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Mobile Weather Sensors Using ESP8266

Mountain Biking in the local trails in my Southern California home has kept me both reasonably fit while maintaining a close connection with nature. As you roll through many of the trails here, the terrain varies significantly…from the darker shadows of the canyon floors to the wide-open sun exposed ridge-top fire roads. And with these changes there are noticeable variations in the temperature and moisture in the air. So I got to thinking. Wouldn’t it be interesting to track these variations as the trail climbs up the mountain face and descends down the other side? Sure, there are gadgets available that do this kind of thing. Like tracking your position, speed, altitude and heart-rate. If you really look around, you might even find one that reports the temperature. Not cheap, but they are available. Hmmm… Let’s see, can we make a do-it-yourself alternate? A solution that is much cheaper than the cost of a commercially bought product? This looked like a perfect task for the super low-cost ESP8266 and a few inexpensive sensors. Coupled with a data link to a smartphone, you got a mobile platform tailored to track just about anything. A system that can be tailored to your exact needs. All at a fraction of the cost of a commercially available product, if you can find one meeting the specifications you want. Here is what I came up with. My initial design simply collects data samples and saves them to a file on my Android SD Card. This file is then transferred to a PC for visual representation with excel. Later, I intend to add screens to the Android App to display the data on phone. But first, a data collection and storage system was needed. After thinking about how I wanted to implement these features, the project was broken down into several phases. This post addresses phase 1. Yep, this project is “work-in-progress” and phase 1 is as far as I have gotten…so far. Check back to this blog soon for updates that cover the subsequent elements of this Application as they are developed. Once completed, the “phases” that following will be turned into links.”

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