Saturday 31 January 2015

Gutters cleaned

This batch of cold weather and rain and washed all the leaves to the lowest spot on the house.  Luckily, it's single storey.

Weather Station

The weather station lasted a week or so, then stopped working at high humidity again.  I could buy a spare transmitter for £15 from a Clas Olson shop.  It's special order, and I don't live anywhere near one to order and then go back to collect it.
So, I have an excuse for another project.  I'd never been entirely happy with the way the data was sent (every 48s)  You can't get a feel for conditions when the data is delayed.

I've made a new head end, re-used the wind/rain sensors, which will be wired into the main house data collector.


Data is sent every 2s.  2s was chosen due to the way the anemometer works.  The OEM (fine offset) have confirmed the 2s period, so it seemed sensible to work to it.  The minimum wind speed as a paltry 1 revolution per 2s (equivalent to 0.34m/s or 1.2kph)
With a few calculations, I can now send more, useful, data to Wunderground (http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IHAUTEPY4)
I've also added UV index (ML8511 sensor) soil temperature (LM61) and solar radiation, which will be derived from the solar panels.

March 2015
In a fit of over re-cycling, I decided to re-use the original display to display the data that I now get from my weather station.  Not wishing to take it apart, I decided to reverse the receive protocol.  It was quite easy to send 1 set of info, but sending it every 48s, as per the original transmitter, was challenging.  I had to increment the transmission interval in 0.1 second increments.  Now that's the secret to keeping battery consumption down.