1-Wire Weather Stations

ravydavygravy · 07-01-2010 09:31PM #1

Hi guys,

Has anyone here built their own weather station with 1-wire components? Having followed the various weather threads for the last few weeks, I'm interested in upgrading my weather watching capabilities for my current indoor/outdoor thermometer :-)

I have the software know-how to look after that side of the project, and I think enough rudimentary electronics to build the rest. I'm wondering if anyone else here has done similar, and has any advice to share?

FYI, to get me started, I've ordered a USB 1-wire Interface, a couple of DS18S20 temp sensors and a Dual Counter assembly from www.hobbyboards.com - I already have a Fedora box to act as the controller & web server.

Dave

10-10-20 · 08-01-2010 10:23PM

Hi. I've had a look at this system. It seems interesting.
Does it use a PC as the controler? Is there an option to use a control-board instead of a PC?
How much programming is required (I have no skills in that area, but am handy with circuits...!)?

ravydavygravy · 09-01-2010 08:22PM

Yes normally a PC acts as the controller - polling for data, generating webpages, graphs, responding to events, whatever - the PC could be very small though, like a plug PC or a router running OpenWRT.

Regarding programming, some software exists to control 1-wire setups, but I'm intending to roll my own.

I'll let you know how I get on...

Dave

ravydavygravy · 17-01-2010 07:12PM

Small update on this - I got the controller, a few sensors and a counter (~ €30), and it only took a few hours to get a basic thermometer up and running - I'm gonna need a few extra bits to assemble a weatherproof setup to go outside.

I use owfs (http://owfs.org/) to expose the 1-wire network as a file system, so to read a temperature, I just check to see what number is in a particular file (one per sensor) - same for other components - counters, humidity sensors, barometers - all their measured values are exposed as files by owfs.

I wrote a couple of small programs to read the values every minute and write the data to an RRD database - each minute, I also generate fresh graphs as images from the database, and publish them on my (new) website: http://www.davema.eu/weather.html

Hope this is useful to someone - with a little bit of know-how, and very little money, you can build a simple web-enabled weather station. Next on my list is to work out how the counter works, as this is of of the main components of a rain guage or an anemometer.

Dave

vicky886 · 23-01-2010 03:04AM

ravydavygravy wrote: »

Hi guys,

Has anyone here built their own weather station with 1-wire components? Having followed the various weather threads for the last few weeks, I'm interested in upgrading my weather watching capabilities for my current Indoor & Outdoor Thermometers :-)

I have the software know-how to look after that side of the project, and I think enough rudimentary electronics to build the rest. I'm wondering if anyone else here has done similar, and has any advice to share?

FYI, to get me started, I've ordered a USB 1-wire Interface, a couple of DS18S20 temp sensors and a Dual Counter assembly from www.hobbyboards.com - I already have a Fedora box to act as the controller & web server.

Dave

Oh, I have a MiniMultifunction In-out Doors Centigrade Thermometer & Hygrometer. So When I take it outdoor, I can know the outdoor temperature and humidity by it; but when I take it indoor, I can know the indoor temperature by it.

ravydavygravy · 23-01-2010 10:51AM

ok....

Anyway, the page is now at http://www.davema.eu/weather.php. I've ordered some plastic RJ11 junction boxes from ebay (€7 for 5 - cheap as chips) so that I can house the sensors in something capable of surviving outside, and it'll make the whole thing a bit more modular, since it'll be a simple matter of plugging everything together with phone cable.

23-01-2010 09:28PM

ravydavygravy wrote: »

ok....

Anyway, the page is now at http://www.davema.eu/weather.php. I've ordered some plastic RJ11 junction boxes from ebay (€7 for 5 - cheap as chips) so that I can house the sensors in something capable of surviving outside, and it'll make the whole thing a bit more modular, since it'll be a simple matter of plugging everything together with phone cable.

Great start, well done!

I nearly went down that route a couple of years ago, but chickened out. :pac:

Instead I used a commercial (soon to be replaced) system for the weather and a diy sensor system for the solarpanel & buffer tank installation with a bit of simple batch file scripting to run it, plus a couple of freeware apps. It produces the following table & graph.
http://www.dolanbaker.info/weather/solar_table_chart.html

I did find several good "ham weather" sites with lots of practical suggestions, may be worth a look.

10-10-20 · 12-02-2010 11:59PM

Dave - I purchased some parts myself and have had some good success.
I've documented some of this online. Link in my sig.

Next I'll get a dynamic-DNS IP and also test some of the DS2450 switches.
http://owfs.org/index.php?page=ds2450
These devices seem to be the key to some element of home automation.

Thanks for the initial pointer to 1-wire!

1-Wire Weather Stations

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