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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Weather information like temperature, wind direction and speed, humidity,

flooding can be gathered via various measuring equipment in street weather station. A
weather station is considered a technical method that allows measuring weather
parameters based atmospheric conditions either on the land or on sea for a proposed
location with specific devices in order to realize forecasted weather conditions, and to
study climate properties. Weather prediction issues started formally since the
nineteenth century, then as soon as altered based measuring and recording honest data
about a specific location under certain atmospheric conditions [1].
Today weather station provided accurate weather information and forecast, their
coverage area is still less comparable to world geography. This means that a wider
geographical area is covered only by one weather station in some parts of the world. In
this situation remote areas away from that weather station cannot fully rely on that for
day to day activities. Portable weather station is welcomed for their significant lower
cost, yet provides usable weather data. Hence, environmental parameters such as
temperature, humidity, pressure along with altitude will be collected by sensors. These
data will be input to Arduino board which will serves as a server. It will also upload
local data to weather networks or network. Clients can, therefore, can access real time
data from anywhere using web services. This may be in the format applications or web
browsers. For alternatives to uploading data to networks of network, client can directly
access this real time data. Since the data is real-timed, it will be of value to weather
forecasting professionals as well as people simply wants to know everyday weather
facts.
The collected data allows deciding and confirming the warranty of the proposed
chosen location. The weather is appreciated mostly by two parameters, temperature and
the humidity. These parameters are fluctuated particularly in the places that have
affected by temperature of the sun radiation and the perpendicular location of the sun
that radiates over a specific location based the latitude of the
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tropical line. In fact, the atmosphere is considered jumbled and critical scheme due to
the high-grade effects that can be fallen over the entire scheme in case of a tiny change.
Hereby, the matter generates complications in climate forecasting for far future while
the prediction might be possible just for few subsequent days [2].

1.1. System Overview

This chapter deals with the system overview of personal weather station using
ESP8266 NodeMCU. The review will be performed on both hardware parts and
software parts of the thesis since these two parts constitute the overall system.
The system can be considered to include three main parts. The first part is input,
the second part is processor and the last one is the output. The proposed personal
weather station using ESP8266 NodeMCU also consists of three parts. Since the system
measures the environmental parameters, sensors used to measure them are input
devices. Parameters to be measured are temperature and humidity, atmospheric
pressure. The output to indicate the status of these environmental parameters in this
system is in the form of LCD display. Webserver helps these data viewable on the
mobile devices. Therefore, the whole system can be overviewed to be as in the
following Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1. Overview of Personal Weather Station Using ESP8266 NodeMCU

1.2. Introduction of Personal Weather Station Using ESP8266 NodeMCU

This chapter deals with the overview of this thesis, design implementation for
NodeMCU based weather station, presenting the purposes of the thesis and
implementation methods and steps in general, as well as the structure of the
documentation of the thesis. Accurate weather information is essential to everyday
activities, to maintain the healthy growth of crops, to ensure the safe working
environment in some industries and so on. An automated weather station is a device
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which is used to measure and record different parameters of the atmosphere without the
involvement of humans. Although today weather stations provide accurate information
and forecast, their coverage area is still less comparable to world geography. This
means that a wider geographical area is covered only by one weather station in some
parts of the world. In this situation, remote areas away from that weather station cannot
fully rely on that for day to day activities.
The solution is to set up and encourage the use of personal weather stations. A
personal weather station is a set of weather measuring instruments operated by a private
individual, club, association, or business. Personal weather stations have become more
advanced and can include many different sensors to measure weather conditions. These
sensors can vary between models but most measure wind speed, wind direction, outdoor
and indoor temperatures, outdoor and indoor humidity, barometric pressure. Other
available sensors can measure soil moisture, soil temperature, and leaf wetness. The
quality, number of instruments, and placement of personal weather stations can vary
widely, making the determination of which stations collect accurate, meaningful, and
comparable data difficult.

Figure 1.2. Personal Weather Station Using ESP8266 NodeMCU

In the hardware implementation part of the thesis, specifications of the hardware

required to build the proposed weather station are studied. Personal weather stations
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have the ability to display an astonishingly large array of weather conditions, whether
it is the temperature, internal and external humidity, precipitation, wind and
direction and also speed, wind direction and speed, wind chill.
Personal weather station using ESP8266 NodeMCU is composed of two
sections; hardware and software sections. In this thesis, hardware section of local
environmental measuring and monitoring over web system is described. LCD display,
LCD driver module, Temperature and humidity sensor, ATM pressure, buzzer and
cooling fan are used in this system. NodeMCU is used to control and set up the
webserver. When Wi-Fi module is connected with internet, webserver and webpage can
be constructed by writing program code. If all of the sensors are sensed via
microcontroller and send signal to the webserver. User can measure and monitor the
system via webserver by using PC or mobile phones. Figure 1.2 shows the block
diagram of Personal Weather Station Using ESP8266 NodeMCU.
All about this thesis is to build a personal weather station or portable one to
collect local weather data, host and process this weather data for uploading to integrate
with other services, and view this information whenever necessary from anywhere by
sharing weather information to one another.

1.3. Aim and Objectives

In this system, it is intended to build an affordable and a roust personal weather
monitoring system. The objectives to implement the aim of the thesis are as follows.
▪ To interface environmental parameter sensor to the controller for reading data
▪ To interface the controller to a server for hosting data
▪ To make the data hosted in the web server viewable by any device.

1.4. Implementation Program

The implementation program of the NodeMCU based weather measuring and
monitoring station is as follows.
▪ To study on background theory of personal weather stations
▪ To build and prepare a personal weather station
▪ Collecting and studying the reference documents
▪ Learn the automation system which can be controlled from ESP8266 and
Webserver
▪ Studying and analyzing the role of microcontroller in the system
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▪ Study and learn the embedded software in the NodeMCU

▪ Learn the C Programming language schematics to implement the whole
systems.

1.5. Scope of the Thesis

The scope of the mini thesis is limited to certain environmental sensors, which
are manufactured to be used for school electronic projects. The accuracy of these
sensors should not be compared to those sensors designed to handle extreme weather
conditions or have better range of sensitivity. On uploading weather data to network,
setup and configuration of the weather service provider are out of the scope of this
thesis. Concerned with programming, studying the program is limited to be able to write
program using given interfacing libraries.

1.6. Outlines of the Thesis

In this thesis book, materials have been organized in a way such that the
organization is in accordance of with the flow of the mini-thesis work, and it forms the
most distinct feature about organization of the book. The first chapter overviews about
personal weather stations. The second chapter provides outcomes of doing background
research of three implementation steps, hardware, basic setup and uploading weather
data to network. The third chapter includes building the prototype of the proposed
weather station. The fourth chapter includes tests and results of the constructed weather
station. The last chapter states the development stages of the mini thesis work as well
as describe the potential these weather stations.