Weather Station Project #2 - Vantage Vue is in

I received the Davis Instruments Vantage Vue weather station. The box looks like so

I was rather pleased with the quality of the product. The reviews on Amazon rate it as a 4.5 out of 5 with 309 reviews. I generally don't like to order something without at least 50 - 100 reviews so this is way past that point. My son-in-law was nice enough to come over and put it up on the roof for me.


I got the ISS to mate with the console and it has been working for the last couple of days without any problem.


I am also now exploring the use of the RPi with weewx software to link into Weather Underground and with NOAA.

-- LW

Weather Station Project #1 - Purchased Weather Station - Vantage Vue

I just purchased a Davis Instruments 6250 Vantage Vue on Amazon.  My current weather setup started showing signs of sensor failure this weekend, first with the humidity sensor and then with the rain sensor.  This setup is about 5 to 6 years old so it is probably about time to replace it.  I was somewhat annoyed with the purchase since I have to purchase a $129 component in order to interface the readout with a Raspberry Pi USB port.  That is outrageous!  From what I know, the Davis Instruments provides the best customer service that is out there for most medium capability weather stations, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay the price.  The sensor unit is self contained and has a solar panel for power (i.e., it will save trips to the roof to change the batteries).  The picture of the unit looks like this (from the Amazon site):

From what I understand of the unit, it has high praise, being rated 4.5 out of 5 overall out of 306 reviews.  The unit looks clean so it will not be an eyesore being mounted on my chimney.

Current plans are to sample the information coming across the USB line from the Vue with the RPi, process/archive the data, and then send response to Weather Underground/WeatherBugNet.

Update: apparently the software of choice here would be WeeWx (http://www.weewx.com).  The Davis Vantage Vue is supported, as is uploads to Weather Underground and CWOP (interface to Weather Channel).  I was not able to figure out how to be a part of WeatherBug network; it seems that is closed to PWS implementations.  Anyway, good information to know.

AdaFruit PiTFT 2.8 inch TouchScreen

I finally got around to getting the PiTFT up and running.  The instructions at https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pitft-28-inch-resistive-touchscreen-display-raspberry-pi are very easy to follow, just make sure you follow them closely.  After downloading the OS patches and applying them to a fresh copy of Raspbian, I was unable to get past a problem with a missing driver.  It turns out that I didn't heed one small part of the instructions for removing something that came into the Raspbian mix after Sept 2013.  Once I had removed the directory, as instructed, everything fell into place.  Next on the list is to set up some libraries that can be used to form a menu function for executing individual script files.  A picture of the PiTFT from the AdaFruit site is shown below.  Note you can order this 2.8 inch touchscreen panel from the AdaFruit site at http://www.adafruit.com/products/1601 .

My desire is to have a screen X by Y matrix that can move between different menu levels and each one capable of executing a script file or executable.

Portable Pi Project - Part #3

Well, I attempted to put the cables together to make the portable RPi.  However, there were several issues that I had to deal with:

(1) when I applied power, it became obvious that there was not enough current going through the wires.  I did check out all of the lines and the voltage was correct.

(2) I found one of the sides of my DPDT switch was momentary.  I needed a switch that was ON-OFF-ON but I picked up one that was ON-OFF-(ON), the (ON) indicating that it was momentary - well, live and learn.

(3) I had the Adafruit 1601 2.8" touch screen on the RPi which added a 100ma load to the power supply, further dragging down the power

(4) the ethernet connection would not light off because of the low power.

So now I am back to trying out the application of power with regular power supplies to make sure that there is not something wrong with the particular RPi that I was using.

After using another, albeit more powerful power supply, I was able to get the RPi to come up and stay up, including the AdaFruit touch screen display. It would appear that I may have misjudged the amount of power needed with the switched setup that I was using earlier.

General Purpose RPi WiFi Thingy

I encountered another one of those interesting snags at work where you wished you had a device that did something out of the ordinary.  With that in mind, I want to build a general purpose WiFi-Ethernet interface using a Raspberry Pi.  I am willing to sacrifice an RPi to get what I want.  This also should serve to get me back into the experiment game.  I want the RPi to serve as a couple of different types of Router and Access Point configurations.  No fancy VLAN stuff, just the basics.  But since I occasionally need Wireshark and TOR I have some alternates.  So what I want to do is the following:

1. Router #1

  -- Ethernet -> Firewall (w/wo TOR Proxy) -> Ethernet (w/dns&dhcp)

2. Router #2

  -- Ethernet -> Firewall (w/wo TOR Proxy) -> WiFi (w/dns&dhcp)

3. Access Point #1

  -- Ethernet -> Bridge (w/wo Wireshark) -> WiFi (wo/dns&dhcp)

4. Router #3

  -- WiFi -> WiFi -> Firewall (w/wo TOR Proxy) -> Ethernet (w/dns&dhcp)

5. Router #4 (wireless hotspot)

  -- WiFi -> WiFi -> Firewall (w/wo TOR Proxy) -> WiFi (w/dns&dhcp)

6. Access Point #2 (Repeater)

  -- WiFi -> WiFi -> Bridge (w/wo Wireshark) -> WiFi (wo/dns&dhcp)

7. Client Bridge #1

  -- WiFi -> WiFi -> Bridge (w/wo Wireshark) -> Ethernet (wo/dns&dhcp)

8. Client Bridge #2 (Wireshark Passthrough)

  -- Ethernet -> Bridge (w/Wireshark) -> Ethernet (wo/dns&dhcp)

I think that I will work this up both on a Raspberry Pi and on a VM to run on my work laptop.  The front connections for WiFi (#4, 5, 6, and 7) should allow for capture pages (e.g., Panera).  The back connections for WiFi (#2 and 5) should allow for WPA/WPA2 and a known SSID.

Changing up the netwok for security

Well, after taking a CEH course at night, I have decided that I need to figure out a mechanism to protect my network from intruders.  This is more of  an exercise for me to apply some of the things that I have learned in the class.  I have a number of different VLANs in the house, some pretty benign and some not so much (like access to TOR, etc.).  Any one of these could lead to compromises in the network so I would like to re-evaluate what I am doing and make changes as necessary.  I will be taking the CEH cert test in the next couple of weeks and that will free up time for me to become more involved in this process.

One specific thing that I would like to try is separation of connections from known or unknown entities to a special VLAN for that purpose.  I want to separate out all of the internal networks from being compromised.  In addition, I would like to put up an intrusion detection system for the existing networks and go about looking for unusual traffic patterns.  Of course, one of the quirks about my setup is that I have everything going through an ActionTec router which can be almost a sieve without proper configuration.  Updates to the firmware do not appear to be forthcoming and Verizon is insistent on my spending another $100 to get their "improved" ActionTec router just so I can get gigabit Ethernet to my other router connections.

One of the first things that I think I will try is to make all of the connections from the ActionTec router to be on separate VLANs.  There really is no need for me to have everything on the same subnet and the router does have the ability to have completely separate VLANs from it.

Portable Pi Project - Part #2

Well work activities, dealing with CEH training and the cert test in two weeks, and other things has prevented me from really stepping up to the plate on the RPi Portable idea.  But to get back to the overall plan on this, I have looked at the power through the system.  The portable looks like the following (not updated from last time):

I have looked at the power lead outs and it looks like a DPDT toggle switch and one 14 position terminal block (I have a 12 position which will have to do) will be able to suit my needs to power everything from either the wall wart or via the battery which is encased with the RPi Portable.  The DPDT will be able to choose the 1.0 amp or 2.1 amp lines from either the wall wart or the battery, and if it has a center off, will be able to act as an on-off switch as well.  What I will need to do is cut up some perfectly good USB cables to make this work.  The cables will end up having a USB plug on one end, and pigtail leads at the other.  I just have to make sure that the data leads are not used in the setup.  So the power circuit should look like the following diagram:

Notice that I have pulled the power out to the board sides for the wall wart. I have also included a power out to the side for charging the battery.  In addition, I have added a board (breadboard) connection so that I can do experiments with this setup as well.  All of the internal connections, except for the DPDT switch can be done with cut USB cables.  It also only requires a 12 position terminal strip.  The high side (2.1 amp connection) goes to the hub and breadboard.  The low side (1.0 amp connection) goes to the RPi and LCD screen.  All grounds are tied together.  Black lines are ground and red lines are 5 volt power lines.