I have had a Arduino weather station for a while, and have not really set it up outside, as i have been trying to figure out the best way to link it with a base-station inside the house. i have recently bought some Adafruit RFM69HCW boards, and pending their arrival, i will adapt my weather station to use the RF link.
for sensors, i have wind speed and direction, rain gauge, temperature, humidity. i will also include battery voltage sensing, for a small bank of 12V batteries. and eventually add in solar charging for the battery bank.
for mounting the weather station sensors, i have a long aluminum pole (20+ feet) that i can mount to a ground base, and setup for tip-down operation for maintenance.
most of the hardware will be up on the pole, but i will have the battery box down low. also in the battery box, i will have the solar controller, and i want to add i a option to connect a battery charger, if the solar is not keeping up with it. likely just a small maintenance charger. the batteries will be smaller than a car battery (7Ah X 4, for about 28Ah when in parallel), so i won't need a huge charging system. i could even automate the charging, by reading the battery volts. if the solar is not keeping up, the voltage will drop. if it falls to a threshold, then the charger kicks on. and when it is up to another threshold, turn the charger off.
the plan is the use the pole near my camper, and mount the camper plugin on it. i can then draw power for battery charging right out of that RV hookup.
for sensors, i have wind speed and direction, rain gauge, temperature, humidity. i will also include battery voltage sensing, for a small bank of 12V batteries. and eventually add in solar charging for the battery bank.
for mounting the weather station sensors, i have a long aluminum pole (20+ feet) that i can mount to a ground base, and setup for tip-down operation for maintenance.
most of the hardware will be up on the pole, but i will have the battery box down low. also in the battery box, i will have the solar controller, and i want to add i a option to connect a battery charger, if the solar is not keeping up with it. likely just a small maintenance charger. the batteries will be smaller than a car battery (7Ah X 4, for about 28Ah when in parallel), so i won't need a huge charging system. i could even automate the charging, by reading the battery volts. if the solar is not keeping up, the voltage will drop. if it falls to a threshold, then the charger kicks on. and when it is up to another threshold, turn the charger off.
the plan is the use the pole near my camper, and mount the camper plugin on it. i can then draw power for battery charging right out of that RV hookup.
