Setting up your own Weather Station

[carlosviansi]

I haven't found yet any post about this, so I am setting one as I work through what I have. 

Disclaimer: I am a noob, don't get biased by my moderator status ;-) 

Alright so let's start by the goal: 

Goal. I need a weather station to be used on a Net-Zero building. They are getting popular in Hawaii, since electricity is expensive here. I just happen to be a hire in a group dealing with those stuff, so I see the potential to use my pine to play around with this.   I will basically dump my Pine in there and collect some data side-by-side with other sensors that already exist there. I imagine the IoT kit likely would benefit from this as well. 

If you browsed over the backerkit, you will see this:




So, the Humidity/Temperature sensor and the Ambient Sensor call attention right off the bat. But is that all we need? Digging in the wiki, I found this template:



Looking back at the Backetkit, you will notice the I2C POT is the "Pine64 12C Multiport POT. Further digging the wiki you will find how it is connected to the Pine64:



Awesome. Now we got the two main folks plugged in, the next is to worry about the sensors. Where do they go? Looking back at the template, we can see the 12C connector has a 4Way Connector and a 5 Way Connector. Again, referring to the wiki, if we stare close enough we will observe this is the number of pins for each sensor (the "white thing"):





4 and 5 respectively. Inspecting closer the 12C POT we will see it has both 4 and 5 here and there with the 5 names..

Ok great so we see the holes. Now what we are missing is how to plug them in.. and again checking the wiki we get a picture of the actual thing built up:

 

Looking at the template again, we can see this is not really the arrangement being shown. Rather it seems closer to this one:



Which is plugged to the Wi-Fi module instead....but seems inconsistent with the template naming. Either way, depending on which set-up we go this may influence if we want 4-way cables, 5-way, or 4-to-5 cables as shown on the template. Seeing this also made me wonder: For those who added the wi-fi and blue-tooth module at the $89 tier, can we just go with the second arrangement and avoid building the 12C POT? What else would we plug in there? 

Thats it for now. :-) Hopefully someone with more expertise feels like sharing their know-how here. To this point, the POT Development Board and Z-Wave remain a full mistery to me, other than the later is useful for OpenHub OS as it is part of the IoT kit.  I am also not sure if the USB Serial Programmer is just an extra USB port or if there is anything special to it. 

Again if you know anything about this, please consider starting a thread, or providing educational links or simple reply to this thread ;-)

[Ghost]

Wow, this some good digging and nicely presented info. 

Just to clarify, though, the WiFi/Bluetooth module and the WiFi remote module are two separate entities. The first allows connection with various (mainly input) Bluetooth devices, such as keyboards and game controllers, and connection to the internet, whereas the second, the WiFi remote allows you to interface with sensors and peripherals wirelessly, from a distance.

 The POT development board allows you to prototype projects by soldering various components (LED, capacitors, resistors, switches, etc) and wires and create unique electronics which can then be interfaced with the Pine. 

The Z-Wave module is used mainly for home automation. As I understand it (and I understand relatively little about it, hopefully others will see this post and flesh it out properly), it utilises a specific frequency and this frequency is shared by many devices around the home, allowing control of all these devices by the single Z-Wave unit, rather than having multiple control units for multiple devices (i.e. one controller for blinds, one for doors, one for lights, etc). The Z-Wave module allows you to control all these processes from one handy focal point, which simplifies things.

Good luck with your weather station!

[Artyom]

I haven't found yet any post about this, so I am setting one as I work through what I have. 

Disclaimer: I am a noob, don't get biased by my moderator status ;-) 

Alright so let's start by the goal: 

Goal. I need a weather station to be used on a Net-Zero building. They are getting popular in Hawaii, since electricity is expensive here. I just happen to be a hire in a group dealing with those stuff, so I see the potential to use my pine to play around with this.   I will basically dump my Pine in there and collect some data side-by-side with other sensors that already exist there. I imagine the IoT kit likely would benefit from this as well. 

If you browsed over the backerkit, you will see this:




So, the Humidity/Temperature sensor and the Ambient Sensor call attention right off the bat. But is that all we need? Digging in the wiki, I found this template:



Looking back at the Backetkit, you will notice the I2C POT is the "Pine64 12C Multiport POT. Further digging the wiki you will find how it is connected to the Pine64:



Awesome. Now we got the two main folks plugged in, the next is to worry about the sensors. Where do they go? Looking back at the template, we can see the 12C connector has a 4Way Connector and a 5 Way Connector. Again, referring to the wiki, if we stare close enough we will observe this is the number of pins for each sensor (the "white thing"):





4 and 5 respectively. Inspecting closer the 12C POT we will see it has both 4 and 5 here and there with the 5 names..

Ok great so we see the holes. Now what we are missing is how to plug them in.. and again checking the wiki we get a picture of the actual thing built up:

 

Looking at the template again, we can see this is not really the arrangement being shown. Rather it seems closer to this one:



Which is plugged to the Wi-Fi module instead....but seems inconsistent with the template naming. Either way, depending on which set-up we go this may influence if we want 4-way cables, 5-way, or 4-to-5 cables as shown on the template. Seeing this also made me wonder: For those who added the wi-fi and blue-tooth module at the $89 tier, can we just go with the second arrangement and avoid building the 12C POT? What else would we plug in there? 

Thats it for now. :-) Hopefully someone with more expertise feels like sharing their know-how here. To this point, the POT Development Board and Z-Wave remain a full mistery to me, other than the later is useful for OpenHub OS as it is part of the IoT kit.  I am also not sure if the USB Serial Programmer is just an extra USB port or if there is anything special to it. 

Again if you know anything about this, please consider starting a thread, or providing educational links or simple reply to this thread ;-)

I do not know how often does it rain in Hawaii and what there is humidity, but would recommend using sensors in a hermetic package, and not as it is ... Open should remain only the sensor (temperature, humidity, etc.).

[carlosviansi]

Are you referring to using that more expensive case that fully encloses the Pine?

By the way, I found a link that helps a bit more on making of the whole thing, but it is not a DiY (Do it Yourself) tutorial on the thing: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=231

Will keep looking..