Weather Station Project #10 - Starting Extra Sensors

Ok, now that the Vantage Vue is putting out good data, the next portion of the project is to set up the next three sensors.  The three sensors will be Solar Radiation, UV Index, and Pollen Count.  I'm thinking the following:

(1) Processor Setup

• Use Arduino Mega to interface to the sensors (more IO lines, a little more capable system than the Uno)
• Use Prototyping board on top of Mega for interface to the sensors

(2) Solar Radiation

• Solar Radiation sensor based on use of TSL2561 Lux Sensor from Adafruit (TSL2561)
• Solar Radiation sensor will need to be put behind a white painted glass surface
• Solar Radiation sensor uses I2C bus, read by Mega

(3) UV Index

• UV Index sensor based on use of SI1145 UV Sensor from Adafruit (SI1145)
• UV Index sensor will need to be put behind a clear glass pane, plastic pane will inhibit the UV from passing to the sensor
• UV Index sensor uses I2C bus, read by Mega

(4) Pollen Count

• Pollen Count sensor based on use of SCM GP2Y1010AU0 bought from Happy Store (B00GET4KR0)
• Pollen Count sensor actually counts density of particles greater than 2.5 um
• Pollen Count sensor puts out a voltage which will need to be read by Mega

(5) Connection to Weather Station RPi

• Connection to Weather Station RPi  done through an Addicore nRF24L01 2.4GHz wireless transceiver (B00E594ZX0), one on the Mega and one on the Weather Station RPi
• Will require python script on Weather Station RPi to read values from Addicore transceiver
• Will require code on Mega to transmit all three values at a regular interval

(6) Housing for Sensors

• Housing for Sensors should be based off of Solar Radiation shield (Radiation-Shielding-7714)
• Power comes up through the bottom of the shield
• Need two holes cut into the top; one for white painted glass for solar radiation and one for glass for UV index

Weather Station Project #9 - Building a Weather and General Info Display

I thought  that I might take some time and figure out a weather display for my PWS.  I am intending on using another RPi, different from the one running the PWS to do the interface to an old monitor that I have lying around.  I intend on have some sort of touch pad and people sensor attached to the RPi and mounted on the top of the monitor; also holding the RPi on the back of the monitor.  The idea is to be able to change what is being displayed, or send it into a rotation mode, by tapping on the touch pads, and have an IR sensor determine when someone walks into the room.  So the requirements look like the following:

(1) Raspberry Pi displaying output from the PWS / Weather Underground / Google Calendar / NOAA radar map / ABC News feed / Fox News feed, etc.

(2) a touch pad connected to the Raspberry Pi which is able to sense a touch and cause the display to change to the desired feed, or conversely to change to an auto rotating display.  The touch pad should also be able to turn the display off (sleep mode).

(3) an IR sensor connected to the Raspberry Pi which will detect when someone enters the room and turn the display on (from sleep mode), it should be able to be set to go into sleep mode automatically after a certain amount of time in which there is no movement in the room.

(4) the Raspberry Pi should be able to be connected to the wi-fi system via a usb adapter and have only a power connection to get it running.

Update: this is a shot of a Raspberry Pi B+, in a case, attached to the back of a Acer touch screen monitor via a little lexan Vesa mount that I picked up at Micro Center for cheap.  I am in the process of setting it up to do the afore mentioned items.  I just picked up the Acer Touch Screen Monitor from Micro Center for about $250.  It's a 21.5 inch screen area with two HDMI ports.  It has it's issues, and no I haven't tried out the touch screen interface on the RPi yet, but seems to be near enough to what I want to use.  Also, it doubles as the display for my Mac Mini.  I got it for a potential portable Weather Display.  BTW, the long adapter is for a Logitech keyboard; small adapter plus an extension.

Multiple Embedded Computer Connections

So now that I have the ability to connect multiple RPis to my network in a separate VLAN, I am trying to figure out how to provide screen images and keyboard/mouse connections to them and also to connect other devices in my network.  There are a number of issues that I am trying to resolve at this point.

1. I have an almost full managed switch all to myself after moving the Mac Mini to a different managed switch.  I need to make use of this "tail end" switch to the max.
2. I have 5 different Raspberry Pis that I will need to connect to at any one time plus a number of other devices, including media equipment.  This provides a power and networking issue that needs to be resolved.

Setting up Shorewall and VLANs on the 1-Port Router

In putting together a 1-Port router, it seems that I have kind of lost a purpose here.  What I would like to do is have the router allow just the Mac Mini to access 3 other VLANs than what it is connected to.  In addition, I don't want anything from the Pers VLAN with the exception of the Mac Mini to be able to connect to these three VLANs.  I don't want any cross-talk between the VLANs.  The diagram of what I want to do is shown below.



 In order to accomplish this task I am turning to an old friend in the firewall world, Shorewall (http://www.shorewall.net/).  So I want to load Shorewall onto my 1-port router, add the additional VLANs, and add Webmin to manage the Shorewall setup and other things on this platform.  Installing Shorewall and Webmin is pretty easy:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shorewall
sudo apt-get install -y perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions python
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.690_all.deb
sudo dpkg --install webmin_1.690_all.deb