WeatherPi Solar Powered Weather Station Deployed Outside

What is WeatherPi?

SwitchDoc Labs is in the process of building a Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Weather Station.   The design will be released as a SwitchDoc Appnote, an Instructable and a series of posts on SwitchDoc.com.  We have now completed the software and we are placing the device outside.  After a few days in the sun, we will post graphs of the data from RasPiConnect.

Brownout Issue

There is one  issue that still needs to be addressed.  Occasionally, during our testing, the Raspberry Pi is not rebooting after a brownout incident.  It doesn’t happen every time and we are trying to capture the issue.  These once-in-a-while problems are the hardest issues to find in a system.  We are recording a lot of data!   We have simulated the battery going low by substituting a variable power supply for the battery and it reboots every time.   Next we are disconnecting the Voltaics solar panels and letting the battery run down naturally to try to see if the issue repeats.

With the I2C Mux Breakout Board installed, we now have no I2C address conflicts and consequently added the inside humidity sensor back into the system.  We also moved the AM2315 outdoor temperature and humidity sensor to the 5V I2C bus on the SunAirPlus Solar Power Controller and it is working much more reliably than on the 3.3V I2C bus.

WeatherPi Deployed

Now that we can monitor the system remotely using the command line and RasPiConnect, we are putting it outside.   The last item was to use silicon caulk to seal all the mounting screw holes.   The final location of the system will be up on top of the house, but this location is easier to get to.

Plus we have tulips.

 

 

Updated Parts List (April 22, 2015)

• WeatherRack Weather Sensors
• BUD NEMA Box from Amazon.com
• VoltaicSystems Solar Panel(s) –  2 panels
• Raspberry Pi A+
• Raspberry Pi Compatible WiFi USB Dongle
• SunAirPlus Solar Power Controller
• USB Control (SwitchDoc Labs – now available)
• 4 Channel I2C Mux Breakout Board
• SwitchDoc Labs Dual WatchDog Timer
• WeatherPiArduino Weather Board
• Embedded Adventures I2C Lightning Detector MOD-1016 board
• DS3231 RTC With EEPROM
• AM2315 Outdoor Temperature and Humidity Sensor
• BMP180 Barometer and Temperature Sensor
• Ada fruit HTU21D-F Temperature/Humidity breakout board
• Adafruit 32KB FRAM I2C breakout board
• Adafruit ADS1015 4 Channel A/D I2C board
• Adafruit PKCELL Lithium Ion Battery Pack – 3.7V 6600mAh
• Waterproof 8 Pin Plug from Amazon.com
• 2 Dual Row 4 Position Covered Screw Terminal Block Strip from Amazon.com
• RasPiConnect Control Panel

Block Diagram