New Instructable: Join the IOT on your Weather Station – CWOP

New Instructable: Join the IOT on your Weather Station – CWOP

footer-robotSwitchDoc Labs is pleased to announce a new Instructable for adding the IOT (Internet of Things) to your Raspberry Pi based Weather Station.   Join CWOP and share your data!

 

 

What is CWOP?

The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a network of privately owned electronic weather stations concentrated in the United States but also located in over 150 countries. Being in this network allows volunteers with computerized weather stations (like the WeatherPi – https://www.instructables.com/id/Create-Your-Own-Solar-Powered-Raspberry-Pi-Weather/) to send automated surface weather observations to the National Weather Service.

This data is then used by the Rapid Refresh forecast model to produce short term forecasts (3 to 12 hours into the future) of conditions across the United States’ lower 48 states.

CWOP Observations are also re-distributed to the public. There is an extensive set of quality control software that puts your data through the ringer, assigns your data a quality rating and makes suggestions before the data is taken into the system.

The CWOP was originally set up by amateur radio operators experimenting with packet radio, but now contains a majority of Internet-only connected stations. As of July 2015, more than 10,000 stations worldwide report regularly to the CWOP network.

WeatherPi – A SwitchDoc Instructable

Recently, SwitchDoc Labs produced a complete instructable to build a solar powered Raspberry Pi Weather Station. That instructable is here at WeatherPi.  The Instructable for WeatherPi is here.

WeatherPi is a solar powered Raspberry Pi WiFi connected weather station designed for Makers by SwitchDoc Labs. This is a great system to build and tinker with. All of it is modifiable and all source code is included. The most important functions are:

  • Senses 20 different environmental values
  • Completely Solar Powered
  • Has a full database containing history of the environment (MySQL)
  • Monitors and reports lots of data on the solar powered system – great for education!
  • Self contained and monitored for brownouts and power issues
  • Can be modified remotely
  • Download your data to crunch it on your PC
  • Can be modified to do SMS (Text) messaging, Twitters, webpages and more
  • Has an iPad Based Control Panel
  • Easy to connect to Twitter, WeatherUnderground, etc

This Instructable will show you how to build a WiFi Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Weather Station. This project grew out of a number of other projects, including the massive Project Curacao, a solar powered environmental monitoring system deployed on the Caribbean tropical island of Curacao. Project Curacao was written up in an extensive set of articles in MagPi magazine (starting in Issue 18 and continuing through Issue 22).

The WeatherPi Solar Powered Weather Station is an excellent education project, and with the addition of CWOP, the data is there for everyone to see. There are many aspects of this project that can be looked at and analyzed for educational purposes: