[awood85]

Hello all,

Firstly can I say how great this forum is for information, the wonders of open source systems still amazes me! Sorry if any of this has been covered before but I have a few questions and would like a little confirmation before I start building one.

This is my first experience of weather stations and weather monitoring but very quickly came across this site and it looked the perfect fit for my project. I have some experience of arduino programming, diy electronics and control systems which will hopefully give me some chance of achieving this with your help and advice.

I am building a site wide energy model in Matlab/Simulink for small scale wind/solar generation as part of a research project, using historic weather data, a range of typical wind/solar hardware specs along with some other site specific applications and validating the model with real world collected data.

As I need to log more data from the site I'd like to combine the collection and reporting into one system - hence the open source route. Am I correct in thinking the Arduino micros used in this are reaching their hardware limits, both for processing and IO capability? Could this be transferred to a Mega2560 or Uno reasonably easily?

The project will need to be monitored remotely from the site collecting some of the data in relatively high resolution (possibly upto 1Hz, mostly likely logged internally then uploaded in batches) rather than 1min/10min data. I'll then be post processing the data into different timescales to quantify the effect of filtered/averaged data available online, both for time and location as well as response times and filtering of the energy generation hardware.

I see that WeatherDuino Pro2s are typically connected to a PC for processing then data is uploaded to the web, could the data (raw or otherwise) be uploaded directly using an ethernet/gprs shield without the PC? I've seen the Raspberry Pi being mentioned quite a bit, is this a sensible alternative to a PC (as I also have no linux or RPi experience)?

Timing wise I have around 2-3 months to get this working (including some time for testing).

Is there anything else I should be aware of that I've probably not considered?

I look forward to discussing and sharing my progress with you all,

Many thanks,

Adam

[uncle_bob]

Hi and welcome.

Could this be transferred to a Mega2560 or Uno reasonably easily?

Yes, I've done before. But it isn't supported.

The project will need to be monitored remotely from the site collecting some of the data in relatively high resolution (possibly upto 1Hz, mostly likely logged internally then uploaded in batches) rather than 1min/10min data. I'll then be post processing the data into different timescales to quantify the effect of filtered/averaged data available online, both for time and location as well as response times and filtering of the energy generation hardware.

Sampling at that speed may be an issue

I see that WeatherDuino Pro2s are typically connected to a PC for processing then data is uploaded to the web, could the data (raw or otherwise) be uploaded directly using an ethernet/gprs shield without the PC? I've seen the Raspberry Pi being mentioned quite a bit, is this a sensible alternative to a PC (as I also have no linux or RPi experience)?

Anything is possible, with the right knowledge and time.

Timing wise I have around 2-3 months to get this working (including some time for testing).

That may work, depending how many hours in that period you can actually put in. But sourcing parts from China will possibly take a third of that time.


I think you might be best to start afresh but by possibly looking at Werk_AG's code to see how it all ticks and get some ideas from there.

[werk_ag]

Hi Adam, welcome.

Am I correct in thinking the Arduino micros used in this are reaching their hardware limits, both for processing and IO capability? Could this be transferred to a Mega2560 or Uno reasonably easily?

The most limiting issue with the Arduino used (Nano) is the low SRAM, which not change with an Uno which uses the same microcontroller. Processing power and I/O are enough.
Porting the code to a Mega is possible with several changes on the code, some functions are using direct write to a port instead of digitalWrite to save memory and speed things a little.

I see that WeatherDuino Pro2s are typically connected to a PC for processing then data is uploaded to the web, could the data (raw or otherwise) be uploaded directly using an ethernet/gprs shield without the PC? I've seen the Raspberry Pi being mentioned quite a bit, is this a sensible alternative to a PC (as I also have no linux or RPi experience)?

The WeatherDuino Pro2 when connected to a PC (or RPi) transfers data in reply to specific commands issued by the PC. It emulates an Davis Vantage Pro weather station. To get data from the WeatherDuino Pro2 you need a software like Cumulus (or other) which supports a Davis Vantage Pro weather station.
It is also possible to use something called Easyweather.dat format, but this mode requires using a software data logger to catch and store the data.
Not all data are available in Easyweather.dat mode. For more info about this format, search on google, it's easy to find.

The project will need to be monitored remotely from the site collecting some of the data in relatively high resolution (possibly upto 1Hz, mostly likely logged internally then uploaded in batches) rather than 1min/10min data. I'll then be post processing the data into different timescales to quantify the effect of filtered/averaged data available online, both for time and location as well as response times and filtering of the energy generation hardware.

As noted by uncle_bob sampling at that speed will be an issue.
As an example, wind data (gust and average speed) are sent from the TX unit, each 5 seconds, and occasionally some packets may be lost. Other data, as temperature / humidity are sent at different intervals, always greater.

If you think the code can be useful for your project, feel free to use it and modify it to suit your needs.

[awood85]

Thanks all for your quick replies and advice, perhaps not the tool I need then (although I might build one for personal use, not something I'd every considered but it sounds interesting.