Weather Station Progress

For my upcycing project I decided to make a home weather station from some recycled hardwood flooring and some spare electronics I had around the house. To start I used a DHT11 sensor breakout board to sense the current temperature and humidity. These values are read by an arduino pro  mini ($2 from sparkfun’s annual sale a few years ago).

IMG_1767

Next, I chose to use two analog voltmeters to function as a display for a 1950’s engineering aesthetic. The output of the voltmeter can be set by varying the duty cycle of the arudino’s pulse width modulation output. I plan to remove the little paper cards behind the needle and replace them with my own temperature and humidity scales. I really wanted to use a wifi module to display the current chance of snow and outdoor temperature, but I didn’t have one on hand and figuring out the technical side of it is likely out of scope of this project.

IMG_1768

The next step is cut and stain the recycled hardwood flooring for a rustic looking case. I chose to use wood as the casing material because I really like the texture of old wood, and I’d like to learn some wood working skills as part of the project. So far, I’ve made drawings for the parts in Solidworks. On Wednesday, I’ll be in the IdeaForge makerspace learning how to use the woodworking equipment. If anyone would like to join me you can sign up here.

Capture

Previous Post
Design Flow Chart – Rachel, Sreyas, Ryan
Next Post
Flow chart: Matt Sturm, Albert Como, Andre Szlendak

2 Comments. Leave new

  • Anfal Abdulrahman
    January 28, 2016 7:09 pm

    I like the fact that you are incorporating functionality and technicality sides to your project without neglecting the purpose of this project and that is by acquiring new skills to make it aesthetically look like 1950’s engineering.
    That being said, it is a cool project!

    Reply
  • Whoo home electronics! 🙂
    I agree that the look of those analog meters is pretty neat. My brother actually has an alarm clock which is quite similar to this look, and I am very jealous of it.
    What kind of look are you aiming for with your wood case? I can see the possibilities of something that fits in with the older aesthetic and has old fasteners or brass clasps visible, or maybe more modern with the aim of trying to hide the fasteners?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Fill out this field
Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.