New OurWeather Software Released – WXLink and Solar Support

March 3, 2017 Arduino Software, Grove, OurWeather, Products, Projects, SwitchDoc Products, Weather, WXLink

New OurWeather Software Released – WXLink and Solar SupportOurWeather

SwitchDoc Labs has now released a new version of the OurWeather software (Version 021) that supports the SwitchDoc WXLink/Solar WXLink and also the new OurWeather Solar Power Extender Kit.   This new software version for the popular OurWeather Weather Station adds two very substantial capabilities to the OurWeather Kit.   This software update is freely available to all OurWeather customers (through the over the air update method – see the OurWeather Manual) and the open source software for the OurWeather kit (Arduino IDE) is located here:  https://github.com/switchdoclabs/OurWeatherWeatherPlus

What is OurWeather?

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OurWeather

OurWeather is an ESP8266 based  connected weather station containing 7 different sensors that will teach about electronics, software and theunspecified-8 copy weather.   It contains all the sensors and wires to make a fully functional, WiFi weather station.   No software programming is required, it works right out of the box. However, if you want to change the way OurWeather works, add your own software or do something entirely different, we have the Open Source software available.   And what is one of the coolest features of OurWeather?   Building the kit requires NO SOLDERING. It uses Grove Connectors.    It is all plug and play based building, with a full step-by-step photograph based instruction manual.  It is a safe and educational way to learn about weather, electronics and science topics.   You can watch our successful kickstarter video here: https://youtu.be/pw6hSNSQnsM

See the Grove Connector Tutorial Here.

What is the OurWeather Solar Power Extender Kit?

It is a new kit that allows you to add solar power to the OurWeather kit and to be able to study the results.  Lots of data available.   We will be doing a product announcement next week when we publish the assembly manual for the extender kit.

What is the WXLink?

The issue is sometimes you don’t want to run a wire all the way from the Weather Station to the wind and rain sensor.  Using the Mini Pro LP, we built a WeatherRack reader and then we use a transmitter to send it back to the GroveWeatherPi station inside. 600 meters in free air range.

The WXLink product kit contains two Min Pro LP Arduino boards, a WXLinkWR Weather Rack Interface board, two transceivers and one DS3231 RTC Board.

The system has a bi-directional serial link between the two Mini Pro LP Arduino Boards.    The software below only supports a one way link, but you can modify the software code to transmit anything you would like.   The boards come preprogrammed with the Rx and Tx software so you can get up and testing quickly!

The Rx board has an I2C interface built in so it can be easily read by many computers without consuming the standard serial port.

What is the Solar WXLink?

Sometimes you don’t have power easily available for the WXLink and that is why we added a solar power option.

The Solar WXLink is a solar powered wireless serial link that can transmit up to 600 meters in free air.   IT is designed to connect up to any source of data from sensors connected to the Mini Pro LP Arduino compatible low power computer board.  It was specifically designed to connect a WeatherRack weather sensor array to a Weather Board based system connected to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi computer.   The receiver is read by the host computer through an I2C interface.   Much easier and more available than a serial interface.   And yes, it has Grove connectors throughout the system.   The WXLink comes preloaded with the software to support a WeatherRack and AM2315.