Integrated Weather Station project question

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi, I have built a small Weather Station using Arduino Uno, a few sensors and an LCD and was thinking of going further with the project. I found this Integrated Weather Station project :https://www.instructables.com/id/Integrated-Weather-Station-IWS/

I have been looking on where to obtain the materials and I didn't find the Nuvoton NUC140 anywhere on my local shops. Firstly, can someone with better knowledge explain to me what is it exactly used for in this project as I feel that it is not explained enough? And a second question, is there anything cheaper and more common to find that I can replace it with? Thanks a lot!

2

That's a pretty baffling project, I can see that a weather station might use an Arduino to handle sensors and display and push the data to a Pi for storage and display on a web page, but I don't see a need for yet another micro controller on top.

As is so often the case with instructables, I'd say that one is best ignored. Figure out what additional functionality you want in your weather station and pursue it directly.

3

Well, you can buy the Nuvoton NUC140 for delivery:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nuvoton-technology-corporation-of-america/NU-LB-NUC140/NU-LB-NUC140-ND/2798387

I'd say that weatherstation is extremely complex, using 4 different platforms (including the PC for data presentation) and there are only a few pages of description which would not seem enough.

4

on of the neatest weather projects I have seen was a fellow who pulled the weather from each station that was about 60 miles from his location, a ring of stations
with prevailing winds, he would determine that if the wind was comming from the north east, then the station north east would show what he could expect to have in whatever the wind speed was.

the idea is that he had radiant flooring with a huge thermal mass offset. it would take 30 minutes for any change. so, if he knew what the weather was going to be like in 30 minutes from now, he could start heating the floor to accommodate.

I have a simple soil sensor, and BME280 and read every minute, but log every hour.
since I am looking at trends for my plants it is really just boring information. my needs could be to log once a day.
this winter will be a time to add some things, light sensor, calculate degree-day, etc
I have a rain gauge, but that is independent, I am building my own and will be adding that to the data set as well.

One of the things that the link you offered has that seems very interesting is to be able to graph the last period of weather.
with all the world talking about climate change, I would think that we, as a group, could put out a simple BME280 and calculate degree days (it's a weather term) and show what the weather is doing on the planet and end all the silly debates.
Nothing like facts to end nonsensical points of view.

I have been looking at the Raspberry Pi for the logging and the graphing. Similar to what your link shows.

since the Pi could do all the heavy lifting of data and graphing, it seems like a nice fit. and since it could host the web page without much effort, it would enhance the project.

rambling a bit more. the ESP32 has the ability to do simple graphing, can store data on a huge SD card and might be able to be used instead of the Pi.

If you are looking for some next step, the web hosting and more sensors seem to offer more bang for the amount of work needed.