Introduction: WAVEbuoy

By Gin and Tronic
About: Adventures in Creativity and Innovation, Design, Engineering, Making, Fixing, and Tinkering

The WAVEbuoy is a arduino lamp connected to the internet that displays the current wave height of any of the National Data Buoy Centre's wave buoys.

This lamp is currently connected to the Sevenstones Lightship buoy that gives an indication of swell approaching Cornwall in the UK. The lamp can also be connected to any surfing location covered by magicseaweed.com

RED - High surf alert

GREEN - Medium swell

BLUE - Low swell

Parts needed:

  • Arduino UNO & Ethernet shield
  • Light bulb like this one Link
  • 3 Colour RGB SMD LED Module Link
  • Breadboard
  • Jumper wires

The case....its up to you how you encase it. Im a carpenter by trade and i had the ability to use some scrap pieces of oak. You could house it in all sorts of ready made boxes or lamps. The white dome on top is a lightbulb that i have cut in half.


Step 1: Build the Circuit

Its a very simple circuit using 2 RGB modules and 3 resistors. Just follow the diagrams. If you need the fritzing file let me know.

I know i could improve this by using a PCB, but i just sawed off a small section of the breadboard and stuck it in the oak case.

Step 2: The Code

Here is the arduino code. Just change the link to your local buoy listed here on the Google map.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/

Not all of them have the 'Significant Wave Height' variable so check first.

With a slight edit you can also pull data from any location covered at magicseaweed by using the 'Swell' variable

http://magicseaweed.com/syndicate/rss/index.php?id...

Replace the id=1 in the link to your local spot the id can be found by visiting the spot on msw and looking in the link.

Let me know if you integrate this into anything interesting.

Thanks

Alec

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