{"id":825,"date":"2021-04-27T13:41:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T11:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/?p=825"},"modified":"2021-04-27T13:41:34","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T11:41:34","slug":"outdoor-solar-powered-weather-station-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/2021\/04\/27\/outdoor-solar-powered-weather-station-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Outdoor solar powered weather station \u2013 part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not too much progress but I said I rather blog more often this time instead of just reporting the result at the end. I am usually working about between 30 minutes to an hour in the evening on this project, a bit more during the weekend. So it is slow steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Software<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When I built my first station I thought about sending it commands as well. LoRaWan is a two-way protocol. To conserve power, so-called Class-A devices (like the one I am building) only receive data in a fixed interval after they have sent something. But as my station is sending every 1-4 minutes it is also ready to receive shortly afterwards. I designed a (very simple) extendable command protocol for my purpose, you can find the description <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/wtremmel\/adafruit-lora-sensors\/blob\/master\/LoraRemoteProtocol.md\">here on GitHub<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And this is what I implemented yesterday. For testing purposes I wanted to have a way to drain the battery down to the point the device stops sending. The controller can read the battery voltage, but I needed to find out at what point that voltage is too low for it to continue working. Fortunately the device also contains a RGB LED. Quite useless in a weather station, but a perfect load to drain the battery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The CubeCell board does many things right: One of them is that it also cuts off power to the LED when going into deep sleep, so I had to implement two commands:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Switch on\/off LED (since it is an RGB LED I also implemented the color it should use)<\/li><li>Switch on\/off deep sleep state<\/li><li>Unrelated: I also implemented a command to change the time interval the station sends reports. Included one &#8222;auto&#8220; setting where the interval depends on the battery voltage.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently the device is sitting on my bench, happily draining the battery with the LED on in red. Current voltage is 3.5V, let&#8217;s see how long it lasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hardware<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of making stuff is also failure &#8211; and yes, I had some failure yesterday. I had the great idea to 3d-print a rain detector. You know these meandering circuit boards which get connected when a raindrop falls on them? I had the idea to 3d print a structure and solder wires in. Did not work &#8211; the soldering iron melted the plastic before I could solder the wires. So I will again use a cheap circuit board for rain detection.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not too much progress but I said I rather blog more often this time instead of just reporting the result at the end. I am usually working about between 30 minutes to an hour in the evening on this project, a bit more during the weekend. So it is slow steps. Software When I built [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"zakra_page_container_layout":"customizer","zakra_page_sidebar_layout":"customizer","zakra_remove_content_margin":false,"zakra_sidebar":"customizer","zakra_transparent_header":"customizer","zakra_logo":0,"zakra_main_header_style":"default","zakra_menu_item_color":"","zakra_menu_item_hover_color":"","zakra_menu_item_active_color":"","zakra_menu_active_style":"","zakra_page_header":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microcontrollers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outpost.garf.de\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}