I am seeking to get some data loggers made up to collect weather data to provide a service to help get more weather stations in the area to help communities. I am wondering if you have what I need below and if not, do you know where I could get it?
I would like to be able to add weather sensors of my choice to the system and have it work like my current system which now uses old technology being a parallel printer port. A system that uses USB would be better.
Currently I have a system that samples voltages between 0 and 5 volts on 10 input ports and I have software that lists each sample in a table that can opened in Microsoft Excel and pasted into a file with formulas to calculate the values for temperature, rainfall, light, wind direction and wind speed. Currently, my system takes a sample every half a second so that each hour there are about 7200 lines of data in the file. My current system can therefore sample data from 10 different weather sensors.
The anemometers output a frequency so I also use a frequency to voltage converter to convert the frequency to the voltages. However, another possibility would be to use a data logger circuit like what I would like above but only samples the frequency values directly on some of the ports instead of the voltages.
Currently I use a wired system which I could use. However, I would also like to try a wireless system or alternatively adapt a wireless transmitter to an existing wired system.
Do you have any circuit boards or kits that could be made up to do log voltages or frequency from multiple ports so software can display them in a table like I am seeking?
Do you also have any circuits that enable frequency to voltage conversion for anemometers?
SparkFun Logomatic v2 - Serial SD Datalogger (FAT32) lets you add different types of sensors for measuring temperature, humidity, wind speed etc. For converting anemometer frequency to voltage, you can use a frequency-to-voltage converter like LM2917 by TI.
I assume you mean https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12772 . Does it come with software or is there free software available to enable saving the data in a format that can be pasted into Microsoft Excel?
Will it sample voltages between 0 and 5 volts and how many ports or sensors can be added?
I am still searching for a circuit board to connect to my computer to log weather data like described in my earlier posts. Do you know anything with at least 10 ports so I can sample voltages between 0 and 5 volts in each port so software can connect to the computer to record the voltages in a text file that can be pasted into Microsoft Excel? Someone may also be able to write a program to do this for me and it would also benefit other people that may want to set up weather stations like this. Will the Logomatic v2 - Serial SD Datalogger (FAT32) in the above link do what I want or do you know what will?
It looks like you have 10 analog values you want to record; and perhaps send wirelessly. If WiFi is ok you could consider Sparkfun’s IoT Datalogger, it’s three internal ADCs, and two SparkFun’s Qwiic 12 Bit 4-ch ADCs.
Or the Adafruit Feather system with a datalogger wing plus either a RFM wireless wing or and ESP32 base. Or a PicoW with Adafruit PiCowbell Adalogger.
Normally there are many more things for you to consider; such as do you want those stations to be remote (and therefore power consumption, power capacity is important)? remote access (and therefore type of connectivity; LoRa, WiFi, Bluetooth, other)?
Arduino Mega has 16 analog inputs that will handle 0 to 5 volts in 1024 steps. You will need to write a little bit of software to make it work but it can send data to a PC via USB serial.
Richard Hole:
I am still searching for a circuit board to connect to my computer to log weather data like described in my earlier posts. Do you know anything with at least 10 ports so I can sample voltages between 0 and 5 volts in each port so software can connect to the computer to record the voltages in a text file that can be pasted into Microsoft Excel?
Since it's to a PC, a USB device will make things easier. These guys have a bunch that look well documented:
In skimming this summary, it shows up as a virtual comm port and you issue commands for any of the available channels to send a reply with the analog state.
Arduino MEGA looks more promising as it has 16 inputs so you could have a lot of sensors on the one system. Do you think that is the best one for my purpose as I would need to sample up to 5 volts and have many ports? Is that Arduino MEGA at https://www.cnc3d.com.au/arduino-mega-atmega2560 and https://core-electronics.com.au/arduino … -mega.html ? It does not mention 1024 steps there. My current system sampling up to 5 volts records to the nearest 0.02 volts so I would want a resolution of at least that.
My current system is wired where the wires from the 10 sensors are screwed into the terminals. I assume the Arduino MEGA would work for me. However, in future I may set up some wireless systems.
It is just a matter of finding or writing software that logs the voltage of each input. The software would have to be capable of taking a reading every 0.5 seconds and displaying the figures in 16 columns in a file that can be pasted into Microsoft Excel 2003. The file would have to contain 1 hours data. I would want the software to save the settings regarding the recording interval and also start recording immediately as soon it is open and stop recording as soon as the program is closed. Would it be easy to find or write a program to do this and do you know who could do it for me? It would also benefit many people in the community as I would like to get a few people recording the weather and uploading it online.
I assume these would all work on Windows 7 and above.