Let's find out what AMMS is, an evolution of the Overseas Weather Service
AMMS, an acronym that stands for Autonomous Meteorological Monitoring Service – Autonomous environmental monitoring serviceThis is the flagship project of Klinkon Electronics, which consists of a system of self-built weather stations, environmental detection nodes, and validation systems for environmental data collected 'in the field' that are interconnected and operate autonomously, i.e., each station 'talks' to itself by sending data and information via a dedicated internet network, but if one station shuts down or fails, the other stations make up for the lack of data in a predictive manner, i.e., by triangulating the measured data, they are able to make an estimate of the environmental values present on site.
Difficult terms, right? No problem, let's go in order.
History of the Sovramontino Weather Service
The Sovramontino Weather Service was born at the end of 2017 with the installation of a small temperature, pressure, humidity and electromagnetic disturbance detection station for a high school project at Sentà di Sovramonte (BL), a project that evolved over time, receiving significant improvements as early as 2018, including sensors for wind and rain (3D printed), an improved frame (which withstood Vaia), while in the winter at the turn of 2018/2019 the station from a temporary installation became permanent, with the addition of a photovoltaic panel and lithium battery that allowed two-week autonomy instead of the previous rechargeable batteries extracted from old laptops that had to be changed manually every week (for budget reasons, as many 18650 batteries as possible were initially recycled from laptops, recharged by hand at home and replaced every Thursday by hand) and the installation of a radio link that transmitted data to the server at home instead of the previous method that consisted of extracting weekly values from an SD card to be read manually. The data was then used to make simple forecasts, which could be consulted on Telegram in the official project channelwhich is now used for weather forecasts and news articles.
In 2020, the system was equipped with a simple seismograph and the prototype of a snow sensor, projects that were then put on standby with the arrival of the pandemic and for reasons of time and inability to follow the project alone, a situation that lasted until 2021 when Lorenzo De Luca and Fabio Da Rolt joined the team, thanks to whom the project restarted with the installation of two new weather stations and a slow but steady improvement of the Sentà station's software and electronics, the opening of the project under an opensource licence and the resumption of the seismograph
In 2023, with the expansion of the team together with the DeLucaLabsof Filippo del Floppy Lab and Jacopo Franco, the resumption of all project activities takes place, from the complete refurbishment of the Sentà weather station to the introduction of new weather stations (as many as 18 nodes, stations and survey points at the current stage of the project) and a new network infrastructure to make all stations communicate with each other independently, with a . where to consult real-time and historical data
This is how AMMS was born, an acronym mentioned above that sums up the purpose of the system, which is to monitor our territory in a capillary manner, a project that is still expanding and is followed by twenty or so young people who contribute to the project on a daily basis.
How AMMS works
AMMS is an autonomous system, i.e. any device capable of detecting meteorological data (such as temperature, pressure, humidity, etc.) can be used to send data to the central database, and vice versa any actuator device (e.g. relays) can read the data in the database for configured automatisms, provided that everything is interfaced to the Internet. It is also possible to perform both operations, as the node runs in its software a library written by us that is Arduino, Esp, STM compatible, scalable in its functionality, and thus customisable as desired.
Hardware and software, one basis for all
In order to simplify the project as much as possible, while favouring its functionality and expandability, the whole system runs on an ecosystem of devices designed to run basically the same software, or at least part of it adapted very simply and quickly to the needs of each node, which can be summarised in 3 types of hardware:
- 5in1 weather stationsWe are talking about classic commercial weather stations from Amazon, made opendata through the installation of specially designed gateways to intercept data and upload them to the database, such as the Bresser 5-1 or the Ecowittwhich allow you to have a weather system connected to our system for less than €300. Examples of these stations in our system are those of Sorriva, Servo and Faller in Sovramonte (BL) and Sospirolo (BL).
- Weather nodesThese are systems that interpolate data collected on site to data taken from the database and have the ability to manage actuators for greenhouses, sprinklers, beehives, and more, based on WeatherIOT or other DIY boards running the AMMS_Utils and BSG libraries in their software.
- Base StationsThe largest and most complex stations with a plethora of features and advanced sensors cover a wide range of meteorological data types and are the most powerful ones we build, as well as being WMO-compliant (Sentà and Col De Mich, near Sovramonte (BL), and one in Sedico at DeLucaLabs are currently active for this type of station, while one in Pordenone by Giosuè and one in Mas, in the province of Belluno, held by Fabio Da Rolt, are under construction).
Each type of station is united by its basic operation, i.e. the data acquisition sensors detect environmental values and transmit them to our main server; the differentiation of the various systems depends on the software running inside the microcontrollers, and the electronics that are prepared by the hardware team as required.
Speaking of hardware, it is prepared in our workshops already configured with a basic firmware, 'tailored' to the type of station, mainly based on ESP32 microcontrollers.
Once installed on the desired station, all we need to do is to configure the station on a wifi network so that it can detect the parameters of the installed sensors by self-configuring with the necessary definitions and then transmit the data via our server. This is to simplify as much as possible the configuration phase of the station at first start-up, generally followed by us and executed by programmes such as the Arduino IDE to access the station's control terminal, removing the need for expert programming skills, but leaving only the final configuration aspect to our user.
We currently have three devices that we design and assemble in the lab, which are constantly being improved and optimised through continuous collaboration with the Floppy Lab and Fusetronics, as well as the AMMS in-house team of Klinkon Electronics and DeLucaLabs guys in order to separate the activities and ensure project quality and efficiency.
Our files
Before moving on to the software, it is therefore correct to make a distinction between the devices running the AMMS ecosystem, in order to also understand the differences in the various stations, modules and their operation.
Bresser Station Gateway (BSG) Boardlatest product in terms of release, this is a gateway Lora to Esp32 we use in the 5in1 stationswhich allows the 868MHz radio frequencies of commercial stations to be picked up and sent via wifi to the AMMS central server. Currently Joshua and Leonardo are developing the Lora modem functionality, with a view to implementing it also in our base stations and weather nodes where the Internet does not arrive, thus exploiting radio waves.
The board consists of an RFM95W module and an ESP32 WEMos, with an i2c expansion connector for installing additional sensors or displays to the radio module (which works in SPI). For more info please refer to our blog article where we specifically describe the functioning and purpose of our system BSG and how you can achieve it too.
AMMS BoardThe flagship model of our hardware park, developed in collaboration with FuseTronics.Eu, is the board dedicated exclusively to the AMMS system, currently still under internal development for OMM-compatible stations (the standards that regulate weather stations and their installations), not yet 'online' as the firmware is still under development, but already available on request for those who wish to tinker with it. It is equipped with an ESP32-S3 microcontroller that allows interfacing to a series of features on the board, such as microSD, RGB LEDs, I/O button for operating modes, native serial interface for debugging, as well as some 'Pro' functions such as support for Home Assistant, mosfet for external actuator or heater, integrated TP4056 charge controller for 18650 batteries, RTC and type-approved connectors for use in even the harshest conditions, with two dedicated RJ11 (twisted pair) connectors for rain gauge and anemometer, which can be removed by shrinking the board and freeing up 3 GPIOs that can be configured as desired, and an expansion board via a dedicated connector to increase the available outputs.
Currently, the plans for the AMMS Board are to make it only Open-Hardwareand to keep the software closed, as the functionality within it (Home Assistant above all) will be given 'As-a-Service' to support the project and always guarantee further improvements, as well as being the professional version of our system, with the highest technology and attention to detail resulting from two years of work. You will still find everything available in our Official GitHubtogether with the previous boards, which are also completely free to contribute to the development of the system.
WeatherIoT: The most widely used board in AMMS due to its versatility and low cost is WeatherIOT, a board developed in collaboration with Floppy Lab and now in version 0.3 (1.0 coming soon). It is currently installed in most of our weather stations, and unlike the others, it was created to be completely opensource, in order to provide a basis for all projects that combine IoT and environmental monitoring, namely the use of meteorological data to regulate and manage greenhouses, beehives, smart sprinklers and much more.
It is composed of an Esp32-Devkit_V1 devboard integrating an ESP-Wroom32 and the whole USB interface and programming part, which is inserted on a dedicated socket on our board. Our board will then take care of powering it, via a buck made up of a TPS5430 that provides power to the whole board, the sensors and the ESP from an input of up to 30V, and to carry the signals from the prepared connectors to the microcontroller.
The real strengths of this board are the ESD protections for the sensors (as they are exposed to the external environment and therefore subject to electromagnetic interference), and the connectors for expansions and sensors already prepared with resistors and capacitors to guarantee maximum stability and reliability of the board even in unfavourable conditions of use, with expansion connectors for actuators such as relays or special uncommon sensors, interface I2C at 5V and 3.3V, SPI, UART and OneWire already prepared in the PCB.
Software and Functionality
The real beating heart of AMMS lies in the software, which has been specially developed to be compatible with all our boards and more, from those already in other projects to do-it-yourself ones that perhaps implement different sensors and functionalities from ours.
The whole thing revolves around a bookshop, AMMS_Utilswhich allows any device connected to the Internet to interface with our database, enabling it to interact by reading and writing data.
This library, which we use in all the controllers we install, reads the serial values of a given sensor (in the case of Bresser Station Gateways, it reads the data returned by the RFM95W module) and sends them to the respective database tables
The library also takes care of reading the data for use in the case of sprinkler stations or automated greenhouses, and also has the ability for stations managed by us to receive firmware updates via OTA (over-the-air), completely removing the complexities of firmware updates from the end user every time we make changes to the software or the library itself, or simply add new sensors compatible with our ecosystem
In fact, our system is developed in such a way as to integrate as many sensors as possible by default, enabled by us when configuring the station, with the station automatically updating itself and detecting the sensors and definitions given for the database, guaranteeing maximum flexibility and user-friendliness to the project.
Finally, the AMMS software is encapsulated in the library alone, so that the customisation of the system by the station owner is guaranteed, keeping actuator control or customised data delivery separate from our data acquisition and the free use of the library even by those who want to develop clients or solutions based on our system data, in fact we provide Hardware and Software as a free and freely shared template for creating environmental monitoring and management systems, our main aim can be defined in this sentence, involving as many people as possible with an interest in pursuing this goal, integrating electronic engineers, professional and amateur programmers, weather enthusiasts, farmers, beekeepers and making enthusiasts into the development team, combining efforts and expertise for the continuous development of the AMMS ecosystem.
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