Tutorial: Part 10 -Building a Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Weather Station – GroveWeatherPi
The Raspberry Pi is a fabulous device to on which to build your projects. The GroveWeatherPi project is designed to show the capabilities of this computer while remaining accessible to a diverse Maker community.
GroveWeatherPi is a Solar Powered Raspberry Pi WiFi connected weather station designed for Makers by SwitchDoc Labs ( www.switchdoc.com). This is a great system to build and tinker with. All of it is modifiable and all source code is included.
This tutorial for building your own Solar Powered Weather Station based on the Raspberry Pi consists of 14 parts.
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Mounting the AM2315 and Radiation Shield
Drill a hole on the right side (wihtout the clips) of the BUD enclosure and route the Grove plug on the AM2315 inside to the hardware. Using the mounting hardware clip provided, screw the clip down to the base. Clip the sensor into place. Then place the radiation shield over the sensor and screw it down to the BUD enclosure. Note: After some consideration and experience, it might be better to mount this on the bottom of the box to keep the whole assembly and the radiation shield out of the direct sunlight.
Mounting the Solar Panels
Mount the Solar Panel Bracket on to the door of the BUD enclosure and attach it with four screws and bolts to the enclosure. Drill a hole in the door to route the cables with the JST connector into the box.
Mounting the Lightning Detector
Drill a hole for the Grove connectors in the top side of the BUD enclosure. Screw the Pylong down, route the wires up through the hole and then place the pylon top onto the pylon. Secure the wired MOD-1016G on the pylon platform and then snap the top box onto the assembly.
The Last Things to Build
Three things:
- Condensation hole. At the lowest part of the box (and what the lowest part is depends on how you are mounting the box!) cut a small hole (1/2 inch should do it), cover it with screen (to keep the wasps out).
- The Pi 2 Grover has a very, very strong physical connection to the Pi and will not come loose. The Grove cables have a good strong physical connection too, and you can use buckled connectors if you want. We do recommend putting a small dot of silicon caulking on the singe wire jumpers to make sure they don’t pull free in a storm. If you don’t feel velcro will be strong enough, then use standoff posts and screws to secure all the boards. They all have mounting holes.
- After you have verified everything is working, seal all the holes and screws with silicon caulking and be liberal about it. Caulk the pylon base, the top and the bottom to make sure they won’t leak.