1-Wire/Arduino Weather Station

Starting this project from the very ground up and this will be one of the threads I'll use as a home for the progress. Hopefully the pain I am about to go through can be useful to someone else who may be thinking along the same lines.

This won't be much of a weather station at first, but it will lay the foundations of expandability that I am looking for.

Here are the ingredients that I am starting off with:

1 Arduino Duemilanove from Amazon
1 HA7S - ASCII TTL 1-Wire Host Adapter SIP from embeddeddatasystems.com
1 DS1920-F5+ - iButton Thermometer same as above
1 Rainwise Rainew 111 Single Counter Wired from ambientweather.com

note: I had to buy the iButton DS1920 instead of the DS1820 because of EDS's 25$ minimum order, dammit.
Temps will be the only computer logged sensor while I come up to speed on 1-Wire/Arduino. Rainwise rain gauge
will use the supplied counter initially, but will be the next sensor I convert over to 1-Wire/Arduino logging.

Here's the Grand Scope...

Project Intent:

Research, materials and knowledge to cheaply construct, from scratch, a modular and aesthetically pleasing, open source weather station/software project.

Industrial Design:

A marriage of Geek and Art that is lacking in the weather station segment. Inspired from "slate appearance" touch enabled weather stations.

Hardware:

Hopefully, a community derived, open design of Arduino/1-Wire modular components that can scale from 1 wired sensor and UI to large scale wireless designs. Open source hardware will be utilized wherever and whenever possible. Cost of materials will be as low as can be managed to help spur adoption.

Software:

Hopefully, a community derived, open source software package that can scale with the above hardware requirements. Design of the software must also be a marriage of Geek and Art, bringing the pretty along with power and flexability. "Walled garden" application stores will be "blessed" with closed source applications that can be purchased for an appropriate cost to help fund development on said platforms.

and so the fun and frustration starts....

Well, all of the items are here except this forum's namesake. I wait with anticipation for my Arduino to get here every day and am SORELY disappointed every time.

Arduino was bought through NKC Electronics' Amazon store with an estimated delivery of 18-21 May.

Today is the 21st and still no Arduino.

I have shipping frustration quite bad today and am of the mind right now of spending a bit more if it means faster and trackable shipping.

NKC Electronics, you really need to set up an account with either UPS or FedEx. If I don't get the board tomorrow, I'll be shopping with a reseller that does! An extra 5$ spent would mean I have an arduino already...

Palandium,

It is unfortunate that your first shipping experience with NKC has been less than satisfactory. I have used them several times in the past to ship to Canada with excellent results and without any undue delays.

Between business and personnel shipping I send/receive almost 100 packages per month via a variety of sources (UPS, FedEx, USPS, Canada Post, DHL, Purolator and various LTL shippers). Tracked or not tracked, once a package has gone out the supplier's door; knowing where it "supposedly is via the tracking number" is poor consolation for the feeling that it is not where it should be . . . received and sitting on your desk in front of you.

My experience has been that the "officially tracked location" is rarely accurate.

Regard,
C Singleton
aka CaptainBalsa

I appreciate that others have had better experiences with NKC and it is the USPS shagging the dog here.

Just venting about the subset of Murphy's Law that states:

"The item you are looking forward to receiving the most will be the item you receive last."

Thanks for the perspective.

As a way of moving the project forward, I'm wondering if there is a way to use the simple Rainwise supplied counter with my maybe future Aduino? Pics soon.

Palandium,

Are you using the Rainwise RAINEW 111 Tipping Bucket Wired Rain Gauge?

$72 . . . ouch!

I have a remote wireless Arduino based weather station project in the early planning . . . hence why I am following this thread . . . but I had planned on building a homemade rain gauge based on a design I found in an electronics magazine last year (will update this post with additional information when I get home tonight).

Yep, Rainnew 111 single counter. $70 total from ambientweather.com.

Painful amount for what you get, but a nice piece of plastic compared to every other tipping bucket I researched. (The pics I'm posting soon will show why you are paying for the plastic and not the electronics.)

I wanted to start with a quality rain gauge since I'd like to build a modular weather station and weep-watering system for my winegarden. (I'm interested in how JeeNode might fit into my plans as well for the wireless parts of the future weather station.)

Early stages of the project here too. Hope your home built gauge will save you some $ compared to the Rainwise I went with. Love to keeps tabs on your project if you don't mind.

I'll keep updating this thread and find a good home on the web for the project.

Alright, now the geek-gasm I've been having for this project just had rockets attached.

http://libcinder.org/

Been a fan of Processing for awhile and had been following flight404.com and been quite a fan. Problem was I'm personally a newb to programming but still felt Java is, personal opinion here, not for me. (Yahoo toolbar install says a lot to me.)

I had read in Dec that Robert from flight404 had left The Barbarian Group, but was working with a C++ framework that was inspired by Processing that TBG might open source.

Today I finally checked up on flight404 and found out about Cinder, the now open source project. While reading about the features of Cinder I came upon this tidbit:

"Serial port - Supporting Arduino and similar hardware applications"

Oh. Man.

The Stars are aligning for me at long last! Gonna have fun learning C++ and some Cinder. My brain is going to explode in so many different ways...

Pics are on hold of the Rainwise counter board. It's currently counting its first day of rain. Pics will go up late Sat.

My faith in NKC Electronics has been given a huge boost as well. Finally received my Arduino today and had a nice surprise when I opened the package, a free ProtoShield.

How could I do anything except recommend NKC to others now?

Thanks NKC!