Weather station (Underground) with Netduino

I am using a Netdunio-Plus board (Physically looks like Arduino but is using C# as programming language) to display current and forecast weather information on VGA screen. I pull the information from Weather Underground. I recently posted a similar project where an Arduino board was used to show forecast of the weather from Google Weather service. This project is fully automatic, no configuration required, and there several enhancements to the graphical display (and bug fixes). Video   http://youtu.be/Qusj9oBFwqw

The output is graphical with icons and some colorful text, and color coding depending on temperature ranges and time. It is one of those gadgets I wanted to have for some time now – A weather forecasting display that is there just like the wall clock. Yes I know you got nicer looking things on your angry-birds machine... I simply enjoy doing it myself.

Features

• Fully automatically identifies location in the globe
• Fully automatically determines daylight saving and local time
• Graphically displays current and forecast weather information
• Automatically synchronizes time and daylight savings from the internet (using NTP protocol)
• Shows:
  • Current weather temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed
  • Current weather barometric pressure
  • Weather condition text and icon
  • Today low and high temperatures
  • Moon phase for today
  • Sunrise and Sunset times for today
  • Forecast weather for next 3 days including:
    • High and low temperatures
    • Weather condition text and icon
    • Humidity
    • Wind direction and speed
• Does not require any PC to be involved, fully standalone
• Easy to connect and assembly, only Ethernet cable and power supply
• Supports DHCP for network connection
• Supports both VGA screens and small 3.2" screens

Some more features include change of background color between night (dark blue) and day (light blue) for the clock and change text background color of the weather data areas depending on temperatures (hot in orange, normal in light blue and cold in dark blue). Night and day times automatically detected by the internet service of Weather Underground (sunrise and sunset).

I went on doing this revision because the previous version required setting up the city in which you live during compile time, and setting the daylight saving manually. Here it is all automatic.

Compared to Google Weather Screen additional features:

1. Current weather information includes barometric pressure
2. Forecast weather includes humidity information too for each day
3. Sunrise time and sunset times are available for today
4. Moon phase information is available for today
5. Substantially more icons on the screen and improved visibility of existing information
6. Support for automatic DST, location and time zone information
7. Indicators for communication between screen and host board is displayed

However, this unit does not have indoor temperature and humidity sensor support.

Step 1: What is required to build this gadget?

1. Netduino Plus board (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10186 ) ~$ 60
2. 4D Systems display (uLCD-32PT) http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10089  or display adaptor (uVGA II) http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10329 ~ $ 55 for VGA
3. An old VGA screen (if you are doing the assembly with uVGA card)
4. 5x Jumper wires (only 3 required for operation, 5 while burning program), note the display and display adaptor have male pins and Netduino comes with female headers, so you will need a jumper wire that is male connector on one end and female connector on the other end, like http://www.ebay.com/itm/Arduino-Solderless-Dupont-Jumper-Wire-AWG-24-Male-Female-Protyping-QTY30-/251028328487?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a72745027#ht_1797wt_1393
5. 2GB or less micro-SD (only needs about 150KB, so if you have one from old phone, it can be used)
6. Power Supply (7.5V or 9V)
7. Ethernet Cable
8. Enclosure of your choice

Also for building the gadget, you will need the following

1. FTDI board, better use 5Volts one like this one.
2. PC for programming
3. A micro-SD reader device

Comments

[kd8bxp]

Love it, and you are right, a small monitor would be more acceptable to the wife, and the display looks better then just a moving message about the WX...So I will have to add it to the long list of projects (LOL) - I'm kind of stuff in building robot mode right now, but I bounce around from project to project. Your right about the call sign, I am a Ham. Thanks for pointing me to this project.

[seulater]

First, thanks so much for sharing this. In your notes you say this:

The guys in Weather Underground actually enforce the limits which is 500 calls daily or 10 a minute. So this is why I am not sharing my key with them and also you should avoid doing that. I included their logo and stuff as their terms of conditions require.

When i look at Weather Underground's API request it says i need a key. so i am kinda confused about what you mentioned and what they are saying.

[zmashiah]

You need to register YOURSELF with Weather-Underground (WU) directly. I can't share my key with you or others as it will cause the service counters to go over the limit of 500 calls a day which is what they give for free.

Once you register, they will send you key which you need to place into the code at the right place.

The above is actually the drill with the other services this code relies on. You need to register with askGeo and with GeoBytes.

[seulater]

Thanks i did register with them, and got my key. What had me confused is that you mentioned "this is why I am not sharing my key with them and also you should avoid doing that" this does not make sense to me.

[zmashiah]

Thanks for the feedback and I fixed the text above based on it. Sorry for the trouble.

[millerboy220]

I am upset, I had this working yesterday, but trying to be cool and update the firmware to Netduino, not really knowing what I was doing, now the code will not work...maybe I should check with you as to what version firmware I should use, whatever it was shipped with the device I suppose...would this be a problem? thanks.

[zmashiah]

I assume you mean which .NET MF, then it is 4.1

This is not a problem, only few manual steps... and you are NOT the only person who did that mistake... yours truly as well.

To revert back to 4.1 you need to follow few steps, see:
http://forums.netduino.com/index.php?/topic/3914-moving-to-sdk-42-question/page__p__26729__fromsearch__1#entry26729

The cause of the problem is that this program is taking all memory available (code space) of the N+ and the .NETMF 4.2 leaves only 48K instead of ~60K with 4.1

[millerboy220]

awesome, thanks for the info, makes sense...