WeatherPi Solar Power Weather Station – 3D Printing Parts

In building the WeatherPi Solar Powered Weather Station, we saw a couple of parts that we decided it would be good to 3D Print.  In the 6 months since we bought our SwitchDoc Labs MakerBot Replicator, we have totally changed the way we build special parts for prototyping.  And with the latest extruder and firmware updates, the MakerBot rocks!  We have done 10 long prints with no problem.  It used to be Xacto knives and foam, wood and glue, but now we just build new parts when we need them.  The three parts we have used 3D Printing for so far are:

• Bracket with Hinges to connect solar panel panels to weather station box (adjustable for latitude)
• Opposite hinge on which to hang solar power panels (the tabs on the side of the rectangle are just to make sure the bracket is flat!)
• Sun Cover for AM2315 Temperature and Humidity Sensor – we killed the Humidity sensor in one of these in the sun in Project Curacao.

Here are the OpenSCAD files.

Next Up

On fabrication, we are now getting ready to put out the WeatherRack wind direction, speed and rain sensors.   We have tested them on the WeatherPi and all is good.

Next up on design testing is running the battery all way down reading all the data to figure out where to set the thresholds for shutting down the Raspberry Pi and then using the USB Power Control to reboot the machine when the battery voltage reaches 3.9V.  Don’t like those brownouts!  Brownouts kill Raspberry Pi SD Cards!

Updated Parts List (April 11, 2015)

• WeatherRack Weather Sensors
• BUD NEMA Box from Amazon.com
• VoltaicSystems Solar Panel(s) – jury is still out regarding 1 or 2 panels
• Raspberry Pi A+
• Raspberry Pi Compatible WiFi USB Dongle
• SunAirPlus Solar Power Controller
• USB Control (SwitchDoc Labs – now available)
• 4 Channel I2C Mux Breakout Board
• SwitchDoc Labs Dual WatchDog Timer
• WeatherPiArduino Weather Board
• Embedded Adventures I2C Lightning Detector MOD-1016 board
• DS3231 RTC With EEPROM
• AM2315 Outdoor Temperature and Humidity Sensor
• BMP180 Barometer and Temperature Sensor
• Adafruit HTU21D-F Temperature/Humidity breakout board (removed)
• Adafruit 32KB FRAM I2C breakout board (not included)
• Adafruit ADS1015 4 Channel A/D I2C board
• Adafruit PKCELL Lithium Ion Battery Pack – 3.7V 6600mAh
• Waterproof 8 Pin Plug from Amazon.com
• 2 Dual Row 4 Position Covered Screw Terminal Block Strip from Amazon.com
• RasPiConnect Control Panel

Block Diagram