[Klug-general] Linux weather station!

[J D Freeman]

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On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 04:58:05PM +0000, Benjamin Donnachie wrote:
> Just wondering whether anyone has any practical experience of running
> a Linux-based weather station?
> 
> Long story, but after years of neglect I've decided that it's time I
> made progress with my garden.. and being a geek I've decided that a
> weather station that sends me frost alerts etc is the only way to
> progress!  I've already got CAT5 laid to the end of the garden and a
> spare machine ear-marked for the job.  One day I may even tackle the
> weeds/jungle/nature reserve...
> 
> I quite like the WSI-603 1-wire Weather Station Kit[1] and will look
> into modifying wview[2] or OWW[3] to work with it.  Over time I'd
> quite like to add a range of home-brew sensors including rain[4],
> humidity, pressure and various stats on the state of the soil.
> However, as much as I like attempting to build electronic circuits, I
> seem to possess a massive static charge and can kill an IC from the
> other side of the room even wearing an earth strap.  Also toying with
> the idea of expanding my current X10 infrastructure to facilitate
> automatic irrigation[5], but I suspect a watering can will prove more
> effective!
> 
> Anyone tried this sort of set up or similar?  Any pitfalls?  Any
> advice on home-brew sensors and connecting them up?  Anyone used the
> 1-wire protocol under Linux?

I have been thinking much along the same lines, tho put the plans on hold
a year or so ago because the 1-wire stations were such a PITA to get hold
of. Do you know if the 1-wire rain guage is available anywhere sensible?

My thoughts for this was to run 1-wire over cat 5 to the patch panel in
the server room, then convert the 1-wire to RS232, plug the RS232 into the
spare rs232 port on my firewall, and then dump the data to a server in
amsterdam, as well as providing basic local graphs, (It has to be
transfered somewhere, the firewall has no hdd). 

The other hurdle I am trying to overcome is where to put the weather vane,
as it needs to go where there aren't going to be to much interferances
from the buildings...

Would be most interested to hear how your efforts progress.

Thanks

Julia
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