LTB Weather Station

thingiverse

Weather stations have become increasingly valuable tools, and as our understanding of global weather patterns grows, quantifying local experiences has also become more popular. Weather has never been more fascinating! Integrating aspects of the weather into IoT systems is becoming increasingly important. **Important Update:** I've designed a 433MHz link to allow transmitters and sensors to be separate from consoles and sensors. Output can be sent to standalone LCD displays or through serial connections, such as to Raspberry Pi devices, for further processing. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3546977 This project doesn't introduce anything new, but it provides a working set of plans for weather enthusiasts to build their own stations. The design is somewhat double-brick out-house in most places and doesn't require high-resolution printing, such as wafer-thin walls. However, it will produce a robust system that people may like to refine themselves. OpenSCAD files are provided to allow customization of the designs. The system was designed and built for an Arts/Science Exhibition, FLOAT, as a demonstration station, and has been wired up and programmed to demonstrate typical weather station functions. A cutaway funnel is also included, which was used with the Rain Gauge for this exhibition. In the demonstration video, a film of plastic has been glued to the open side so that water can be dripped in to demonstrate the toggling tipping bucket system. The system includes a working Arduino program to illustrate how the weather station can be interfaced, processed, and results displayed. The Arduino program, as it stands, doesn't provide any definitive calibration for rain and wind speed (if accurate, this has happened only by chance). Wind direction, temperature, and barometric pressure are accurate. If you build it and use my Arduino program, you will have to spend some time calibrating wind speed and fine-tuning rainfall. The program uses very little of the overall Arduino Uno capabilities, so there is much room for expansion and innovation in extra sensors or data processing, such as adding a wireless interface (see above). The non-printable extras I used are listed below, and also in the OpenSCAD and Arduino scripts. Plus, you will probably want to add to the Arduino gear.... I added a Barometric/Temperature sensor, but BeeBix has added Humidity & Temperature Sensor(s) and an RTC (Realtime Clock). This is a really neat extension; see here for details on how BeeBix did it - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3379691. Plus, he has revamped the display to allow more information to be displayed clearly as well. Awesome! Some suggestions for mounting sensors are provided, along with glue-on brackets and fittings to construct a simple "T" frame combined with aluminium tubing; however, this can be adapted as circumstances dictate. You will find a short video at Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/bPasvq7NFdE If you like the design, you are welcome to make a Tip. Cheers!