I wanted to have a weather station and, in summer 2019, I decided to create my own using two simple components a WEMOS D1 Mini pro and a BME 280. These components are easy to use and easy to find and moreover, they are quite small so it's perfect for that kind of project.
As you can see in the following image, the final product is quite compact.
Another important factor is to be able to see the information through a webpage but, I'm not a developer and I did not want to spend time creating a website to display the weather information so I decided to search and found a free MQTT service using http://io.adafruit.com
I have a French YouTube channel through which you will be able to see all the stages of creation of the weather station so I invite you to visit my channel where you will get all the necessary information to complete the project
The electronic circuit that I created is really simple as you will see throughout this project. Essentially, the pin D1, on the WEMOS, is connected to the pin SCL of the BME280 and the pin D2 is connected to the pin SDA on the BME280.
Before uploading the code, you should create a free account on https://io.adafruit.com. Take note of the USER_NAME and AIO KEY, from this site, because it will be needed later in the code.
I use the Arduino IDE to program, prepare and upload the code to the WEMOS board but, before compiling the code, the following library will have to be downloaded and installed: https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/Grove_BME280
The IDE must be setup to allow the installation of the board. Open the Arduino IDE, go in File -> Preferences and then add the following string into the box marked “Additional Boards Manager URLs” : http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
This will allow you to install the ESP8266 board in the Arduino IDE and then you will be able to select the Wemos D1 mini Pro on the Arduino Board dropdown.
You can now select the board "WeMos D1 R1" in the tools menu and upload the code.
Once the code is uploaded, as soon as the microcontroller is started, the feeds will be created automatically. You will see them in this page https://io.adafruit.com/feeds
From that point, you can create your own dashboard to display the information gathered https://io.adafruit.com/dashboards
It is easy to create graphs based on the data that are sent from the device.
As a person living in Quebec, we have cold weather and I confirm that the electronic works perfectly throughout the winter even with temperature as low as -25 degree celcius & temperature over 30 degree in the summer.
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