Weather station

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Weather station with pressure reading, relative humidity, indoor & remote outdoor temperature display.
Both Celsius or Fahrenheit & mbar/hPa or mm Hg supported. With calendar & clock. Easy 3-button user-menu. 42 hour-history

display (curve). Auto-memory & display of all high and lowvalues. PIC 18F452 running at 4 MHz, power saving sleep mode. Sensors are only turned on when needed. All parts are available in our online shop. Schematic & pcb (Eagle 4.11e), source code (CCS) and hex file available. Updated on May 6, 2006. Future developments: fully solar powered.

Circuit explanation:
Now this was a huge project! All sensors had to be fully tested one at a time, wireless communication had to be perfect, various LCDs were tried. Nevertheless, here's the result: hope you enjoy it! The circuit may be powered by a small 9V battery, but you'd better take a couple of AAbatteries. A 6-pack will last a several months. Consumption for the base station is around 8 to 9 mA whilst active and only 2 to 3 mA in sleep mode (LCD remains on.) The transmitter takes

slightly less. The receiver (base station) is active during 5 seconds & then goes to sleep for 45 seconds. The transmitter takes a nap every 30 seconds or so. Menu mode is entered when pushing the "menu" button (what's in a name?) for 1 second. Browsing & value changes are done with the "min" & "plus" keys. When in normal mode (like in the picture above), the "min" and "plus" keys can browse through the different histories. All these controls will wake up the processor if it was in sleep mode. On the left-hand side of the LCD we have (from top to bottom:) Outside temperature, Pressure, Inside Temperature, Relative Humidity, Calendar and Clock. On the right: High value of the past 42hours, Bar graph histogram (right is most recent value), Low value. All sensors are read & LCD (left-hand side) are updated every 50 seconds. Histogram is updated on the hour (e.g. 10h00, 17h00, 22h00,...) All data is stored in EEPROM and is loaded at power-up. In case of a power failure (or when changing batteries), there will be no data (nor history) lost. Most expensive part of the project (around 20,- / $ 25,-), but it's worth it. Output of this MPX 4115A pressure sensor is an analogue voltage, which is sensor temperature-compensated! We'll feed this directly to the PIC's 10-bit ADC. Nice SPI-sensor in a tiny SO-08 package. We'll use an emulated SPI-mode since we're already using IC for the RTC (with a TC77 SPI DS1307) and the external memory temperature sensor (24LC256), but this works just as well. Resolution goes to one tenth of a degree Celsius!

This sensor's output is a capacitance between 112pF (at 10% RH) and 143pF (90% RH) Its curve is not linear so we'll use a simple table H1 humidity to convert the A/D reading to the correct RHsensor value. Capacitance to frequency conversion is done with a simple 555 timing circuit. This frequency is fed to the PIC's T1_CLK. These are cheap modules. They have a quite good range (to 25m indoors and 150m RX+TX433: outdoors.) Data size of one packet is 32 bits. wireless modules Bits 8 (LSB) to 19 (MSB) contain temperature data (BCD). Bit 21 is the minus sign, bit 23 is a low battery warning.

Schematics: right-click & "save picture as" for full resolution or (recommended) download the
eagle-file below.

Base-station (receiver)

Remote temperature sensor (transmitter) compatible with HUGER & OREGON

SCIENTIFIC remote sensors

Part Lists (Bill of material): receiver and transmitter.

Receiver, calibration:
Make sure you're using a reliable multimeter, and not a cheap one. First adjust VREF- (PIC RA2, pin 4) to 2V40 with trimmer R9. Then adjust VREF+ (RA3, pin 5) to 4V70 with trimmer R8. At last, do a manual (linear) pressure correction via the menu (see below.) Of course, you'll have to know the current pressure for your area ... but this is just once! Is done via the menu (see below). This is a one-time, linear correction. No need, the TC77 sensors are fully calibrated.

Pressure calibration Humidity calibration Temperature calibration

Receiver, main interconnections: LPH7779 module 18F452 DIL

pin # schematic & symbol pin # code +5v sclk sda d/!c !cs gnd Vout !res VDD RD5 RD4 RC5 RD3 GND RD2 11,32 28 27 24 22 12,31 21 description

various
schematic & code

18F452 DIL
symbol SCL, C3 SDA, C4 B7 B6 B5 B3 A1 pin # 18 23 40 39 38 36 3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

ic SCL ic SDA SPI TC77 !CS SPI TC77 SIO SPI TC77 SCK power for mpx4115a analog from mpx4115a power for the RX433 module radio from RX433 module RS232 TX RS232 RX

SCL SDA TC77_CS TC77_SIO TC77_SCK MPX4115A_POWER (bar_analog)

RX433_POWER CP1 TX RX

E2

10

CCP1, 17 C2 C6 C7 25 26

power for H1circuit(humidity) frequency from the H1-circuit -- pushbutton ++ pushbutton enter pushbutton

RH_POWER (T1_CLK) key_min key_plus key_enter

B4 C0 B2 B1 B0

37 15 35 34 33

Receiver, menu structure:

History Display A0= Tin+Tex+Press+RH Mode: A1= Tin+Press A2= Tex+Press A3= Tin+Tex+Press Time Set: Temperature output: B0 to B7 = set calendar & clock C0= Celsius C1= Fahrenheit Pressure output: D0= mbar / hPa D1= inHg E= manual pressure adjust F= manual humidity adjust G= Clear EEPROM Clear history: history Pressure correction: Humidity correction: Exit menu:

Receiver, external EEPROM (24LC256P)

contents:

zz=0..41dec: history index

table (char 8 bits) y: 0..3dec: Tex UMSB..LLSB (float 32 bits) y: 4..7dec: Pressure (for address 0x1zzy:) UMSB..LLSB (float 32 bits) y: 8..11dec: Tin UMSB..LLSB (float 32 bits) y: 12dec: Relative Humidity (char 8 bits) 0x0003= temp_outp= Temperature notation (0= Celsius, 1= Fahrenheit) 0x0004= press_outp= Atmospheric Pressure notation (0= mBar/hPa, 1= inHg) 0x0005= p_corr= Manual Correction for Pressure (0..255dec) 0x0006= rh_corr= Manual Correction for Relative Humidity (0..255dec) 0x0007= hist_index= current history index (0..41dec) 0x0008= hist_sel= history selection(0..3dec) (Tex, Press, Tin, RH)

Wireless temperature sensor waveforms:

Full timing details of the transmission protocol:

Total transmission examp le: (black colon is signal high.) data MSB is on the utmost right.

Downloads:
WARNING: may not be duplicated for any commercial use whatsoever without explicit consent from the author

(c) Michel Bavin

for the base-station (receiver:)

Hex file: 012_v32_hex.zip, September 12, 2004: 012_32.hex (to program the PIC 18F452) Source code: 012_v32_c.zip , September 12, 2004 : 012_32.c (CCS compiler) (with include files 24256_mb.c / ds1307_mb_v1.c / lph7779_v3.c / menu_012.c / rx_radio_012.c) Schematic: 012_base_sch.zip , September 9, 2004: 012_base.sch (Eagle 4.11e) (with these library files: pic18f4x2.lbr and ic-package_mb.lbr (important: copy these to your eagle\library directory)

PCB: 012_base_brd.zip, September 9, 2004: 012_base.brd (Eagle 4.11e)

for the remote temperature sensor (transmitter:)

Hex file: 012_v105_hex.zip, May 6, 2006: 012_105.hex (to program the PIC 16F84A) Source code: 012_v105_c.zip , May 6, 2006: 012_105.c (CCS compiler) Schematic: 012_transmit_sch.zip , September 12, 2004: 012_trans.sch (Eagle 4.11e) PCB: 012_transmit_brd.zip , September 14, 2004: 012_trans.brd (Eagle 4.11e)

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PCB screenshots: Base station (receiver:) Remote transmitter (outside temperature:)

Info & datasheet:

MPX4115A pressure sensor from Motorola.

TC77 SPI temperature sensor (Microchip.) H1 humidity sensor (Philips.) RX+TX433: wireless modules (Velleman) DS1307 ic RTC 24C256 ic EEPROM MCP120-450D brownout detect (Microchip) Graphic LCD module type LPH7779 (NOKIA 3310 LCD) and its integrated controller PCD8544.

Tools:
Check out our development tools page. This project is made with the PCWH CCS compiler ($500,-) You can install Microchip's free MPLAB IDE with it to get things going smoothly. Programming of the PIC18F452 was done with the excellent Tiny PIC bootloader, through the RC6 & RC7 pins. But you'll need a regular PIC programmer to write the PIC the first time with... The remote transmitter has software RS232 on pins 9 (RB3,TX) and 10 (RB4,RX) for debugging only. Eagle 4.11 was used for the schematic & PCB layout.

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