’s probably no geared to handle a lot of traffic.
Site is up and working now