I am brand new on this forum and I should introduce myself a bit.
My name is Cristian, I am from Romania and I am amateur astronomer (moderator on the biggest astronomy forum from Romania).
I have a roll-off-roof observatory and in order to automatize it, I need a WS.
The most important sensors must be IR sensor (for clouds), temperature sensor, rain sensor and (perhaps but not necessary - humidity sensor). In the future I will add a wind sensor, but is no critical at this moment.
So, I want to build this starting from an Arduino platform and I have no idea about anything. Tomorrow I will go to a workshop for beginners in Arduino, to clear a little bit the path. But about the rest, you are my hope.
Thank you for tips, very useful.
I will start by buying an Arduino and doing some tests with all kind of sensors, to gain some experience.
Once this step passed, I will start to build around the board and I will keep you updated.
Anyway, if someone have more ideas, is welcome to post here.
This is my arduino based weather station in construction.
Sensors:
Sensirion SHT11 for temperature/humidity
DS18b20 for temperature of electronic in the box
DS18b20 for grass temperature and soil temperature
Bosch Sensortec BMP085 for barometric pressure
DS1307 for RTC
SD card for data logging
Led signalization if error occured
Daytime solar aspirated radiation shield
Todo list:
Completely powered from solar panel and battery
Solar sensor,uv sensor, gass sensor, maybe rain detector
That’s a very interesting project and you’ve made a great start. I don’t know how much your design depends on the RTC but in my experience the simple DS1307 RTC modules are not very accurate, especially in an application where the temperature isn’t constant. There are other Maxim RTC chips which are very accurate, like the DS3234 which has a temperature compensated oscillator (but the code is somewhat more complex).
