Diy Weather Station Advice
A while back I started developing my own weather station from scratch using Arduino as my microcontroller and then eventually switching to ESP8266. I work in the paragliding industry and I am a pilot myself. I can imagine those in this industry would understand just how important weather stations are to us, and reliable ones too. We use them everyday to look ahead of the wind direction to see what is on it’s way. We see it’s a gusty SE day so we look further up at SE weather stations to know what wind strengths to expect and how soon. If one of these stations are offline it makes it really difficult for us to make a safe call, especially commercially. This is why I intend on building for my community my own weather stations so that I can both earn a bit more income and dive deeper into my interest in electronics as well as weather forecasts and predictions.
In the pictures attached you guys will see what is my basic prototype of a weather station for at home. It currently only includes temperature and humidity sensors as I haven’t yet gotten to build additional sensors and I wouldn’t like to jump the gun if the concept won’t work.
I realized in my previous version that the radiation shield I had used was practically useless in terms of reliable readings as it traps heat and that’s a big no no. I then came up with the idea of making my own shield with parts bought from the hardware store. I decided on using 5 110mm PVC endcaps along with threaded rods, nuts and washers to create an even spacing between each layer. I went with a spacing of 20mm, but before adding the sensors I thought to halt as I’m doubting if this would work. To me I fear that rain will enter and potentially if not definitely destroy my sensors. I am trying to stay optimistic, but I am also very realistic and sometimes too cautious.
Let me know what you guys think of this DIY Radiation Shield and if and how I could improve it. Preferably not by 3D printing because otherwise that would’ve been my first option.
List of components I’m using
•Nodemcu v2 12F
•Two Led’s For Status Indication And Fault Detection
•Two DHT11 Temp & Humidity Sensors(Cheap, but only for testing purposes)
•LM2596 Buck Converter
•Cheap Solar Charge Controller
•12v 7Ah battery
•Two 9v 5w Solar Panels In Series
I’m using Blynk services to display data on my phone remotely. This is crucial as it doesn’t require me to enable port forwarding on my router which requires additional fees through my ISP subscription.
