Raspberry Pi Weather Station Features Wireless Sensor Nodes

Raspberry Pi Weather Station Features Wireless Sensor Nodes

On the web weather products and services are excellent for providing generic spot forecasts, but they do not supply hyperlocal information certain to your area. [Harald Kreuzer] wanted both and developed a Raspberry Pi Climate Station that supplies climate forecasts for the subsequent 7 times as very well as readings from community sensors. The job is totally open up source and primarily based on a Raspberry Pi base station which connects to ESP32 based sensor nodes and on the net services to nicely current the info on a 7″ contact monitor display screen.

The architecture is fairly clear-cut. The ESP32 based mostly sensor nodes publish their readings to an MQTT broker managing on the Raspberry Pi. The Pi subscribes to these sensor node topics to pick up the appropriate sensor information. This makes it straightforward to incorporate more sensor nodes in future. Temperature forecast info is gathered by connecting to the OpenWeatherMap API. All of the collected info is then exhibited via an app built making use of the Kivy: open up source Python application development framework.

The base station components is straightforward and housed in an tasteful 3D printed enclosure supported on a 3D printed foundation aid. The distant sensor node electronics are a minimal bit more concerned. [Harald]’s layout utilizes a simple custom made PCB which is generally a provider board for mounting the ESP32, a two way DIP change for sensor node tackle placing, a voltage divider to measure battery voltage, a BME280 sensor that delivers temperature, humidity and atmospheric stress readings, and a TP4056 based battery charger for the 18650 lithium ion battery. The battery is charged by way of a photo voltaic mobile that sorts the prime protect of the sensor node enclosure.

Distant sensor applications such as these perform nicely when the battery lifetime can be prolonged as very long as probable, and this calls for reducing electricity use to the bare minimal. [Harald] selects an ESP32 board with a lower quiescent present-day voltage regulator. This final results in about 20uA existing drawn all through deep slumber periods of 10 minutes, and 200mA more than a 10s period of time for connecting to WiFi and transmitting the data. He reckons this will give him about a 25 working day window just before the battery loses demand. Hopefully, he will get ample hrs of sunshine all through the winter months to preserve the battery topped up.

There are several bits of application that need to have to get the job done in unison to make the climate station tick, and [Harald] walks us by way of the installation and configuration of each and every portion in depth. From placing up the OS on the Raspberry Pi and the Kivy: framework in which the weather station application is coded, to environment up the OpenWeather API, the Mosquitto MQTT broker, and flashing the code on the ESP32 sensor nodes. [Harald] has shared all the specifics for the hardware and program factors of the weather conditions station on Github repositories, making it uncomplicated to replicate his efforts.

The weather conditions station operates as expected, but [Harald] previously has a “feature creep” record of enhancements that he would like to employ in the next edition, which should not appear as a surprise to us. Weather Station projects are staple favourites of hackers, and there are lots of different ways to opt for from, this sort of as this Temperature Station For No matter whether It Rains Or Shines or this Hackaday Prize 2022 submission for a Photo voltaic Run LoRa Temperature Station For The Masses.