Downtime projects

A Weather and Environmental monitoring system that is portable

Whilst I’ve been busy with a lot of personal changes in my life recently. I have also been thinking about new electronics and software projects. For many years I sent data from a weather station to the MetOffice and other weather services. Over the last two and a half years that hasn’t been possible. I decided to look at a new weather station.

Originally I was using weather-display software, however, I am looking at the pros and cons of using a different platform to a Windows desktop pc.

After years of using a Raspberry Pi, that was certainly a hardware possibility except due to chip shortages the PI4 is massively expensive at the moment. So not the solution for a budget, possibly a STEM project that could be made available to schools. Whichever way I go I intend on using a HTTP (web) server to access all the information on a LAN this does away with needing an independent screen like many weather stations have.

Next, I thought about the Arduino but I’ve had issues with Arduino in the past, I’d probably need to use multiple boards, so that is out for the time being, although they may end up included in the end product we will see.

Next up I thought of using an Azure Sphere server board, the ones I am acquainted with have expansion and adding extra boards into the mix to expand scalability, Why I may wish to do this I have no idea yet but.

Finally, there is the option of using a single-board PC which are getting cheaper and cheaper all the time.

Things I am thinking of incorporating into this weather solution are as follows

• Anemometer
• Barometric sensor
• Multiple zoned temperature sensors (Indoor zones, outdoor zones)
• Humidity
• UV index
• rainfall (and water temp)
• Air Quality Detector
• windspeed
• Ceilometer (Cloud height)
• Magnetometer (Aurora detection)
• Lightning strike detection
• Webcam
• Geiger–Müller counter
• Solar charging of batteries
• Ethernet/Wifi/5g connectivity
• GPS
• Webcam

There is probably much more that will get added over time so expandability is a key here. Things I also want to take into account for my own personal project which is essential to me, but not necessarily for the STEM project are Wired and Wireless capability (possibly Bluetooth too) Connectivity to an Amateur Radio transceiver for weather data and potentially Seismic data too, I’ve always had an interest in Radio astronomy but I have always been limited by antenna space. maybe whilst I consider putting this together I should also look at an elevation and azimuth controller for an antenna or dish rotator? Whilst a lot of of this is things that I’d like and maybe they would encourage children into the world of Amateur Radio. After all we all use technology that was originally developed by amateur radio users. GPS, SMS, email, and so much more.

Now my personal preference is for local storage as a Primary then stored within the cloud. Initially, my intent is to build two of these one for the house and one for mobile (stationary) use, ie. for deployment in situations where a vehicle is being used as a control room (emergency management). I need to consider that connectivity to the internet on some occasions will be by non-standard methods, ie over the radio, and even via SMS message if required, Accumulation of data is more important than how it is acquired. Considering that Solar cycles effect the radio spectrum, which includes everything from GPS, amateur radio and even cellphones! So the final unit must have enough storage to store data until a way to transmit the data back to either the basestation or the cloud.

This system could be used not just for the hobbiest and anyone interested in earth sciences but also by groups like Skywarn, in disaster situations like forest fires, earthquakes and many other potential useful places.

There you have in a nutshell the latest project, I will update this post as I continue with the project