Guest Blog: Sune Bielefeldt, Denmark. OurWeather 
ESP32 Project
Editors Note: March 9, 2020 – We were tickled to receive this OurWeather guest blog by Sune Bielefeldt. He does a great job with his ideas, building style and excellent questions. Check him out on forum.switchdoc.com. Thank you Sune! The OurWeather STEM kit is a good example of easy to build with no soldering STEM projects.
What is OurWeather?
OurWeather is a connected weather station containing 7 different sensors that will teach about electronics, software and the weather. It contains all the sensors and wires to make a fully functional, WiFi weather station. No software programming is required, it works right out of the box.
OurWeather ESP32 Project in Denmark
By Sune Bielefeld
During a search on Google for a suitable weather station, I found SwitchDoc Labs, which is probably located on the other side of the Atlantic when living in Denmark, but distance in this global world does not matter today.
What caught my interest in OurWeather was the opportunity to integrate the product with the Web service (s) I wanted. I have worked with the ESP8266 / ESP32 controllers for several years, so the choice was easy.
As a DIY maker, it’s always nice to have the freedom to do what you want, and here OurWeather is a perfect match for me. There is room for development on my part, but SwitchDoc Lab also offers new facilities over time, and they are good for listening to users’ wishes.
Most recently, we succeeded in getting SwitchDoc Labs to integrate the MQTT service on OurWeather (Editors note: He was VERY persuasive) so that it can be connected to other Home Automation equipment. It has been added here in January 2020 to OurWeather.
Later in the year, Google Home Integration was also promised on request, so I am very much looking forward to integrating as well. It ends up being a super advanced system.
Both are facilities that many users will appreciate.
The idea is that data from the weather station should be used to control the garden irrigation, or limit it when it rains, and perhaps also
control of windows and other things in the greenhouse. There are thus plenty of opportunities and challenges.
Here is my experience with assembling and setting up OurWeather:
OurWeather Station Purchasing
First I ordered a complete kit at SwitchDoc Labs OurWeather Complete Weather Kit. At the time of purchase, it became a Ver 1 with ESP8266 on board. but now SwitchDoc Labs has released Version 2 with more options and a more powerful CPU, the ESP32 on board. I can only recommend it. On the page I link to below you can find all relevant documentation about OurWeather.
https://shop.switchdoc.com/collections/full-kits/products/ourweather-complete-weather-kit
SwitchDoc Labs Product Support
If you need help, you can post your questions at forum.switchdoc.com
There will be good and competent answers to all questions raised here.
https://forum.switchdoc.com/board/36/ourweather
OurWeather Enclosure
The choice fell on a small Box from Banggood. Free shipping, and a price of US $ 6.68 – it was affordable, but it took 30 days to get it home.
Mounting plate
I have used a piece of acrylic sheet that I have cut and on which the individual components are mounted. Acrylic plate is easy to cut and process.
Power Supply
I chose to use an internal Power Supply because it is not smart with external power supplies when it needs to be waterproof.
In Denmark we use 230V but the used Power Supply can handle anything from 100 to 240V ac, so it is very universal. In addition, I have used 3 cable ducts to carry the wires waterproof into the box. Maybe SwitchDoc Lab chooses to integrate power supply modules someday it could be convenient.
Assembling
A good tool when assembling a weather station is a drill. You need to be able to make both very small holes (2 and 3 mm) and quite large holes of 15 and 20 mm. I use a Dremel multi machine for the small holes of 2 and 3 mm, and a regular drill for the larger holes.
In fact, performing these seemingly small tasks can be quite challenging if you do not have the necessary equipment.
Thus, do not underestimate this task and make sure you have the necessary equipment. Maybe you can borrow it.
I chose to drill holes for the legs of the Power Supply module, which are otherwise intended to solder to a PCB. It was then glued to the acrylic sheet.
On the back I then soldered wires where the primary side goes through a fuse holder with 500 mA fuse, as fire protection. A total of 17
holes have been drilled in the acrylic plate.
The display is mounted on some 20 mm high nylon spacers (included with OurWeather) so that it hovers almost inside the box.
The 5V connection is done via a cut-out USB plug, where the wires are then soldered directly to the legs of the Power Supply module on the back of the acrylic plate.
Cuts have been made in the corners of the acrylic sheet so that it can extend all the way to the corners. In addition, it is tightened with 4 screws.
The SHT30 sensor is mounted in the Grove base directly on the WeatherPlus board.
The same with the display that is also connected to a rough socket.
An additional Grove Hub is therefore not required if no other sensors are to be connected.
Here is the final result:
After power, simply configure the device for your Wi-Fi network using a phone.
This is all well described in the installation manual, which can be found on the product page.
https://shop.switchdoc.com/collections/full-kits/products/ourweather-complete-weather-kit
Weather portals with visualization of weather data
I have chosen to send data to WunderUnderground and Blynk in the first place, but other solutions are on the drawing board.
My Weather Underground weatherstation board
Here you can follow my weather station in Denmark at WunderUnderground:
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IJUELS2
Blynk is an app based protal that is very flexible and not dedicated weather data, yet it is very configurable and easy to set up to display the desired data and graphs. Thus, you always have your weather data on your phone.
Weather Cloud
The next one I want to integrate with is the Weather Cloud service, which I think has a very clear Dashboard. You just have to do a bit of legwork to write to them to get an API key, so you can set up a Weather Station with them, but they are very helpful when writing. In addition, some code must be written so that the OurWeather device can send data to their API. This project is not finish yet.
https://app.weathercloud.net/home
EmonCms.org
The other solution I want to work on is actually an Energy Meter project, which I already use to monitor the energy consumption in my house.
It’s called http://OpenEnergyMonitor.org, and has its home in England. They have a service called https://emoncms.org where you can upload your weather data to and design your own Dashboard. It is very clear, but it takes some time to get to know it.
It took a little while to use their system. You settle for the number of feeds and the frequency of your data. I think you can run for $15 / year.
Before I can use it with OurWeather, I need to add some code to OurWeather’s firmware so that it can talk with the Emoncms.org API. I will work on this in the spring of 2020.
You can see an example here where I measure the temperature of my Pillet Stove and send data to Emoncms.org via an ESP8266 and a DS18B20 thermostat sensor. There is also an outdoor sensor, and the House energy consumption. We have an electric Car (Renault Zoe), so it is quite interesting to follow.
https://emoncms.org/dashboard/view&id=36602
YouTube Video of the Station
Here is a small video of the weather station temporarily located on the terrace while I test it.
It will later go up on a 4 meter mast on the gable of the house so that the wind meter will reach the highest point of the roof.
Watch my video here in a thrashing weather on February 25, 2020
More pictures from my project, are constantly updated
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hi8rhug780t64az/AACRsK4ZJG6k56iJH7ONfjr_a?dl=0
As you can see, there are plenty of development opportunities, so just get started.
If you have any questions about my description, my setup or anything else, feel free to write to me.
Best regards, and good luck with your OurWeather Station project.
Sune Bielefeldt
Bisholt, Denmark
sune@bielefeldt.dk