Since I wrote my last post about my Arduino projects I have
learned a lot. I released my first project into the wild the night of the huge
rain storm we had in September when north east Clark County experienced some intense
flooding. On that weather station, which the boys and I call DRASTIC, I was
logging humidity, temperature, light, time and soil moisture. I was able to make readings for a while and
capture some interesting data, however I found out the hard way that my system
was not water tight. After about 21 hours of capturing data I shorted out one
of the circuits and stopped capturing data.
This is the graph of our sensors the night of the big rain storm. You can see my system biffed it in the morning but we still managed to capture some interesting data.
This was the afternoon after the big flood and there was still a lot of water draining off Mormon Mesa.
We also found this guy while we were out checking our Arduino system on Mormon Mesa.
Since that time I have been building and testing more
sensors to capture even more data with the Arduino system. One of the sensors
that I have built and tested over the last month is a soil temperature monitor
that captures data at 3, 6 and 12 inches below the soil.
the boys and I out checking on the system
Another one of the areas I have been experimenting with is
utilizing solar panels and rechargeable batteries to power the Arduino system. I can successfully run the Arduino system of
my solar panels and record the data but during the low light and the night I am
out of order. Since the nighttime is a time of activity in the desert and the
low light conditions like a storm is when I really would like to be capturing
data this is less than ideal. Because of this I have tried to wire up
rechargeable AA batteries within the electrical system to store the needed
energy. So far I have been able to extend the operating life of the Arduino
system into the night for a while but I have not yet been able to make it
through the night. This setup is still vulnerable through an extended weather
even with heavy cloud cover for multiple days so there is still testing and
experiments left to go. One of the requirements for my system is that it
remains as small, light and cheap as possible. I know through larger batteries
I could extend the life but once this system is built it will be deployed out
in the hills so I want it to remain small.
Another of the huge breakthroughs that I have been able to make
is to run my Arduino system off of AA batteries for an extended period of time.
Out of the box the Arduino system will only run for approximately 6 hours off
of 4 AA batteries. However through a series of articles on the web and
countless hours of testing I was able to tweak the code to shut down the
Arduino between readings and wake up on a timer interrupt. This will be huge. I hope to take this
enhancement and tie it together with what I have learned from the solar
recharging experiments and tie it together so I can run my device, I hope,
indefinitely.
With all that I have learned and built over the last two
months I hope to get my Arduino based weather\environmental monitor back out
into the wild and start building a repository of data for North Eastern Clark
County that I can then use for future experiments and analysis.
This is the barometric pressure as registered through our Arduino in mid November. This is one of the sensor we are incorporating into our system
One of the first projects I hope to do is start collecting
data within some of the areas that have experienced wild fires within the Gold
Butte region and start assembling the pieces for a larger scale analysis. I
will continue to post updates on our projects.
the kids and I out checking on another iteration of our Arduino based weather station
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