“For years now, one of these typical weather stations has been sitting in my living room. It works as it should, but it lacks a second or even third radio sensor, and a weather forecast would be a great addition. That’s why I started building my own weather station a few weeks ago, one that could cover all my wishes if possible. In the meantime, the weather station is running stable, so I would like to give you a description of how my project is built. All components are available on GitHub and linked at the corresponding sections.
What should the weather station be capable of? After some brainstorming this list came out:
- Raspberry Pi with display as base station.
- Battery-powered sensors that are charged via solar cells.
- The number of wireless sensors can be adjusted to your own wishes.
- The sensors can measure temperature, humidity and air pressure.
- The weather forecast is to be loaded via a free API and automatically updated on a regular basis.
- Clear presentation of the data (although “clear” is of course very subjective).
- Only standard components, so that the setup is reproducible.
- Worldwide usable, so in my case no special weather data from Austria, although they would probably be much more accurate.
- Professional look. The whole weather station should look like a real product.
I don’t think the list holds any particular surprises. Especially the last point is very important to me. It wouldn’t be the first project that never gets beyond prototype status.
The building instructions are divided into the following points:
- The basic setup of the weather station
- Setting up the Raspberry Pi
- OpenWeather API account setup
- MQTT broker installation
- Weather station application
- ESP32 sensor module
- Possible enhancements”