Start of a weather station project

[dynamicdave]

Just managed to get my old weather station to talk to my Combo board which then talks to Node-RED.

As you can probably see I'm using the long-range version of the NRF24L01-l05 module.

The old WS uses a Wemos D1 Mini that is in deepsleep for most of the time. Once every 15-mins it wakes up, takes some readings from the BME280, INA219 (solar panel V, I, W) and ADS1115 and then sends the data as a packed message-packet via the UHF radio to the base station.

The base station is a Raspberry Pi Pico married-up with an ESP01S to give it WiFi capability and of course a NRF24L01 radio. Here's a screen-shot of my debug node in Node-RED showing the received data.

I'll write-up a detailed tutorial for this project once I have everything working.

[smcgann99]

Must be a summer thing - I'm just working on an UBER weather page

[Paul-Reed]

@smcgann99

I'm just working on an UBER weather page

UBER weather??
I thought they did pizzas...

[zenofmud]

You need to add a UV index to it.

[smcgann99]

thats the icons along the bottom

[smcgann99]

OK Make that Über

[ScheepersJohan]

Look at Misol tipping bucket for rain fall, wind speed and direction sensors, they are fairly easy to read and cheap.

[Paul-Reed]

Über

I'm still no wiser Sean, is the forecast provided by Über? Do you have a link

EDIT - Oh dear

[mudwalker]

How is the range of the NRF24L01? Have you experimented with distance yet?

[dynamicdave]

Have a look at this thread for a range check that gave a distance of 435m.
As long as it's line-of-sight the radios perform really well.
As soon as the signal encounters brick walls and other solid objects - signal rapidly deteriorates.

Using nRF24L01 radios as part of a weather station

This is an extension of the weather station project one of my IoT students tackled last year (2019). The objective was to have a remote sensor (located in one of the school's gardens) to send temp/humidity/pressure readings to a database using MQTT. Initially a Wemos D1 Mini was used but the WiFi range of the ESP8266 limited the distance the sensor could be placed from the school. Someone suggested I should look at the inexpensive UHF radios - - nRF24L01 as an alternative. I've just spent a …

[mudwalker]

Thanks for the link David, I remember the post now!

We are suffering a major internet outage here (possibly affects your daughter) and was thinking how I could link LOS to someone who does have internet. Openreach have just replace 150m of fibre, still no prediction of when all will be working!! (Twitter link is worth viewing!!)

[dynamicdave]

She contacted me yesterday and mentioned the PROBLEM. Builders had cut through the major internet cables that feed her's and your area.

[mudwalker]

Check the link, it definitely isn't a cut!!

Some 4,00 accounts affected including Landlines, Mobile Masts and of course Private fibre links (Hospital affected on other side of town - link to Winchester and Andover?)

[ScheepersJohan]

@Using nRF24L01 radios as part of a weather station

This is an extension of the weather station project one of my IoT students tackled last year (2019). The objective was to have a remote sensor (located in one of the school's gardens) to send temp/humidity/pressure readings to a database using MQTT. Initially a Wemos D1 Mini was used but the WiFi range of the ESP8266 limited the distance the sensor could be placed from the school. Someone suggested I should look at the inexpensive UHF radios - - nRF24L01 as an alternative. I've just spent a …

You can use LoRaWAN as a back haul as well. The TTN coverage is pretty good and if there is not a gateway close by you can add one very easily.

Dependent on the area you are in coverage can be from several hundreds on meters to km.

Here is my station, 6km from gateway.

Don't ask about the cable ties, they are their for every bird in the country.

[ScheepersJohan]

Blue is active gateways with in 10km

[dynamicdave]

Wooo - that is spooky.
I was just looking at the LoRaWAN map for my area and then... I get a posting from you.

I will definitely have to follow up on his technology.

[ScheepersJohan]

Saw in you other post you are in Yeteley area, so I had a quick look

This is also build with node-red

[dynamicdave]

There are so many things to explore.
I've been looking into ZeroTier - that was mentioned in another thread this morning.
I'm glad I'm retired as I couldn't hold down a full-time job and "play" as much as I do

[dynamicdave]

Here's a rough sketch of Plan-B for the Base Station.

The NR24 radios can handle 6 receive pipes and a single transmit pipe.

That means it should be possible to create a 'star' radio network as per attached diagram.

I also believe I could create a set of nested Python dictionaries to hold the readings from the various remote WS.

So what happens is each remote station sends its readings on an ad-hoc basis.
The readings are held in a Python dictionary, so the last reading is always available.

The Python script in the RP2 could send these readings at set intervals and/or could also react to a command from Node-RED (via MQTT and ESP01) to send a reading on demand.

I have a second old weather station I intend to bring back to life so I can check out this idea.

Plan-C
At the moment my remote weather stations are just fitted with sensors (BME280, INA219, ADS1115)
however, I reckon they could be fitted with output devices like relays, LEDs, even OLED panel.
It just means implementing two-way radio communication (which the NRF24 radios support).

I haven't given this aspect much thought yet, but reckon it should be easy to send a command like this...

<WS_ID>, <device_ID>,

e.g. 101, gpio_6, on
100, gpio_4, off

So ALL the remote WS would receive these commands but only the WS that matched the WS_ID would react.
Although this is not an efficient use of the network, it does mean the 'pipe' selection is fairly straightforward.

In my particular application, this would open things up to become a more generic data acquisition and control system - rather than being limited to just a weather station.

[ScheepersJohan]

I know I am putting you on a tangent here with LoRaWan.

But using TTN, Oracle (EC2), node-red and Grafana, these projects you can deploy so rapidly.

There are 100 of boards ready for use and gateways prices have also dropped.

These boards have LoRa radios already integrated on them (this is just a short list), and lots of info on them.

LoRa development boards with integrated LoRa support:

Board-id Board name

---

adafruit_feather_32u4_lora ; Adafruit Feather 32u4 LoRa

adafruit_feather_m0_lora ; Adafruit Feather M0 LoRa

disco_l072cz_lrwan1 ; Discovery B-L072Z-LRWAN1

heltec_wifi_lora_32_v2 ; Heltec Wifi LoRa 32 V2

heltec_wifi_lora_32 ; Heltec Wifi LoRa 32

heltec_wireless_stick_lite ; Heltec Wireless Stick Lite

heltec_wireless_stick ; Heltec Wireless Stick

lopy4 ; Pycom Lopy4

lora32u4II ; BSFrance LoRa32u4 II v1.0, v1.1, v1.2, v1.3

ttgo_lora32_v1 ; TTGO LoRa32 v1.3

ttgo_lora32_v2 ; TTGO LoRa32 v2.0

ttgo_lora32_v21 ; TTGO LoRa32 v2.1.6

ttgo_t_beam ; TTGO T-Beam v0.5, v0.6, v0.7

ttgo_t_beam_v1 ; TTGO T-Beam v1.0, v1.1