Weather Station

I built a small solar-powered Arduino-based weather station to log temperature, humidity, and air pressure. Once stored, the data provided a live feed to this website. The feed is no longer running.

The first build of the weather station, about to begin testing

The components onboard are:

Arduino Nano
Two small solar panels (approx 120mW in bright daylight)
Lithium-ion battery, salvaged from a discarded wireless radio
TP4056 chip-based lithium-ion charging board
NRF24L01+ 2.4GHz radio transceiver
DHT11 humidity sensor
BMP180 (Bosch) pressure and temperature sensor

Several issues existed with the weather station; the clear acrylic causes a major greenhouse effect, when it gets humid, the humidity is often exaggerated, and will frequently max the sensor out to its highest possible reading. When the station is in direct sunlight (which is good for the solar panels!), the same issue affects the temperature. On sunny days, large spikes can be seen at the time of day when the sun shines onto the weather station. The location of the station is limited as the low power of the transceiver requires reasonable proximity to the ‘base’ transceiver, located inside a Raspberry Pi.