Wi-Fi Based Portable Weather Station for Monitoring

Temperature, Relative Humidity, Pressure, Precipitation,

Wind Speed and Direction

Indranil Sarkar 1, Bijoy Pal 2, Arnab Datta 2, Sandip Roy 2

1
Elitte Institute of Engineering & Management, 2 Brainware Group of Institutions
{ indra.nil2004, bijoypal32, dattaarnab2013, sandiproy86}@gmail.com

Abstract. This manuscript mainly focuses on the development of a model

weather station to measure weather data: temperature, relative humidity,
atmospheric pressure, wind direction, speed, and rainfall. This type of weather
station has been designed to perform unmanned measurement of weather data.
The measured date wirelessly transmits to the remote station for logging and
display the information to different smart gadgets. This wireless connectivity
has been planned using Wi-Fi connections which establishes mesh network for
reliable data communication. Furthermore, our consistent outputs do help for
the dwellers to take necessary precautions.

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Fog Computing, Internet of Things, Mobile

Weather Station, Smart City

1 Introduction

Air quality monitoring and climate change have received much consciousness in the
urban area. Urban dwellers always keep update about the latest weather conditions of
their surroundings. Due to the availability of low-cost sensor platforms and the
presence of high speed reliable wireless data communication network, many devices
are easily communicated their measured data with each other and form mesh network
[1, 2]. The average cost of sensors was $1.30 in the year 2004, and it is expected to
reach $0.92 in the year 2020 [3, 4]. In [5], Gartner forecasted that around 70% of the
world’s population is anticipated to live in cities by 2050. Due to the rapid urban
growth in the next coming year, it will also make pressure on the existing
infrastructure.
To assist the new demand on cities, Internet of Things (IoT) based system would
reduce costs, improve services, and enhance communication and interaction [6, 7]. It
is also very important that best wireless connectivity technology for an IoT based
personal devices to industrial instruments can be quite exacting (see fig. 1) [8]. In [9],
authors discussed about the various emerging wireless technologies for IoT.
Popular ISM bands like 433MHz, 868MHz, 915MHz, 2.4GHz, and 5GHz are used
in wireless communication system. The unlicensed 2.4GHz band became very
popular and it is used in all regions for connecting IoT-based devices [10].
 Nowadays air pollution is the most remarkable concern for public health. World
Health Organization (WHO) suggested that each year around 5.5 million people die
due to the pollution. So, many researchers work on real-time air pollution monitoring
and forecasting system [11, 12]. It is also notable that IoT-based systems can also
reduce the hardware cost into one-tenth as previously used technologies. In [12],
authors focused on ZigBee based real-time air pollution monitoring unit for smart
city. Urban dwellers are not only aware about the air pollution monitoring unit but
also they concern on the various weather attributes like temperature, relative
humidity, pressure, Precipitation, Wind Speed, and Direction.
Therefore, in this manuscript, we have researched on portable weather monitoring
station using wi-fi network technology.

Fig. 1. Wi-Fi data communication for Smart City.

Sections of the manuscript are as follows: Section 2 is discussed the literature

survey. Section 3 describes the experimental setup and result analysis. Section 4 deals
with conclusions and examines the future scope of our research.

2 Literature Survey

Automatic weather station (AWS) is an unmanned system which saves human labor.
A typical AWS consist of a rechargeable battery, data logger, meteorological sensors
with attached solar panel or wind turbine, and the telemetry [13, 14].
Lage et al described a mini weather station for crop protection [15]. Their system
can also forecasted the occurrence of Zonda winds as before advance of several hours.
This type of system was very much efficient for farmer. Saini et al proposed the
arduino uno board and ZigBee wireless technology supported weather station which
can monitor various weather parameters, weather forecasting, and alert the people
from its catastrophic effect [16].
Thaker et al proposed the ESP8266 based low cost Wi-Fi based system with linux
based web-server application [17]. In [18], authors described real-time weather
monitoring system based on a mobile application. Jianyun et al discussed on IoT
based automatic weather station. Authors discussed about the various features of the
IoT based automatic weather station like high quality meteorological data,
comprehensive monitoring information, reliable meteorological equipment, flexible
scalability, standard interoperability, convenient deployment, and efficient
maintenance and protection [19]. In our experiment, we have planned to organize an
outdoor weather station for monitoring various atmospheric attributes and send the
data to the remote cloud server.

3 Experimental Setup and Result Analysis

At first we have organized our portable system on the outdoor platform unit as shown
in fig. 2 a). In our system, we have used Weather Shield (see fig. 2 d) which was
designed for SparkFun RedBoard, Arduino Uno, and also connected with Weather
Meter [20, 21]. It is also noted that humidity/temperature sensor (HTU21D),
barometric pressure (MP3115A2), tipping bucket rain gauge, cup anemometer, and
wind vane are used in our proposed system which are illustrated in fig. 2 b) and c)
[22]. The tipping bucket rain gauge, wind vane, and cup anemometer are connected
with the Weather Shield by socket 6P4C [22]. We have used 9V battery for our
experiment as outdoor power supply unit.

a)

b) c) d)
Fig. 2. a) Mobile Weather Station, b) Wind Speed and Direction Sensor, c) Rain Gauge Sensor,
d) Weather Shield.
 a) b)

c) d)

e) f)
Fig. 3. a) – f) The graph of Temperature, Relative Humidity, Atmospheric Pressure,
Rainfall, Wind Speed and Direction vs Time: 4th April 2018

NodeMCU, an open source IoT platform, is used for data communication. It can share
the sample data with public channel Id #431128 of open source IoT application and
API named ThingSpeak1. In fig. 3 a) – f) illustrate the results of our experiment.

3 Conclusion and Future Scope

In this manuscript, we have designed an outdoor portable weather station. Our

research objective is to not only sense data but also send the data to the remote cloud
server using NodeMCU wi-fi module. Our research methodology will be more robust
if we will include different forecasting techniques which can predict the results and
minimize the error [23].

1
Weather Station: https://thingspeak.com/channels/431128
References

1. Castell, N., Dauge, F. R., Schneider, P., Vogt, M., Lerner, U., Fishbain, B., Broday, D.,
Bartonova, A.: Can commercial low-cost sensor platforms contribute to air quality
monitoring and exposure estimates? Env. Int. 99 (2017) 293 – 302
2. Lopez, J. C. B., Villaruz, H. M.: Low-cost weather monitoring system with online logging
and data visualization. 2015 Int. conf. on Human, Nanotech. Info. Tech., Comm. and
Control, Env. and Mgmt. Cebu City, Philippines (2015)
3. Goldman Sachs, BI Intelligence Estimates: The average cost of IoT sensors is falling.
ATLAS (2018)
4. Honrubia, M.: Industrial IoT is booming thanks to a drop in Sensor Prices. ennomotive
(2017)
5. State of the Market: Internet of Things 2016 Accelerating innovation, productivity and
value. Verizon.com (2016)
6. Zanella, A., Bui, N., Castellani, A., Vangelista, L., Zorzi, M.: Internet of Things for Smart
Cities. IEEE Internet of Things, Vol. 1 (2014) 22 – 32
7. Kim, T-h., Ramos, C., Mohammed, S.: Smart City and IoT. Future Generation Computer
Systems, Vol. 76 (2017) 159 – 162
8. Pau, G., Claudet, C., Dixian, Z., Collotta, M.: Next Generation Wireless Technologies for
Internet of Things. Sensors, Editorial (2018) 1 - 5
9. Elkhodr, M., Shahrestani, S., Cheung, H.: Emerging Wireless Technologies in the Internet
of Things: A Comparative Study. IJWMN, Vol. 8 (2016) 67 – 82
10. Lethaby, N.: Wireless connectivity for the Internet of Things: One size does not fit all.
Texas Instruments Incorporated, (2017) 1 – 16
11. Xiaojun, C., Xianpeng, L., Peng, X.: IOT-based air pollution monitoring and forecasting
system. 2015 Int. Conf. on Comp. and Computational Sc., Noida, India (2015)
12. Roy, S., Bose, R., Sarddar, D.: Smart and Healthy City Protecting Carcinogenic
Pollutants. IJAES, Vol. 12 (2017) 1661 – 1692
13. King, J.: Automatic Weather Stations. Internet Archive. (2009) 1
14. Paul, D.: WATERSHED SENSOR NETWORK NON-LINE-OF-SIGHT DATA
TELEMETRY SYSTEM. Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. University of Cincinnati,
(2007) 1 – 63
15. Lage, A., Correa, J. C.: Weather station with cellular communication network. 2015 XVI
Workshop on Info. Proc. and Cont., Cordoba, Argentina (2016)
16. Saini, H., Thakur A.., Ahuja, S., Sabharwal, N., Kumar, N.: Arduino based automatic
wireless weather station with remote graphical application and alerts. 2016 3rd
International Conf. on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks, Noida, India (2016)
17. Thaker, T.: ESP8266 based implementation of wireless sensor network with Linux based
web-server. Symposium on Colossal Data Analysis and Networking, Indore, India (2016)
18. Munandar, A., Fakhrurroja, H., Rizqyawan, M. I., Pratama, R. P., Wibowo, J. W., Anto, I.
A. F.: Design of real-time weather monitoring system based on mobile application using
automatic weather station, 2017 2nd Int. Conf. on Automation, Cognitive Sc., Optics,
Micro Electro-Mech. Sys., and Info. Tech., Jakarta, Indonesia (2017)
19. Jianyun, C., Yunfan, S., Chunyan, L: Research on Application of Automatic Weather
Station Based on Internet of Things. IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science,
Vol. 104 (2017) 1 – 6
20. Weather Station Wirelessly Connected to Wunderground. SparkFun (2018) 1
21. Weather Sensor Assembly p/n 80422. Argent Data Systems (2017) 1 - 2
22. Weather Meter Hookup Guide. SEN – 08942 ROHS (2018) 1
23. Roy, S., Biswas, S. P., Mahata, S., Bose, R.: Time Series Forecasting using Exponential
Smoothing to Predict the Major Atmospheric Pollutants. ICACCCN 2018, Greater Noida,
India (2018)