Weather Station Hardware > WeatherElement Weather Station

Spy photos- New cellular weather station in testing...

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SLOweather:
You may remember Vanadium's thread a few months ago regarding his WeatherLab Davis SIM board replacement.

Since then, we have teamed up. A few days ago, I received 3 rev B boards for testing here in the States. I installed one in a Davis cabled ISS, along with a cell modem and ATT SIM card. The antenna is mounted on a second Sensor Shelf installed behind the SIM box.



Today I got it installed on a metal pole in the back yard, along with a 10 watt solar panel.




The web page is http://www.weatherelement.com/usdev1.

We're still working on making WeatherElement WeatherLab friendly. For instance, since there's no console and no "inside" the Inside Temp on the Indoors and Stats page is really the solar panel voltage.

And, we're still working on getting the solar and UV sensors on-line.

Bushman:
any plans to accept other SIM cards?

SLOweather:

--- Quote from: Bushman on February 23, 2013, 09:41:26 PM ---any plans to accept other SIM cards?

--- End quote ---

Maybe. I'm still hashing out this whole SIM/GSM thing. I did find out that AT&T roams on Rogers Wireless in Canada, and all I need to do is let my M2m rep know if I ship a dev unit up there.

SLOweather:
One interesting thing I've noticed.... The solar panel voltage has a reading well before the Davis solar sensor on my adjacent VP2. In the almost full moon last night, it was reading 0.02 volts, compared to 0.01 the night before. And the voltage comes up pretty quick as dawn arrives.

SLOweather:

--- Quote from: Bushman on February 23, 2013, 09:41:26 PM ---any plans to accept other SIM cards?

--- End quote ---

Now that I've been schooled in the variabilities of SIM cards and carriers, I can answer this with a little more authority.

We can support SIMs from most carriers, if not all. However, the APN for that SIM/carrier has to be entered in the firmware first. It's a sort of a circular problem, because, lacking any local programming ability, the firmware is updated over the air, which, duh, requires an APN and SIM for a working carrier to be installed to get the update for a new carrier's APN.

So, we can't just send out a unit and have someone install their own SIM in it without preprogramming the APN into the list, and testing it. We went through 3 or 4 weeks of angst with one M2M data company whose system works differently from the other 4 or 5 we've tested with. It took a firmware patch on our end to get it on the air.

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