John R. Havrilla Moble Weather Station

JRH Weather Station - Mobile

When traveling I wanted a weather station that had the same features as my home system (JRH Weather Station). It was based on an Arduino 2560 board with a LED display showing the data. I added a 4" color display to the system to plot the sensor data. It did add a more visual component to the system. That was as far as I was going to go with the system.

A few weeks later I was going through my part box when I came across a piece that I really didn't pay much attention to. I placed an order several months back from Amazon for a sensor. When I opened up the package it was obviously not the sensor I ordered. I planned to ship it back but just didn't get around to it. I finally took look at it and it was a Raspberry Pi 3 module.

I have been looking at the Raspberry Pi for some time but was really not interested in switching over from the Arduino. I went to Amazon to see if there was a mounting board for this module and came across one: Waveshare Compute Module IO Board Plus Development Composite Breakout for Raspberry Pi Module.

I was intrigued with the Pi system because it supported displays and additional components the Arduino system does not. The Pi supports an HD port, hard drives and most of not all USB devices with the proper libraries. With the SQLite library I could save the data to a database similar to my home system.

Originally I had planned to use only the Raspberry system for the entire weather station. However after playing around with the Python programming I realized that I could use my Arduino code I already developed and connect the two through the USB ports. This allowed me to use the strengths of the Arduino (data collection from sensors) and the Pi's capabilities for display and data storage.

I do have a rain gauge for the mast as well however I do not have it mounted. I plan on using the mobile ws when camping or if I am stopping in a place for just several days. I did not see the point of having it mounted for short periods of time. I can mount it for extended times if necessary.

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