Arduino project: Weather Station

Every second week, we are posting an Arduino project of interest.  Some are probably quite easy, but don't seem so.  Others might seem quite easy, but aren't.  Your mileage may very, as one person's easy might be another person's difficult.

No matter what, being able to review a project can at least give ideas or insights on what we might build or how something works for use in a different project.

So this Arduino project should be fairly simple, but actually consists of three parts.  What we will be looking at is, one person's project to build an Open Source weather station.

These instructables come from instructables user msuzuki777, a self described "lazy old geek".  Based on the initial project, it started with wanting to know what the wind chill was before he took his dog for a walk, and ended up going from there.

So the project starts off with a 10 step process of making a wind chill measurement tool.

Aside from a USB Freeduino kit and an adaFruit DIY shield, there are quite a number of pieces that are required.  Not too expensive, though.  Aside from PVC pipe, nuts and bolts and telephone cable to connect it to the Freeduino in a weather shelter, it required a bearing, some aluminum balls for the wind cups, a temperature sensor, and some magnets.  All told, it cost about $50.  Level of difficulty is probably low.  Much assembling, the code is made available by the user, and there is a tricky part to calibrate speed.  Probably could be all done in a few hours, once the parts are aquired.

So the next bit is a 7 step process for adding a wind vane to the weather station.  It may seem like an afterthought and not like a necessity, but as msuzuki777 indicated, knowing the direction of the wind might suggest future weather.  ie. might blow in moisture off a lake or northern wind might suggest a potential drop in temperature in the future, or even potential environmental smells, and which windows one might want to open.

This part of the project asks for a USB Freeduino and an adaFruit Data Logging shield, among other parts.  I can't be sure that a person couldn't use the already existing Freeduino and add this to it's computing function, but if this is a stand alone project it would be required.  It may seem like this is a rather simple feature, yet the cost of the parts comes out to about $65, due to the list having an SD card, ethernet cable, and potentiometer, which added about $26 to the cost.

Again, while this might seem pretty straight forward, and the level of difficulty is still probably lower, it is time consuming to calibrate and to get a good vein shape and mounting.  So this may also take about three or so hours to do, depending.

In the third part, it is time to look at the wet bits of weather.  Certainly it is easy enough to tell if it is raining or it is not raining.  But figuring out how much rain has already happened could help a person decide whether boots are needed or the plants could do without watering.

So it is on to adding a moisture sensor / gauge to the weather station.  This will reuse the cable from the wind vane, but add another freeduino, data logger, and SD card, among other items.

This portion of the weather station will cost about $50.  This 9 step process may not be as easy as the other two.  Building the tipping bucket is likely to take some extra time.  A tipping bucket could be purchased, but add another $20 to the price.  Possibly another four hours to complete this part.

So, there you have your own weather station.  You could certainly add some additional components, but this gives a good view of the weather at any given time, plus some historical data for making predictions or decisions.

At about $150, a person might just want to buy a weather station at the hardware store.  That and the day or so to put this together, if one wants to factor in their time, would put this unit at about $250. But, where would the fun be in that.  And, there is a major value in doing this yourself.  That is, you can make what ever adjustments to this device.  Whether it be in form or function.

Enjoy the weather.