Starting this project from the very ground up and this will be one of the threads I'll use as a home for the progress. Hopefully the pain I am about to go through can be useful to someone else who may be thinking along the same lines.
This won't be much of a weather station at first, but it will lay the foundations of expandability that I am looking for.
Here are the ingredients that I am starting off with:
1 Arduino Duemilanove from Amazon
1 HA7S - ASCII TTL 1-Wire Host Adapter SIP from embeddeddatasystems.com
1 DS1920-F5+ - iButton Thermometer same as above
1 Rainwise Rainew 111 Single Counter Wired from ambientweather.com
note: I had to buy the iButton DS1920 instead of the DS1820 because of EDS's 25$ minimum order, dammit.
Temps will be the only computer logged sensor while I come up to speed on 1-Wire/Arduino. Rainwise rain gauge
will use the supplied counter initially, but will be the next sensor I convert over to 1-Wire/Arduino logging.
Here's the Grand Scope...
Project Intent:
Research, materials and knowledge to cheaply construct, from scratch, a modular and aesthetically pleasing, open source weather station/software project.
Industrial Design:
A marriage of Geek and Art that is lacking in the weather station segment. Inspired from "slate appearance" touch enabled weather stations.
Hardware:
Hopefully, a community derived, open design of Arduino/1-Wire modular components that can scale from 1 wired sensor and UI to large scale wireless designs. Open source hardware will be utilized wherever and whenever possible. Cost of materials will be as low as can be managed to help spur adoption.
Software:
Hopefully, a community derived, open source software package that can scale with the above hardware requirements. Design of the software must also be a marriage of Geek and Art, bringing the pretty along with power and flexability. "Walled garden" application stores will be "blessed" with closed source applications that can be purchased for an appropriate cost to help fund development on said platforms.
and so the fun and frustration starts....
