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SOLAR POWERED WIFI WEATHER STATION

ESP8266 based Solar Powered wireless Weather Station

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The aim of this project is to make a simple and reliable solar power harvesting circuit and then using the circuit to power a weather station which will remotely monitor basic weather parameters like temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed /directions and rain fall etc.

The Power harvesting circuit is made of TP4056 IC . The circuit can be used for any single Li Ion battery powered applications.

The Weather Station has the following features:

1. The Weather Station can measure Temperature, Humidity, Barometric Pressure, Altitude

2. You can monitor the above weather parameters from your Smartphone or from the web.

3. The whole circuit along with power supply is put inside a 3D printed enclosure.

4. The range of the WiFi is around 100mt with an external antenna.

You can now see my new version of weather station.

RAR Archive - 2.91 kB - 07/09/2018 at 17:48

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3D printed Enclosure .zip

.STL files for 3D printed Enclosure

x-zip-compressed - 367.12 kB - 07/09/2018 at 17:46

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  • 1 × Wemos D1 Mini Pro
  • 1 × TP 4056 Charging Board
  • 1 × Li Ion Battery 14450 Li Ion Battery
  • 1 × AA Battery Holder
  • 1 × 24 AWG wire

View all 13 components

  • PCB Design

    Open Green Energy07/22/2018 at 02:28 0 comments

    Recently I designed the PCB for my weather station with new feature to monitor the battery voltage.

    Another change is replacement of 14450 by 18650 Li Ion Battery.The battery foot print is in the PCB itself.

    The PCB is still not tested, waiting for its arrival.

  • Future Planning

    Open Green Energy07/15/2018 at 18:53 0 comments

    1. Adding a Voltage divider network to measure the battery voltage and monitoring the data on Smartphone.

    2. Power Consumption optimization.

    3.  Separating the Solar Panel from the main enclosure to get more accurate weather readings 

    4.   Making  a custom PCB for the circuit.

    5. Over The Air (  OTA ) sensor calibration 

    6. Option to add more weather sensors like wind, rain and light sensors. 

  • Uploading Sensor Data to ThingSpeak

    Open Green Energy07/15/2018 at 18:15 0 comments

    First create an account on ThingSpeak.

    Then create a new Channel on your ThingSpeak account. Find How to Create a New Channel

    Fill Field 1 as Temperature ,Field 2 as Humidity and Field 3 as pressure.

    In your ThingSpeak account select “Channel” and then “My Channel”.

    Click on your channel name.

    Click on “API Keys” tab and copy the “Write API Key”

    Open the Solar_Weather_Station_ThingSpeak code .Then write your SSID and Password.

    Replace the “WRITE API ”with the copied “Write API Key”.

    Required Library : BME280

    Credit : This code is not written by me .I got it from the link given in a YouTube video by plukas

  • Making 3D Printed Enclosure

    Open Green Energy07/11/2018 at 05:40 0 comments

    Designing the Enclosure :

    This was the most time consuming step for me.I have spent around 4 hours to design the enclosure. I used Autodesk Fusion 360 to design it. The enclosure have two parts : Main Body and Front Cover

    The main body is basically designed to fit all the components. It can accommodate the following components

    1. 50x70mm circuit board

    2. AA battery holder

    3. 85.5 x 58.5 x 3 mm Solar Panel

    4. 3dBi external antenna

    Download the .stl files from Thingiverse

    3D Printing the Enclosure : 

    After completion of design, it is time to 3D print the enclosure.In Fusion 360 you can click on make and slice the model by using a slicer software.I have used cura to slice the model.

    I used an Anet A8 3D printer and 1.75 mm green PLA to print out all the body parts. It took me about 11 hours to print the main body and around 4 hours to print the front cover.

    I will highly recommend to use another printer for you that is Creality CR - 10. Now a mini version of the CR-10 is also available.The Creality printers are one of my favorite 3D Printer.

    As I am new to 3D designing, my design was not optimistic.But I am sure, this enclosure can made by using lesser material ( less print time ). I will try to improve the design later.

    My settings are:

    Print Speed : 40 mm/s

    Layer Height : 0.2

    Fill Density : 15%

    Extruder Temperature : 195 degC

    Bed Temp : 55 degC

  • Interfacing with BLYNK App

    Open Green Energy07/11/2018 at 05:34 0 comments

    Blynk is an app that allows full control over Arduino, Rasberry, ESP8266 and many more hardware.It is compatible for both Android and IPhone. Right now the Blynk app is available with free of cost.

    Follow the below steps :

    Step-1: Download the Blynk app

    1. For Android

    2. For iPhone

    Step-2: Get the Auth Token

    In order to connect Blynk App and your hardware, you need an Auth Token.

     1. Create a new account in Blynk App.

    2. After the project was created, we will send you Auth Token over email.

    3. Check your email inbox and find the Auth Token.

    Step-3: Preparing Arduino IDE for Wemos Board

    To upload the Arduino code to Wemos board, you have to follow this Instructables

    Step-4: Install the Libraries

    Then you have to import the library on to your Arduino IDE

    Download the Blynk Library

    Step-5: Arduino Sketch

    After installing the above libraries, paste the Arduino code given in files section of this project.

    Enter the auth code from step-1, ssid and password of your router.

    Then upload the code.

    To upload the code, following settings are preferable :

    PU Frequency: 80MHz 160MHz

    Flash Size: 4M (3M SPIFFS) – 3M File system size 4M (1M SPIFFS) – 1M File system size

    Upload Speed: 921600 bps

    Implementing Power Saving Mode :

    The ESP8266 is a pretty power hungry device. If you want your project to run off a battery for more than a few hours, you have two options:

    1. Get a huge battery

    2.Cleverly put the Thing to sleep.

    The best choice is the second option.Before using the deepsleep feature, Wemos D0 pin must be connected to the Reset pin.

    Credit : This was suggested by one of the Instructables user " tim Rowledge ".

    More Power Saving Option :

    The Wemos D1 Mini has a small LED that lights when the board is powered. It  consume lot of power. So, just pull that LED off the board with a pair of pliers. It will drastically drop the sleep current down .

    Now the device can run for long time with a single Li Ion battery.

  • Extending the WiFi Range

    Open Green Energy07/11/2018 at 05:18 0 comments

    The Wemos D1 mini Pro board have a inbuilt ceramic antenna along with provision for connecting an external antenna to improve the range.Before using the external antenna, you have to reroute the antenna signal from the built-in ceramic antenna, to the external socket.This can be done by rotating the small surface mount (0603) Zero Ohm resistor (sometimes called a link).

    You can watch this video made by Alex Eamesto rotate the zero ohm resistor.

    Then snap the antenna SMA connector in to the Wemos Pro mini antenna slot.

  • Measuring the Weather Data

    Open Green Energy07/11/2018 at 05:17 0 comments

    In the earlier days weather parameters like ambient temperature,humidity and barometric pressure were measured with separate analog instruments: thermometer, hygrometer and barometer.But today the market is flooded with cheap and efficient digital sensors that can be used to measure a variety of environmental parameters.The best examples are sensors like DHT11, DHT 22, BMP180, BMP280 etc.

    In this project we will use a BMP 280 sensor.

    BMP 280 :

    BMP280 is a sophisticated sensor that very accurately measures barometric pressure and temperature with reasonable accuracy. The BME280 is the next-generation of sensors from Bosch, and is the upgrade to the BMP085/BMP180/BMP183 - with a low altitude noise of 0.25m and the same fast conversion time.

    The advantage of this sensor is that it can use either I2C or SPI for communication with microcontroller. For simple easy wiring, I will suggest to by I2C version board.

  • Solar Power Harvesting Circuit

    Open Green Energy07/11/2018 at 04:37 0 comments

    The Power harvesting circuit is made of  TP4056 charging IC and DW01  li Ion battery protection IC. 

    About the TP4056 :

    The TP4056 IC is a complete constant current/constant-voltage linear charger for single cell lithium-ion/Lithium Polymer (LiIon/LiPo) batteries. Its SOP-8 package and low external component count make the TP4056 ideally suited for portable applications. 

    Other features include :

    1.  Current monitoring

    2. Under voltage lockout

    3. Automatic recharge

    4. Two status LED to indicate full charge and the presence of an input voltage.

    To know more about TP4056, you can read the Data Sheet.

    About the DW01 :

    The DW01  battery protection IC is designed to protect lithium-ion/polymer battery from damage or degrading the lifetime due to overcharge, overdischarge, and/or overcurrent for one-cell lithium-ion/polymer battery powered systems.

    To know more about DW01 , you can read the Data Sheet

    I used a ready made module which include both  TP4056 and  DW01 ICs. This module will offer 1000 mA charge current then cut off when charging is finished. Furthermore when the battery voltage drops below 2.4V the protection IC will cut off the load to protect the cell from under voltage. It also protects against over voltage and reverse polarity connection.

View all 8 project logs

  • 1
    Solder the Headers

    Wemos modules come with variety of headers but you have to solder it according your requirement.

    For this project,

    1. Solder the two male headers to the Wemos D1 pro mini board.

    2. Solder a 4 pin male header to the BMP 280 module.

    After soldering the headers the module will look as shown in the above picture.

  • 2
    Adding Headers and Terminals

    Next step is soldering the headers to the perforated board.

    1. First place the Wemos board over the perforated board and mark the foot print.Then solder the two row of female headers over the marked position.

    2. Then solder a 4 pin female headers as shown in the picture.

    3. Solder a screw terminals for battery connection.

  • 3
    Mount the Charging Board :

    Stick a small piece of double sided tap on the back side of the charging module and then paste it on the perforated board as shown in the picture.During mounting care should be taken to align the board in such a way that the soldering holes will match with the perforated board holes.

    Adding terminal for Solar Panel

    Solder a screw terminal just near the micro USB port of the charging board.

    You can solder this terminal in the earlier step also.

View all 6 instructions

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Discussions

brian wrote 07/29/2019 at 17:34 point

I need Fahrenheit for my Temperature readings.

Do you see any issues with changing this line of code:

From:

   measured_temp = measured_temp + TEMP_CORR;

And Changing To:

   measured_temp = measured_temp *1.8+32;

It seems to be working. Let me know if you know of a better way to use Fahrenheit.

Thanks.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Byron Miller wrote 04/07/2019 at 15:17 point

Awesome project! I have a pond that i want to monitor so i'll probably incorporate this design to include sensors for water temp, level and maybe ph level

  Are you sure? yes | no

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