PORTABLE WEATHER STATION BOARD

The environmental changes of today are no exception. Professional weather stations are rightfully used, but cannot be placed in every corner of the world. What if it was possible to make a low cost weather station, which almost everyone could afford? What if we together could help out with a piece of the puzzle, trying to solve problems ahead?

We have created a portable weather station that will measure and display weather parameters such as 
    •  Temperature 
    •  Humidity 
    •  Environment Air Quality 
    •  Light Brightness

It can be used in office environment and outdoor as well. The design uses Microchip eXtreme Low Power MCU PIC24FJ128GC010 which drives the measurement for all of the sensors. The sensor values undergo signal conditioning using microcontrollers integrated Op-Amps and analog to digital converters making the sensor reading suitable for digital processing. To allow user to control the board and select different operating modes capacitive buttons are implemented using CTMU peripheral. A segmented LCD display and USB are both output for the board. The board is powered by two AA batteries and also a coin cell connected to Vbat pin of the microcontroller for maintaining real time clock information even if the main battery is removed.
 
Besides displaying weather data on board, we can do meaningful use of data by sending data to cloud using computers. This demo also includes connectivity to computers using USB communications device class (or USB CDC), providing an interface for transmitting and receiving to other USB based systems. The demo is supported by Schematic, User guide and MCU firmware.

This level of integration is available on Microchip’s PIC24F ‘GC’ family, we call it intelligent analog and it improves system throughput, reduces noise, and reduces system cost by integrating several analog blocks. We also integrated user interface peripherals like USB, LCD to create a product that is perfect for portable medical and industrial sensors applications.

For questions related to this board please contact Microchip Support.