👋 Well hello, April! Yes, it is April already. Doesn’t time fly? Here in the Netherlands, this month already provided us with some nice sunny days, with exceptional warm temperatures for the time of year…
Summer is coming! (yeah I know, it is barely spring 🌱). Nevertheless, I feel the need for a summer side project to tinker with, and I have been writing down quite a bunch of ideas. I figured it should be something for outside, something useful or interesting. Something that involves IoT (doh!).
So one of the ideas I came up with: A DIY Weather station….
“Frenck, wait, aren’t there tons of existing project for weather stations out there already?”
LOL, Yeah, there are. A lot. So what? 😬
Of course, I could just search for a DIY weather station project, and complete it as it was written. Instead, I’m looking at doing something a bit more extreme. More like: The Ultimate DIY Weather station. One that measures… All. One that runs on ESPHome. One that powers itself. One that provides so much data, that it becomes useless, but is impressive and cool at the same time.
Feel it already?
Time to start thinking about all things it could measure… Of course, it should measure the temperature! But should it measure sound pollution? UV? What else?
../Frenck
“Summer is coming”
You didn’t write that just now, did you?
looks outside at snowstorm
Hehe… Yeah, I did… It’s snowing right now… Crazy month!
Simple, it needs at least a smoke detector and infrared view of your outdoors for the BBQ binary sensor. You need a wind direction sensor to know what neighbours to apologize to. Decibel measurement to trigger your “keep it down!” neon sign when beers made you produce too much noise after 22.00.
Great idea! I think it should contain a pollution (pm2.5 and pm10) with for example SDS sensor and if possible contribute to luftdaten. At the same time it would be great it would be autonomous by building on solar power, integrated with Home Assistant and a nice 3D printed case.
The SDS sensors are great! (Got a couple of those), but maybe I should use an SPS30 instead; provides pm1.0, 2.5, 4.0 and 10.0), additionally, next to the weight concentration, it also provides number concentration.
Hi Frenk,
I made a similar sensor with en PIR, temp/hum and Lux sensor.
only thing missing is a UV sensor. if you have an idea how to fix this, please let me know 😉
It should measure wind speed with an anemometer, plus keep that data so that one can look at the wind speed over time.
Oh absolutely! Wind speed & direction ✅
I was more thinking in the area of crazy stuff… Geiger counter for example 🙂
Somewhat crazy ideas that just came to my mind:
number of meteors (shooting stars) per hour (at night time)
sky cloud coverage percentage
geomagnetic disturbances
Now we are talking! Is that even possible? 😀
Hahaha, crazy ideas have you guys! Can wait to see the outcome!!!
I guess first two are not too hard. It should be doable with camera pointing upward and some image processing algorithms/neural networks.
The last one could be trickier mostly because we live in very noisy electromagnetic environment.
Korte rokjes sensor is also a must. I mean, what is more important to know for going outside in the summer?
I would love to see an working rain meter with ESPHome and while were at it a UV Index would be nice.
If you are considering solar power then tracking the sun and positioning the solar panel towards might be cool.
And if you have a swimming pool, adding sensors to check water temperature, chlorine level and such might be a nice addition. Although that’s maybe a project on it’s own 🙂
Hi Frenck. I used the the particularI use a particulate sensor (pm1, pm2.5 and pm10), a lux sensor and a bme280 for the temperature. I also wanted to add a rain gauge. But a project made by you would be awesome.
Hi Frenck,
A ‘mother-of-all-weatherstations’ project sounds pretty cool! And it can be ook very useful too! There is a group of duch guys (including Teus Hagen) that are working on an IOT measurement station – air quality including nitrogen (NH3 / NOx). Very relevant at this moment. Wouldn’t it be cool to create a mesh of hass measurement stations? Check it out: https://www.trouw.nl/duurzaamheid-natuur/meet-je-stad-breidt-uit-op-jacht-naar-de-stikstof-hotspots-van-het-platteland~bfa6fa47/