Custom Weather Camera Feed With Software Tricks

July 23, 2020 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

With a gorgeous view of the Italian seaside, we’re not surprised [Danilo Larizza] had a couple IP cameras set up to pull in real-time views. But using a Raspberry Pi, an environmental sensor, and some software trickery to overlay the current (and naturally, perfect) weather conditions over the images? Now he’s just teasing us.

Whatever his motives are, we have to admit that the end result is very nice. Especially when you find out that there’s no complex hardware or software at work here. An original Raspberry Pi is doing all the heavy lifting by pulling a frame from the external IP camera using ffmpeg, polling the I2C-connected BME280 temperature and humidity sensor with a Python script, and then producing a final snapshot with the environmental data laid over top using ImageMagick.

[Danilo] gives the exact commands he’s using for each step of the process, making it easy to follow along and see how everything comes together in the end. That also makes it much easier to adapt for your own purposes should you feel so inclined. Once you see how all the pieces fit together, where the data and images come from is up to you.

We’ve previously shown how some simple Python code can be used to turn your raw data into attractive images, and combining that with real-world photographs is an excellent way of turning a text file full of values into a display worth showing off.

A Slightly Bent ESP8266 Sensor Platform

January 14, 2020 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

The ability to get professionally manufactured PCBs, at least small ones, for dirt cheap has had a huge impact on the sort of projects we see around these parts. It’s getting to the point where experimenting with PCB enclosures is not only a way to make your next project stand out, but an economical choice.

Which is how this ESP8266 sensor gadget from [Josef Adamčík] got its unique “folded over” look. The top panel is where the microcontroller and headers for various sensors live, the bottom panel is home to the TP4056 USB charging module, and the center panel provides mechanical support as well as holds the single 18650 cell. Rather than close the whole thing up with a fourth panel, he decided to leave it open so the battery can easily be removed. Plus, of course, it looks cooler this way.

Could [Josef] have fit all his electronics on a single 100 x 100 PCB and then put the whole thing into a 3D printed enclosure? Well, sure. But that’s been done to death at this point, and besides, he was looking for an excuse to get more comfortable doing PCB design. We think it also makes for a considerably more visual appealing final product than simply taking the “normal” way out.

Currently [Josef] has an SHT21 humidity/temperature sensor and a BH1750 light sensor slotted into the headers on the top side of the device, but they could just as easily be swapped out with something else if you wanted to do something a bit more exciting. We notice that homebrew air quality monitors are becoming increasingly popular.

Building bespoke enclosures from PCBs is a fantastic trick that frankly we’d love to see more of. It’s somewhat of an artform in itself, but if you’re willing to put the effort in to do it right the results can be truly phenomenal.

An ESP8266 Environmental Monitor In Your USB Port

January 8, 2020 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

At this point, we’ve all seen enough ESP8266 “weather stations” to know the drill: you just put the ESP and a temperature sensor inside a 3D printed case, and let all those glorious Internet Points™ flow right on in. It’s a simple, and perhaps more importantly practical, project that seems to never get old. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for innovation.

Annoyed by the unnecessary bulk of existing solutions, [cperiod] has come up with an ESP8266 temperature and humidity sensor that can plug directly into a standard USB port. Slotted into a USB wall charger or power bank, this diminutive board can provide inconspicuous remote environmental monitoring wherever you need it. For extra hacker points, the board was even produced at home on a PCB mill.

In addition to the ESP-7 or 12 module (which plugs in via a header, should you need to swap it out), the board features a CH330N USB to UART chip and HT7233 voltage regulator. For the sensor itself, [cperiod] has bucked convention a bit and went with the I2C-connected AHT10 over something more common like a member of the BME family.

Unfortunately, this design suffers from the same issue we’ve seen in other compact environmental monitoring solutions; namely, that the heat generated by the chip itself skews the temperature readings. To combat this, aggressive power saving functions are baked into the firmware to make sure the ESP is in a deep sleep as much as possible. While not a perfect solution, it does prevent the ESP from warming the PCB up so much that it invalidades the reported data.

By now, the particularly astute reader may have realized that all the additional components used for the USB side of this board aren’t strictly necessary. After all, if you can pull the ESP module out of the header and program it separately, then you don’t actually need to include that capability in each sensor node. While true, we’re hardly the ones to complain when a hacker showboats a bit on their designs.