My son built an off grid two way weather station to send basic data (temp and humidity) from one location (a greenhouse) to another approximately 600 ft. away. (classroom) using a YouTube tutorial (link below) He upgraded the radio antennas to cover the longer distance but experienced some issued bringing the project together. In particular bringing together an Arduino uno, breadboard, clock module, temp/humidity sensors, tft display, radio antenna and power supply were very challenging. Reviewing post related to this topic, it seems this is a popular project. Thus the question if anyone would be interested in creating a weather station group with the goal of documenting progress, issues, and support. It's possible we would be interested in upgrading this system to using a gsm module but need project guidance both for the current build and weather it's feasible to use a gsm. The specific challenge of this project was combining multiple parts and the fact that there is no signal like wifi to connect to. Thoughts?
I personally think this tutorial is a bit clunky in it's design and could be more elegant. That said, we don't have the experience yet to do so so welcome feedback. Would really like to get this project up and running!
Are you working together on this? If not, that would be a good idea, as younger forum members may sometimes have more technical knowledge than their parents, but often don't yet have the life experience to enable them to understand how to ask for help in an effective way. So even if some of the technical stuff seems beyond you, at least you will have the opportunity to help your son by prompting him with questions like "have you told the forum everything they need to know in order for them to help you?" or "will the forum members truly know what you meant by 'it doesn't work'?".
Anyway, on to those technical problems...
That's an ambiguous term, can you please clarify? If it means "battery powered", what is the expected or hoped for battery life?
The YouTube tutorial does not appear to be two way. How is your son's project different?
I suggest using 2.4 GHz with the NRF24.
I'm using it for remote controls for my robots. With an extra antenna you should have a range of about 800 meters.
Yes I would like to join the group.
Two way: though I believe he mentions that is the intention with the nrf24 module. Thanks for the feedback.
Working together: It's his project and he's built everything. Encouraging him to do just what you mention but getting things going here so hopefully he can jump in and find some similar builds that he can troubleshoot with.
Off grid: Realizing that was a confusing term. Simply meant that there is no easily available means to send data or power the project from this location. He successfully set up a 12v solar panel and battery system to run greenhouse side. The 2.4 ghz radio antennas were his solution to transmit the data to the classroom. The Nrf24 antennas, according to the tutorial only had range of 100 meters.