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• PCB Design

  Open Green Energy • 07/22/2018 at 02:28 • 0 comments

  Recently I designed the PCB for my weather station with new feature to monitor the battery voltage.
  

  Another change is replacement of 14450 by 18650 Li Ion Battery.The battery foot print is in the PCB itself.

  The PCB is still not tested, waiting for its arrival.

• Future Planning

  Open Green Energy • 07/15/2018 at 18:53 • 0 comments

  1. Adding a Voltage divider network to measure the battery voltage and monitoring the data on Smartphone.

  2. Power Consumption optimization.

  3.  Separating the Solar Panel from the main enclosure to get more accurate weather readings 

  4.   Making  a custom PCB for the circuit.

  5. Over The Air (  OTA ) sensor calibration 

  6. Option to add more weather sensors like wind, rain and light sensors. 

• Uploading Sensor Data to ThingSpeak

  Open Green Energy • 07/15/2018 at 18:15 • 0 comments

  First create an account on ThingSpeak.

  Then create a new Channel on your ThingSpeak account. Find How to Create a New Channel

  Fill Field 1 as Temperature ,Field 2 as Humidity and Field 3 as pressure.

  In your ThingSpeak account select “Channel” and then “My Channel”.

  Click on your channel name.

  Click on “API Keys” tab and copy the “Write API Key”

  Open the Solar_Weather_Station_ThingSpeak code .Then write your SSID and Password.

  Replace the “WRITE API ”with the copied “Write API Key”.

  Required Library : BME280

  Credit : This code is not written by me .I got it from the link given in a YouTube video by plukas

• Making 3D Printed Enclosure

  Open Green Energy • 07/11/2018 at 05:40 • 0 comments

  Designing the Enclosure :
  

  This was the most time consuming step for me.I have spent around 4 hours to design the enclosure. I used Autodesk Fusion 360 to design it. The enclosure have two parts : Main Body and Front Cover

  The main body is basically designed to fit all the components. It can accommodate the following components

  1. 50x70mm circuit board

  2. AA battery holder

  3. 85.5 x 58.5 x 3 mm Solar Panel

  4. 3dBi external antenna

  Download the .stl files from Thingiverse

  3D Printing the Enclosure : 

  After completion of design, it is time to 3D print the enclosure.In Fusion 360 you can click on make and slice the model by using a slicer software.I have used cura to slice the model.

  I used an Anet A8 3D printer and 1.75 mm green PLA to print out all the body parts. It took me about 11 hours to print the main body and around 4 hours to print the front cover.

  I will highly recommend to use another printer for you that is Creality CR - 10. Now a mini version of the CR-10 is also available.The Creality printers are one of my favorite 3D Printer.

  As I am new to 3D designing, my design was not optimistic.But I am sure, this enclosure can made by using lesser material ( less print time ). I will try to improve the design later.

  My settings are:

  Print Speed : 40 mm/s

  Layer Height : 0.2

  Fill Density : 15%

  Extruder Temperature : 195 degC

  Bed Temp : 55 degC

• Interfacing with BLYNK App

  Open Green Energy • 07/11/2018 at 05:34 • 0 comments

  Blynk is an app that allows full control over Arduino, Rasberry, ESP8266 and many more hardware.It is compatible for both Android and IPhone. Right now the Blynk app is available with free of cost.

  Follow the below steps :

  Step-1: Download the Blynk app

  1. For Android

  2. For iPhone

  Step-2: Get the Auth Token

  In order to connect Blynk App and your hardware, you need an Auth Token.

   1. Create a new account in Blynk App.

  2. After the project was created, we will send you Auth Token over email.

  3. Check your email inbox and find the Auth Token.

  Step-3: Preparing Arduino IDE for Wemos Board

  To upload the Arduino code to Wemos board, you have to follow this Instructables

  Step-4: Install the Libraries

  Then you have to import the library on to your Arduino IDE

  Download the Blynk Library

  Step-5: Arduino Sketch

  After installing the above libraries, paste the Arduino code given in files section of this project.

  Enter the auth code from step-1, ssid and password of your router.

  Then upload the code.

  To upload the code, following settings are preferable :

  PU Frequency: 80MHz 160MHz

  Flash Size: 4M (3M SPIFFS) – 3M File system size 4M (1M SPIFFS) – 1M File system size

  Upload Speed: 921600 bps

  Implementing Power Saving Mode :

  The ESP8266 is a pretty power hungry device. If you want your project to run off a battery for more than a few hours, you have two options:

  1. Get a huge battery

  2.Cleverly put the Thing to sleep.

  The best choice is the second option.Before using the deepsleep feature, Wemos D0 pin must be connected to the Reset pin.

  Credit : This was suggested by one of the Instructables user " tim Rowledge ".

  More Power Saving Option :

  The Wemos D1 Mini has a small LED that lights when the board is powered. It  consume lot of power. So, just pull that LED off the board with a pair of pliers. It will drastically drop the sleep current down .

  Now the device can run for long time with a single Li Ion battery.

• Extending the WiFi Range

  Open Green Energy • 07/11/2018 at 05:18 • 0 comments

  The Wemos D1 mini Pro board have a inbuilt ceramic antenna along with provision for connecting an external antenna to improve the range.Before using the external antenna, you have to reroute the antenna signal from the built-in ceramic antenna, to the external socket.This can be done by rotating the small surface mount (0603) Zero Ohm resistor (sometimes called a link).

  You can watch this video made by Alex Eamesto rotate the zero ohm resistor.

  Then snap the antenna SMA connector in to the Wemos Pro mini antenna slot.

• Measuring the Weather Data

  Open Green Energy • 07/11/2018 at 05:17 • 0 comments

  In the earlier days weather parameters like ambient temperature,humidity and barometric pressure were measured with separate analog instruments: thermometer, hygrometer and barometer.But today the market is flooded with cheap and efficient digital sensors that can be used to measure a variety of environmental parameters.The best examples are sensors like DHT11, DHT 22, BMP180, BMP280 etc.

  In this project we will use a BMP 280 sensor.

  BMP 280 :

  BMP280 is a sophisticated sensor that very accurately measures barometric pressure and temperature with reasonable accuracy. The BME280 is the next-generation of sensors from Bosch, and is the upgrade to the BMP085/BMP180/BMP183 - with a low altitude noise of 0.25m and the same fast conversion time.

  The advantage of this sensor is that it can use either I2C or SPI for communication with microcontroller. For simple easy wiring, I will suggest to by I2C version board.

• Solar Power Harvesting Circuit

  Open Green Energy • 07/11/2018 at 04:37 • 0 comments

  The Power harvesting circuit is made of  TP4056 charging IC and DW01  li Ion battery protection IC. 

  About the TP4056 :

  The TP4056 IC is a complete constant current/constant-voltage linear charger for single cell lithium-ion/Lithium Polymer (LiIon/LiPo) batteries. Its SOP-8 package and low external component count make the TP4056 ideally suited for portable applications. 

  Other features include :

  1.  Current monitoring

  2. Under voltage lockout

  3. Automatic recharge

  4. Two status LED to indicate full charge and the presence of an input voltage.

  To know more about TP4056, you can read the Data Sheet.

  About the DW01 :
  

  The DW01  battery protection IC is designed to protect lithium-ion/polymer battery from damage or degrading the lifetime due to overcharge, overdischarge, and/or overcurrent for one-cell lithium-ion/polymer battery powered systems.

  To know more about DW01 , you can read the Data Sheet

  I used a ready made module which include both  TP4056 and  DW01 ICs. This module will offer 1000 mA charge current then cut off when charging is finished. Furthermore when the battery voltage drops below 2.4V the protection IC will cut off the load to protect the cell from under voltage. It also protects against over voltage and reverse polarity connection.

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