Published October 22, 2015 © GPL3+

Make a Mini Weather Station With a Raspberry Pi

Make a Mini Weather Station With a Raspberry Pi and Sense HAT

BeginnerFull instructions provided40,818

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Raspberry Pi Sense HAT

Story

Today I’m going to show you how to make sort of a mini weather station with a Raspberry Pi. This is an ongoing project of mine that I’ve been tinkering with so I’ll share my learning with you.

A core part of the “Internet of Things” movement is the idea of devices that gather data and send it to the Internet. That data is then acted on or observed for later. It’s a simple concept and has been going on for a while but lately it’s been getting cheaper and easier to do. This project is a great example of that.

Once you complete this your Raspberry Pi will measure:

Temperature

Humidity

Barometric pressure

You can send your results to:

Google Spreadsheet on your Google Drive

What you’ll need

For this project you will need:

Raspberry Pi 3, 2 or Model B+, Zero

Sense HAT

The Sense Hat

The Sense HAT is an add-on board for Raspberry Pi, made especially for the Astro Pi mission – it’s going to the International Space Station in December 2015 – and is now available to buy.

The Sense HAT has an 8×8 RGB LED matrix, a five-button joystick and includes the following sensors:

Gyroscope

Accelerometer

Magnetometer

Temperature

Barometric pressure

Humidity

Technical Specification

Gyroscope – angular rate sensor: +/-245/500/2000dps

Accelerometer - Linear acceleration sensor: +/-2/4/8/16 g

Magnetometer - Magnetic Sensor: +/- 4/8/12/16 gauss

Barometer: 260 – 1260 hPa absolute range (accuracy depends on the temperature and pressure, +/- 0.1 hPa under normal conditions)

Temperature sensor (Temperature accurate to +/- 2 degC in the 0-65 degC range)

Relative Humidity sensor (accurate to +/- 4.5% in the 20-80%rH range, accurate to +/- 0.5 degC in 15-40 degC range)

8x8 LED matrix display

Small 5 button joystick

Installing the software

Install the Sense HAT software by opening a Terminal window and entering the following commands (while connected to the Internet):

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sense-hat

sudo pip-3.2 install pillow

Usage

Hello world example:

from sense_hat import SenseHat

sense = SenseHat()

sense.show_message("Hello world!")

Gather data from all the sensors

Here we will gather the data from all the sensors using an application I wrote. This reader will gather all the information and display it on 8×8 RGB LED matrix, or send it out to the internet.

Google Spreadsheets

You can output data to a Google Spreadsheet using my application. You will need to setup OAuth with Google, and create a JSON file. Instructions are here:

http://gspread.readthedocs.org/en/latest/oauth2.html

You will want to store the generated JSON file in the MiniWeatherStation.py folder.

One thing you will need to is open up that OAuth JSON file and look for “client_email”. It should look like this:

“client_email”: “1985453359310-asdlkjried8ss98eeEic@developer.gserviceaccount.com”,

Take note of that email address value and go to your Google spreadsheet in a web browser. Using the File -> Share... menu item share the spreadsheet with read and write access to the email address found above. Make sure to share your spreadsheet or you will not be able to update it with the script!

Next, open up the MiniWeatherStation.py file and edit:

sudo nanoMiniWeatherStation.py

Replace the GDOCS_OOAUTH_JSON value with the name of your JSON file you downloaded. Set the GDOCS_SPREADSHEET_NAME with the name of your sheet. Save it. Type in :

sudo python MiniWeatherStation.py

If all your information is correct, it will start running and adding rows to your spreadsheet every 30 seconds:

Congratulations! You can now send your data to a Google Spreadsheet. You can run this as a service if you want and store all your data on a Google Drive.

Tip : If the data starts from row 1000, Follow the instructions below :

1. Create a spreadsheet.

2. Once you've created it, delete all but one line (since we don't want 1000 empty rows):

3. Then make the one remaining line a header with row names:

Special thanks to ADAFRUIT Team.

Code

MiniWeatherStation.py

#!/usr/bin/python

import json
import sys
import time
import datetime

# libraries
import sys
import urllib2
import json
import gspread
from oauth2client.client import SignedJwtAssertionCredentials
from sense_hat import SenseHat

# Oauth JSON File
GDOCS_OAUTH_JSON       = 'Mini Weather Station-f68343d4a35a.json'

# Google Docs spreadsheet name.
GDOCS_SPREADSHEET_NAME = 'Sense HAT Logs'

# How long to wait (in seconds) between measurements.
FREQUENCY_SECONDS      = 30


def login_open_sheet(oauth_key_file, spreadsheet):
	"""Connect to Google Docs spreadsheet and return the first worksheet."""
	try:
		json_key = json.load(open(oauth_key_file))
		credentials = SignedJwtAssertionCredentials(json_key['client_email'],
													json_key['private_key'],
													['https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds'])
		gc = gspread.authorize(credentials)
		worksheet = gc.open(spreadsheet).sheet1
		return worksheet
	except Exception as ex:
		print 'Unable to login and get spreadsheet.  Check OAuth credentials, spreadsheet name, and make sure spreadsheet is shared to the client_email address in the OAuth .json file!'
		print 'Google sheet login failed with error:', ex
		sys.exit(1)


sense = SenseHat()
sense.clear()		
print 'Logging sensor measurements to {0} every {1} seconds.'.format(GDOCS_SPREADSHEET_NAME, FREQUENCY_SECONDS)
print 'Press Ctrl-C to quit.'
worksheet = None
while True:
	# Login if necessary.
	if worksheet is None:
		worksheet = login_open_sheet(GDOCS_OAUTH_JSON, GDOCS_SPREADSHEET_NAME)

	# Attempt to get sensor reading.
	temp = sense.get_temperature()
	temp = round(temp, 1)
	humidity = sense.get_humidity()
	humidity = round(humidity, 1)
	pressure = sense.get_pressure()
	pressure = round(pressure, 1)
	
	# 8x8 RGB
	sense.clear()
	info = 'Temperature (C): ' + str(temp) + 'Humidity: ' + str(humidity) + 'Pressure: ' + str(pressure)
	sense.show_message(info, text_colour=[255, 0, 0])
	
	# Print
	print "Temperature (C): ", temp
	print "Humidity: ", humidity
	print "Pressure: ", pressure, "\n"

	# Append the data in the spreadsheet, including a timestamp
	try:
		worksheet.append_row((datetime.datetime.now(), temp,humidity,pressure))
	except:
		# Error appending data, most likely because credentials are stale.
		# Null out the worksheet so a login is performed at the top of the loop.
		print 'Append error, logging in again'
		worksheet = None
		time.sleep(FREQUENCY_SECONDS)
		continue

	# Wait 30 seconds before continuing
	print 'Wrote a row to {0}'.format(GDOCS_SPREADSHEET_NAME)
	time.sleep(FREQUENCY_SECONDS)

Credits

Ramin Sangesari

24 projects • 319 followers

Programmer and IoT Developer

Make a Mini Weather Station With a Raspberry Pi

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Story

Schematics

MiniWeatherStation.py

Code

MiniWeatherStation.py

Credits

Ramin Sangesari

Comments

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Make a Mini Weather Station With a Raspberry Pi

Make a Mini Weather Station With a Raspberry Pi

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Story

Schematics

MiniWeatherStation.py

Code

MiniWeatherStation.py

Credits

Ramin Sangesari

Comments

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