Scott, My interest is stand-alone solar powered WX stations. This looks like it could meet the bill but my wish list would include the following:
1) A way to report telemetry - ie battery voltage (at a minimum) and prefereably battery charge current. 2) Temperature inside (the battery enclosure) would be nice but not critical 3) EMP (ie lightning) protection that tends to make these things go bezerk in a thunderstorm when you need them most. Ferrite beads on all inputs and outputs may do the job. 4) A watchdog timer that would automatically reset the WX Station in case of #3. The one I have just does a soft reset every evening at midnight and that seems to do the job most of the time. 5) Output wind speed, 5 minute gust, rain rate per hour and rain since midnight (this assumes it has some sort of reliable clock to know when midnight is). Would you provide a pagoda type enclosure for the temp sensor? (I guess it would need to be the whole board. Hopefully heating from the voltage regulator etc would not throw it off.) Mark --- In [email protected], Scott Miller <sc...@...> wrote: > > I've been promising a weather station kit for a long time, but I've just > about given up on making it a do-it-yourself kit. There are only so > many through-hole sensors available (that don't cost an arm and a leg) > and getting the required resolution out of an analog baro sensor means > adding more parts than I want to squeeze into the enclosure I've got in > mind. > > Making it all surface mount means I can use a much cheaper barometric > pressure sensor with accuracy as good as or better than the through-hole > one, lower power consumption, and a lower part count. It also provides > high accuracy temperature measurement with no additional parts. > > Anyway, I just wanted to see if anyone has specific feature requests for > the new board. I'm hoping to have the first board design sent off by > the end of the week. The idea is to have both a serial output that > could drive an external TNC, and also a direct radio connection. > Granted, hooking it up to a radio and also having it in a location where > it'll get good temperature and humidity readings could be a problem. > > Here are some specs so far: > > Wind direction > Wind speed > Rain gauge (~1/100 inch resolution) > Temperature (~0.5C absolute accuracy) > Pressure (~3 hPa absolute accuracy, 0.2 hPa relative) > Humidity (3% RH, optional add-on for about $20) > > I'm estimating a retail price of about $130 with humidity, $110 without. > > Scott >
