The Coolum Beach Weatherstation

Have brought a long standing project to fruition. Thought I might share the details - it's a bit Rube Goldberg...

In the back yard is a rain gauge. You can see the wire running to the combined battery pack/ solar panel charger/ antenna.


Every ninety seconds or so, it pulses an update to the master controller on 433MHz.


It's an Oregon Scientific WMR-968, which came into the household possesion via a very interesting story indeed. It's integrated with a smaller unit that was a departure gift from the wonderful folks at Downs Micro in Toowoomba.

On the TV antenna mast is an anemometer and windvane. It's not perfect placement, but it gives very accurate direction and reasonably accurate strength.

The outdoor thermo/Baro/Hygrometer.

There's a couple of other temp sensors around, I'll skip those for the moment.

Anyway, here's the master controller.

This is the cornerstone of the whole build. Product description at the Oregon Scientific website.

So, the master controller has a serial port attachment. A nine pin serial cable runs to this laptop, purchased cheaply from a mate in Victoria as it was retired. It's a Toshiba Satellite 2590XDVD, base spec: Intel Celeron 400MHz processor, 6.0GB HDD, 64MB RAM, 2.4X-DVD. Windows98. Not a lot of things you could use it for these days.
Battery is stuffed, so it's plugged in all the time. and runs all the time.

Most annoying feature was the absence of Ethernet on it. Not too big a problem though, rummaged around and found an old 802.11g card from a previous project. Installed.

Every fifteen seconds or so, this box pumps a short FTP transaction out to the local wireless net and beyond.

...to here: an original Apple Airport Base station (Graphite). First gen consumer wireless product, and I think the only thing I have left that I purchased whilst working at Apple (most missed: The G4 cube and Flat panel, sold to pay two weeks rent in Port Melbourne whilst unemployed. But I digress).

Just to the left of the base station is a $32 switch I purchased last week in Brisbane. Needed a fifth port, and the old router I had only had four.

The Base station routes traffic on the local wireless net ("Fleetnet") to the wired network in the house.

The wired network includes the old iMac I bought on eBay as a wreck and repaired. New HD, license for MacOS, away we go. Screen is a bit bruised, but it's been pretty bulletproof despite spending a year in a storage facility in Toowoomba.

Ticked one checkbox - "Share Internet connection", because this is the machine with the internet connection - our gateway to the outside world.

Things are still a bit tight, and Broadband is one of things in our future budget. However, with a bit of serendipity, we moved in next door to Higgo - world record holding skydiver, and broadband owner. He has a wireless net that the iMac's fat antennae pick up at about 70% signal strength, and share in our house - rebroadcasting on Fleetnet as described. This is his place.

The FTP packs go to the Weather Underground for processing and publishing.

This, for the uninitiated, is the global headquarters of skysurfer.com.au.

Weather Underground is just a 'net site, so anywhere we can get Internet we can get local weather. This is my ancient Sony laptop, some four years old and still going strong. It's downstairs at the moment, getting the weather from the weather underground.

You can too - the link to the weather station is here.

Cool!

I actually have a Webcam here which I could add to the feed. However, getting it to run under Win98 on the Toshiba with one USB port proved problematic. The iMac could also do the job with aplomb - if there was a driver suite that actually worked (yes, I've been through Macam etc). I'll post here if and when I get it running.