Weather Station

Near the location of the WiFi repeater station the local paragliders launch their gliders into the air. Because of the micro climate  of the Queen Charlotte Sounds the weather can behave very differently depending on where you are. At times the paragliders have favorable winds in Picton but find out when they get to the launchpad that there is too much wind or that the wind is blowing from a different direction at the launch site. Therefor I offered to build a custom weather station that will be integrated in our WiFi network so the paragliders can retrieve real time weather information near their launchpad.

Measurements

Picture
Planning the connections
The weather stations functionality of importance to the paragliders are windspeed and wind direction. To make it more useful we also measure more weather information. The collected data is:
  • Wind speed
  • Wind gust
  • Wind direction
  • Temperature
  • Humidity
  • Barometric pressure

Hardware

 My design consists out of the following hardware:
  • Teensy 3.1
  • WIZ820io & SD Card Adaptor (Ethernet breakout board)
  • WIZ820io (Ethernet shield)
  • Davis Vantage Pro anemometer + wind direction
  • BMP180 barometric pressure sensor
  • AM2301 (DHT21) temperature and humidity sensor
On the 12th of September 2015 I upgraded the weather station from my temporary setup consisting of an Arduino Uno with an Ethernet shield to the hardware listed above. The two main changes are the removal of a software defect and the addition of barometric pressure.

Access Information

One of the biggest websites collecting weather information, including webcam feeds is "Wunderground" (Weather underground). The data collected by the Teensy microprocessor is send using a standard HTTP GET request. 
The "Personal Weather Station Upload Protocol" is explained in detail here.

Code

Project code available on my github page.