Today, at noon, we started our holiday shutdown, so I am off work for a whole week. I am going to do plenty of reading, maybe some bicycling, fawn over my boys, and in general relax.
However, I have the itch to do a project. Since our little Oregon Scientific weather station is getting a little tired, and the replacements all seem to suck, I am going to make a little weather station.
Plenty of instructions and guidance on the web for this, but I have some learning to do first. I never really had an electronics bug. Sure, I know the mathematics, and what the components do, but wiring shit up? Not really.
So, I am going to do a little self learning. Search for electronics kits, and there is a plethora of options. Terms like Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Edison, BeagleBoard, and others are out there, with a lively ecosystem around each, the options are legion. Seems like a good time to learn embedded systems.
So, I ordered up a Arduino starters kit, and will begin learning about how to connect sensors and program simple things.
I hear about things like I2C at work, and the like, so I am going to dive in.
In the mean time, I will begin planning the weather station, and how to display the data. Should be fun.
I am thinking temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind velocity/direction, and even a luminosity sensor to track daytime versus night. Set up a little web server, and present the data to the world. Enough to keep me busy, maybe beyond my capabilities, but it will be entertaining.
Now to clean off my workbench in my garage.
