Author Topic: SODAQ Arduino Compatible board designed for creating your own weather station  (Read 7456 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline SODAQ

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 3
Dear All,

After 2 years of developing weather stations using Arduino (compatible) boards, we decided to design and launch our own board and make it available as Open Source.

We have combined many features of various boards and shields into one board: SODAQ.

The SODAQ board is:

- Arduino (software) compatible
- Solar Powered

and has all the features on board to make it an ideal board for an autonomous weather station.

With the the launch of the board we started writing tutorials on instructables.com and posting libraries and programs on GitHub.

The first library we created has a complete example of connecting sensors and uploading the data to the Weather Underground using the GSM network.

Please have a look at our SODAQ Kickstarter campaign here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/386717175/sodaq-a-lego-like-plug-in-rapid-prototyping-board

and for the GitHub repositories check here:

https://github.com/SodaqMoja

Regards,
the SODAQ team.


Online johnd

  • Forecaster
  • *****
  • Posts: 4827
    • www.weatherstations.co.uk
It's an interesting idea and one that I might be tempted to support, but I'd have two concerns:

1. The write-up (at least as far as I've seen) comes across totally as an Arduino project and not a weather station project, ie maybe I've missed it, but I can't immediately see anything about sensor specifications, suggested (radiation) shields, and recommendations about adaptations for long-term robust operation in cold wet climates.

2. I'd be really quite surprised if a 0.5W panel charging a 1Ah battery could genuinely sustain reliable 24/7 operation with eg continuous 5 minute updates throughout winter at higher latitudes. The Davis Connect, for example, is AFAICS a pretty similar concept in terms of architecture and power requirement (ie a microcontroller-based ultra-lower power design for the data acquisition board and a GPRS modem that spends most of its time asleep) and requires a 5W panel charging a 12Ah battery (both of which may need supplementing in more 'tricky' locations).

But maybe someone can put me right on these two aspects.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2013, 05:07:55 PM by johnd »
Prodata Weather Systems
Prodata's FAQ/support site for Davis stations
Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
UK Davis Premier Dealer - All Davis stations, accessories and spares
Cambridge UK

Sorry, but I don't usually have time to help with individual issues by email unless you are a Prodata customer. Please post your issue in the relevant forum section here & I will comment there if I have anything useful to add.

Online johnd

  • Forecaster
  • *****
  • Posts: 4827
    • www.weatherstations.co.uk
And, if anyone ever looks back at this:

How would you interface an anemometer to this SODAQ board? (It's not much of a weather station without an anemometer input.)

An interface would need to be to a readily available third-party anemometer like a Davis or an Inspeed one, eg with an A/D input to read direction from a 20K potentiometer and a counter circuit to count reed switch closures for the wind speed.
Prodata Weather Systems
Prodata's FAQ/support site for Davis stations
Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
UK Davis Premier Dealer - All Davis stations, accessories and spares
Cambridge UK

Sorry, but I don't usually have time to help with individual issues by email unless you are a Prodata customer. Please post your issue in the relevant forum section here & I will comment there if I have anything useful to add.

Offline SODAQ

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 3
The SODAQ board has been used with both cheap Anemometers (Fine Offset) and the Davis 6410 anemometer.
These days counter circuits are no longer needed, the Microcontroller can easily handle that by itself.
We have wired up the Anemometer (and the Rain bucket as well) to the interrupt ports of the SODAQ board, so even when the board is in deep sleep, a rain or wind pulse will wake it (in just a few nanoseconds) to count the pulse.

We register both 5 minute averages and wind gusts. For gusts we have a sliding three seconds window, so for each 5 minute interval we have both the average and the maximum wind gust and for both we keep the wind direction too.

For averaging wind direction measurements we have implemented the Mitsuta algoritm. All of this will be available as Open Source in our GitHub repository.

On our Kickstarter campaign we have added as a reward a complete autonomous weather station on basis of the Davis rainbucket and 6410 anemometer.

see:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/386717175/sodaq-a-lego-like-plug-in-rapid-prototyping-board


 

anything