Forums Arduino Thanks for posting your LoRa configuration!

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    • #125
      greno
      Participant

      Hi Peter. I just wanted to say thanks posting the details of your LoRa gateway and nodes. I just ordered a number of Heltec LoRa devices to build a home weather station setup that will be so similar to yours. Your code will be a great starting point.

      Here’s what I’m waiting on:
      – WiFi LoRa 32 (V2) – will use as a LoRa Receiver/gateway. I think I’ll run a small web server on it as well instead of connecting to MQTT.

      – CubeCell Capsule Solar Sensor – for temperature and humidity

      – CubeCell Dev-Board Plus – for wind speed. Have ordered a small solar panel and lipo battery, but haven’t decided yet on an anemometer. Did you ever hook one up, and if so, which one did you get?

      I want a dedicated wall mounted display. I was originally thinking I would have to use an ESP32 with a TTF display, but I found an old Android 7″ tablet that I will use instead (free is good). My thought is that the Android app would just periodically poll the Lora receiver for it’s current values over HTTP, pulling in a JSON file to parse. The Android app would be responsible for logging data over time.

      I have the UI of the Android app already done. I think it will work well.

      Anyway, thanks again for your examples. I’m sure I’ll hit you up with questions once I get my devices.

      -Gregg

    • #131
      UniquePete
      Participant

      Hi Gregg,

      As far as the anemometer goes, no, I haven’t hooked one up yet. I have a friend who’s hooked up a similar arrangement to a set of Misol sensors, and that always seemed like the easiest way to go because all of those sensors are readily available. The other one I liked the look of was the Davis unit—a little more expensive, but it seems to have a good reputation.

      The weather sensors were actually the last on my list of things to do because there were already stacks of examples out there, so I figured that would be the ‘easy’ part of the exercise.

      I have another [open source, but commercial] 8266-based system that currently controls my watering system, so I always figured I’d ultimately use an IOS-based [iPad/iPhone] solution for the monitoring function.

      But all of these things take time. At the moment, I’m still sorting out my PCB design. When I have a stable hardware base, I’ll come back to adding the remaining sensors and fixing up the software&mdahs;creating a library for the common function calls so that I can more easily flip between processors, although I agree that the CubeCell is looking pretty good at the moment. The only problem I have there is that I set myself a[n arbitrary] goal, when I began, to build a complete sensor module for under A$25. The CubeSell is really nice, but it costs twice as much as the arduino/RFM95W solution, so I am continuing to work with a range of processors to see if I can come up with a solution that both fits that arbitrary budget of mine and has an acceptable life on a standard Li-Ion battery, with solar panel ‘support’.

    • #132
      greno
      Participant

      Sounds like an interesting project!

      I now have an anemometer working with a non-LORA ESP32 board I have, and it was a bit of work to get it functional but I’m happy with the results. If you do wind up adding an anemometer, I would recommend going with a hardware approach to debouncing. Without a debounce, the readings were not usable. In my opinion, using a software debounce approach won’t work because (depending on what your debounce delay is), you wouldn’t be able to read higher wind speeds without dropping signals.

      I based my system on these two videos, although I did have to change the capacitor and modified the software a bit, but still highly recommended:

    • #191
      UniquePete
      Participant

      I just rediscovered this post. I now have a fully operational Davis 6410 anemometer configuration, using a CubeCell Dev-Board Plus—see here.

    • #192
      greno
      Participant

      Wow, the work you’ve done with your boards look great! Congrats on getting your anemometer working.

      How are you debouncing the anemometer signal? I first thought I could do it in software, but given how fast the pulses were coming in, I thought I would miss it if I did it in software. So I found a debounce hardware circuit that seems to work really well. I have no engineering qualifications and am a total amateur, so I’m not sure if it’s the best way to implement it. But it seems to be pretty close to the readings from a local airport.

      My prototype weather station has been running pretty continuously since January. I used a ESP32 with LoRa as a gateway, and send readings every 20 seconds to my hosted MySQL database. I also built a Angular web app to display the info.

      Here’s a link to the site. I documented my setup in About section. I’m surprised that the thing hasn’t shorted out with the rats nest of wires.

      https://greggreno.com/weather-dashboard/#/dashboard

      If you look at the Battery chart and select The Past Week, you can see how the battery charges and discharges over time. It’s pretty clear that I didn’t need a solar panel as big as I used (2W / 6V, 5.4″ x 4.4″ x 0.2″).

      -Gregg Reno
      gregg@greggreno.com

    • #193
      greno
      Participant

      Also, I need to replace my temp/humidity sensor since it often will give errors when I read from it. That’s why there are often gaps in the chart for temp and humidity. If you pick a longer timeframe (other than hour), you can see I’m getting some data.

    • #194
      UniquePete
      Participant

      I think I noted in the text that I don’t do any debouncing. I originally had a test setup with a push-button switch that used to bounce like crazy, but when I hooked up the actual [Davis 6410] anemometer I simply couldn’t get it to bounce, no matter what I did. The Davis 6466 rain collector was the same. They both use a reed switch, so I don’t know if that’s just much ‘cleaner’ in its switching, or maybe I’m just blissfully unaware of all the bouncing… But the rain collector is pretty much matching my old analogue gauge that sits right beside it—it’s certainly not over reading—so I figure things must be OK.

      And yes, I tested a whole range of solar panels, getting smaller and smaller until I found one (40mA) that couldn’t keep up. The 70mA (5.5V, 0.38W) panel is doing fine at the moment (I currently have similar configurations running with CubeCell, CubeCell Plus, ESP32 and Arduino Pro Mini processors). It’ll be interesting to see how things go through winter, although, where I live, we rarely get more than three or four overcast days in a row at any time of the year and the batteries last much longer than that without a charge.

      I also give a little sigh when I see other people’s nicely presented output… I’m not there yet on that front… Soon…

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02-05-2020