AM_WeatherBox

Astro Makers project to make a weather monitor box for and observatory

Designed by Alan Sliski and Aaron Sliski. Other contributers: James Synge, George Silvis

The goal is to create an inexpensive device for weather monitoring at a telescope site/observatory. It features:

• Just two onboard sensors: rain detector and sky/cloud monitor. These are the most important sensors for making the scope safety decision: Is it safe to open the scope enclosure?
• Other information can be collected from online API's like https://darksky.net/dev
• One wire connected to the box: an ethernet cable with POE (Power Over Ethernet) providing the power.
• Inexpensive. This unit should cost about $150 for parts.
• Open source Arduino code

Documentation is this readme and the files in the Documentation folder.

• Some pictures of the device: picxxxx.png
• The weather box excel spread sheet has the BOM and two drawings.
• Processor: Arduino Mega + Ethernet shiedl + POE The RobotDyn part that combines all three is easier to work with and may be less expensive. It also comes with a heat sink: The POE does dump a fair amount of heat.
• The sky sensor is just 4 connections to the board
• The rain sensor needs 12V. For that we need a step up regulator from the nominal 9V of the POE.
• wiring notes ( these supercede any images and drawings you might find.
  • Rain sensor.
    • dip switches set for "It's Raining": 5 on for rain gauge, 1,2 off for high sensitivity, 3 on for 15 min hysteresis
    • 12V comes off the step up regulator
    • relay output to arduino pin 47. No need for external pullup; internal is set and is adequate
• monitor script
  • The goal is to access the weather box and decide if its safe to be open and make that information available to ACP
  • This is a work in progress.
  • Output can be a one line report file in the Boltwood format
  • This can be run from a cron or windows scheduled task.