Smart Weather Station

A selection of photographs taken while building a weather station for my exocortex.

Smart Weather Station

Yes, I really do need to draw guidelines on things to drill them somewhat accurately. A weather resistant junction box from the hardware store. First sensor: A BME280 wired into a Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins. The PCB of the weather vane. I'm trying to figure out how to wire it up. Constructing the circuit that drives the anemometer on a breadboard. First time I ever built something like this. A closeup of the guts of the weather vane. Working out the analog-to-digital converter circuit. A closeup of the wires plugged into the breadboard. I used screw terminals for the wires from the sensor because those are what I was going to use on the final version. At the bottom is the voltage divider that drove me nuts for a week. I wired up the weather vane a little differently, which necessitated removing the RJ11 jack. I patched the hole in the casing with a bit of scrap ABS plastic and silicon sealant. The protoboard that fits on the top of the RasPi after soldering everything. Labelled are the screw headers for the rain gauge, the weather vane, and the anemometer. The ADC chip isn't socketed yet. The flip side of the protoboard, where everything gets soldered. You can see how the holes are joined in neat lines, which gives a lot of flexibility when placing components. Interface protoboard fitted onto the RasPi. Added the mounting posts for the RasPi and multisensor. The black thing at the top left is a port for passing the power line into the case. Four mounting posts for the BME280 multisensor. The white plastic screen keeps debris out of the hole that allows the sensor to sample air. I accidentally snapped one of the mounting posts for the RasPi off. To cut my losses and seal the hole I daubed some silicone sealant onto it. The inside part of the gland that would let the power line pass into the housing. I don't know why they called them glands. The outside part of the power line's gland. The rubber bit is a gasket that squishes down to make a seal around the cable when you crank the nut down. Blobs of silicone sealant on the outside, sealing where the standoffs are screwed into the plastic to keep water out. The back of the housing. I drilled holes to mount the brackets and sealed the edges with silicone. Also visible are the holes drilled for the RasPi's mounting standoffs. Silicone sealant: The universal glue. Housing mounted on the edge of the deck. The power line was fed up through the portal in the bottom of the housing and cranked down. Also visible are the cables from anemometer and rain gauge. The power line is a regular outdoor grounded extension cord. You use ones like this for holiday decorations. Far end of the power line, dipping beneath the deck to the power outlet. Everything is fastened in place with zip ties. Cables from the weather sensors are visible. The white thing on the left hand side is a sectional PVC pipe acting as the mast. Mounted to the mast (left to right): Weather vane, anemometer, and rain gauge. The female end of the extension cord just fit in the gland. After cranking it down I injected a lot of silicone sealant into the resulting cavity to seal it. The three smaller glands for the cables from the sensors. Just to be safe I weatherproofed the edges with silicone sealant. RasPi mounted. I screwed the broken off into place for stability. Also visible are tiny labels for each cable. The weather vane's cable wasn't long enough so I had to splice some extra wires on. Two overlapping layers of heat shrink tubing were added to protect the splices. All cables fed into the junction box. The interface board is in place. Below everything is the RasPi's power supply. To the right is the BME280 multisensor. All buttoned up. Just to be safe I daubed some silicone sealant onto the ends of the heat shrink tubing to weatherproof them. Online!