Project day in the company of DeLucaLabs students
Every Saturday, Klinkon Electronics and DeLucaLabs meet in their labs on a rotating basis with the aim of doing collaborative projects, developing ideas and solutions and doing 'team building' in preparation for events, trade fairs, job proposals and more, creating a solid bond of friendship and collaboration. On 7 October it was our turn to host the guys from DeLucaLabs
Introduction to the meeting
Klinkon Electronics has been working on the AMMS project since 2017 - AUTONOMOUS METEREOLOGICAL MONITORING SYSTEM (formerly the Sovramontino Weather Service) and for the past year has been working with the DeLucaLabs in expanding and improving the service also outside the municipality of Sovramonte, as well as in other projects such as the driving simulator, the organisation of the Sovramontina Innovation Fair and many other projects.
Saturday's meeting was aimed at introducing improvements in the aforementioned weather system, such as the installation of a WeatherIOT in the main station of Sentà di Sovramonte and its programming, as well as organising the basis for the second sovramontina fair to be held from 26 April in Sovramonte, and the configuration of a ProxMox server for data retrieval and management and control of various PC hardware for network use (we will return to this last step later)
Saturday's work - Project Weather
Meteorological analysis is the main focus of our activities. For years we have been monitoring air quality, automating greenhouses, creating databases and teaching people via our social pages what environmental monitoring is and how it is done. Since February 2022, these activities have started to be included in a project called AMMS, which goes beyond mere data acquisition but aims to standardise all fields of do-it-yourself meteorology in a purpose-built ecosystem that allows even newcomers to approach this world.
This is where our WeatherIOT boards come from, boards based on an ESP32 microcontroller with integrated Wifi that allow not only to collect data from preset sensors, but also to drive actuators such as relays, motors, grippers, load cells and more, as desired by the programmer, via completely open-source hardware and documentation that make these boards also perfect as DataLoggers.
On our own, however, we are unable to guarantee 360° access to all the technologies, information, and types of system that this board guarantees, especially considering that our weather system to date, out of 18 active control units, is based on no less than 7 different types of hardware, so we have decided, in common agreement with DeLucaLabs, to standardise everything, same hardware, same software, fewer problems, but above all, more possibilities for system expansion.
This led to the need to improve WeatherIOT to make it compatible with all types of station/terminal, and above all to develop software that was compatible for all stations, as software and hardware go hand in hand, an activity that thus involved the Floppy Lab in the development of the board and especially Joshua and Leonardo from DeLucaLabs for the firmware development.
Saturday's meeting was therefore a perfect opportunity to 'field test' the new boards and management programme, and what better occasion to improve the Sentà station than this one?
The morning started with a planning moment of 2a Innovation Fair in Sovramonte, which will involve makers and workshops from all over the province of Belluno, from Trentino and also from Bologna, and will take place from 26 to 28 April 2024 in conjunction with the patronal festival of Sorriva, the village where our workshop is located. We will explain details, guests and programme later.
Then the planning of the work to be carried out in Sentà began, namely removal of the old hardware with installation of the new WeatherIOT v0.3.
As a first step, it was necessary to prepare the boards, two WeatherIOT 0.2 for firmware development with EspNow in order to create a system of interconnected anti-pollution nodes without the need for wifi coverage, ideal for squares and public places of interest, and one WeatherIOT 0.3 to be mounted in our historical station in Sentà, soldering all components and connectors on the board.
Joshua carried out the welding work under the watchful eye of Lorenzo who, with the diagram open on KiCad, dictated components and positions to our welder, who performed his work excellently.
The Sentà weather station
It is the progenitor of the Overmountain Weather System, now AMMS, and is the most powerful station we have built, including sensors for pollution, sensors for agriculture, a snowmeter part currently under development, and a seismograph currently in 'suspension' as we are implementing it in the new hardware version of the station.
The control unit was born in 2017 as an electromagnetic pollution monitoring project for a school assignment, and then over time it received continuous improvements, namely in 2018 the first meteorological core with even a 3D printed rain gauge, which withstood the Vaia storm and is still on display in our laboratory showcase, in 2019 autonomous power supply with a photovoltaic panel and a radio link transmission system, in 2020 the first seismograph prototype, which we are now improving and completely revising thanks to university knowledge, in 2021 the entire internal system will be rebuilt, and in the current year (2023) we are completely rebuilding the electrical panel with a dedicated look at energy efficiency and the support of an emergency network in the event of weather alerts, as well as a weather webcam, snow sensors and a series of automatic services, which we will discuss in a dedicated article.
The evolution of the weather station
Server and laboratory network preparation
For some time we have had a Dell PowerEdge server in the lab, which we plan to use for our needs as a home server, home assistant, but especially for our weather server, until we have our own domain ready and dedicated.
Also on Saturday, Leonardo started working on the installation of ProxMox, configuring the disks and installing an SSD.
Unfortunately, the activity was not successful due to a series of configuration problems for which there was no time in the day to solve them, but we took the opportunity to wire the laboratory in view of the new Internet network we are setting up.
Until now, in fact, the lab used a 4G Sim to have basic WIFI, but that was enough for our activities. With the expansion of activities, an upgrade was necessary, which was achieved on Monday with the installation of a Tim FTTC line.
With these activities, a very productive morning came to an end, and after a quick meal discussing the next steps for the weather project, we went into action at Sentà, beginning work on the installation of the WeatherIOT and the wiring of its sensors.
In-the-field activities in Sentà
The work started with the replacement of the old station motherboard and the installation of the new WeatherIOT, with all the connectors being re-moulded to fit the new board circuit diagram.
Compared to the previous hardware, we are moving from an Arduino Nano to an ESP32, so the data acquisition speed is also much faster, which allows us to reduce the rejection and measurement error of the so-called fast sensors, such as rain and wind, while for temperature the quality of the measurement is given by the sensor itself, so it is an improvement on predictive parameters rather than real-time ones, as well as improving the stability of the system.
One week after its installation, we have 30000 measurements compared to the old system's average of 17000 per week.
The activities, which continued throughout the afternoon, also saw the optimisation of the software and the correction of bugs present in the old code, with data being sent no longer via radio link but via 4G network, which allows much higher and more stable sending speeds.
In addition, an RTC (Real Time Clock) module was installed for improved time synchronisation, a DHT22 for additional comparison of humidity and temperature in order to better calibrate temperature sensors, and a line for an SPS30 was set up to measure ambient particulate pollution
Conclusions
At the end of the day, the station became 'Up and Running', i.e. it started to continuously transmit data to our server (the data you see in the side widget of the site comes from that station), reconfirming how collaboration between groups makes it possible to create great projects from great ideas that cannot be sustained alone, however, perhaps due to skills or 'physical arms'
With this article, we would like above all to focus on the social aspect of the project, i.e. bringing together forces, minds, creating a real team that works in symbiosis with one another, enhancing services in the area and developing not only ideas but also contacts, collaborations and friendships, the purpose of these weekly meetings being precisely that!
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