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This mobile weather station, based on Particle's new Monitor One kit, transmits
live weather/location information over LTE.

Read up about this project on

MOBILE WEATHER STATION USING PARTICLE'S MONITOR ONE KIT


Evan Rust
11 1,495




 * Overview
 * Things
 * Story
    * Monitoring the weather
    * What's in the Monitor One
    * Setting it up
    * Adding environmental sensors
    * Power considerations
    * The code
    * Collecting data
    * Going further

 * Code
 * Credits
 * Comments(0)

11

Evan Rust
Published November 22, 2023 © GPL3+


MOBILE WEATHER STATION USING PARTICLE'S MONITOR ONE KIT

This mobile weather station, based on Particle's new Monitor One kit, transmits
live weather/location information over LTE.

IntermediateFull instructions provided3 hours1,666


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THINGS USED IN THIS PROJECT


HARDWARE COMPONENTS

Particle Monitor One

×1


DFRobot Gravity: I2C BME680 Environmental Sensor

×1


Adafruit ADT7410

×1


SOFTWARE APPS AND ONLINE SERVICES

Particle Workbench


HAND TOOLS AND FABRICATION MACHINES

Soldering iron (generic)




STORY



MONITORING THE WEATHER

When it comes to gathering datasets over large spans of time, having hardware
that maintains energy efficiency, connectivity, and the ability to stay in a
known, working state is vital. This project explores how Particle's newly
released Monitor One IoT platform can be harnessed to gather weather data from
nearly anywhere- complete with GNSS and cellular connectivity.







WHAT'S IN THE MONITOR ONE?

The Monitor One is meant to act as a rugged, customizable IoT gateway that can
record information, track assets, and interact with other devices. In addition
to cellular connectivity and GNSS location services, the kit supports Bluetooth
Low-Energy, has an ESP32 for Wi-Fi geolocation, contains two built-in sensors
(IMU and temperature), a built-in rechargeable battery, and a plethora of serial
bus options. Its nRF52840 SoC, similar to other Particle devices, allows for
DeviceOS-based programs to be flashed over-the-air using the Particle Cloud.
Lastly, the Monitor One has a set of pin headers which accept expansion boards
that allow for other modules/hardware to be added and access the outer
connectors.

1 / 2




SETTING IT UP

After receiving a Monitor One Developer Edition kit, I connected the included
24V 2A power supply to the M12 8-pin cable and then threaded it into the
appropriate port. With the device now powered on, I went to setup.particle.io
and followed the on-screen directions to configure/activate it.



Heading to the associated product's map page gives the real-time location of the
device as well as the ability to change fleet-wide settings. Because this is
going to be flashed with custom firmware, I first had to mark it as a
development device in the console so that the stock firmware does not overwrite
the custom one. Having done that, the next step was to clone the latest Monitor
Edge firmware from its GitHub repository which contains the Edge library and all
other required libraries for working with the hardware. Once opened in VS Code
and after configuring the project to use deviceOS 4.2.0 and the correct device,
development of the custom firmware could start.



ADDING ENVIRONMENTAL SENSORS

I decided to use the common Bosch BME680 environment click board from MikroE due
to its ability to measure temperature, relative humidity, pressure, and volatile
organic compound concentrations via a gas sensor- all over the I2C bus. I also
included an Adafruit ADT7410 high-accuracy temperature sensor for future use if
increased accuracy and resolution (0.0078°C!) are required.

BME680


To attach them to the Monitor One, I soldered headers to one of the provided
Basic Prototype Expansion Cards and connected the 3.3V, GND, and I2C pins to
each module. The Monitor One is able to differentiate between expansion card
SKUs thanks to each one having an EEPROM chip with factory-set configuration
data.

1 / 5




POWER CONSIDERATIONS

As with other radios, facilitating wireless communication, especially with a
cell tower that might be kilometers away, uses a lot of power. The main
technique to reduce this high consumption typically involves a sleep > wake >
transmit > sleep cycle, and the Particle Console provides an easy way to control
how this occurs through setting configuration values according to the device's
schema. I set mine to publish the location at minimum every 300 seconds and at a
maximum delay of 600 seconds between publishes. When combined with enabling
sleep mode, the Monitor One will automatically go to sleep in between in order
to preserve battery.

1 / 2 • Location




THE CODE

Particle Device OS programs are largely based on Arduino-style
conventions/classes, meaning that they contain the typical setup/loop functions,
Wire for I2C communication, and Serial for USB IO. In this case, setup calls the
init method for the Edge instance which starts all of the built-in subsystems
and registers a location callback function. Once started, the BME680 is
initialized and configured to oversample temperature, humidity, and pressure as
well as set the gas sensor's filter.





The loop function only has a single line to call the Edge instance's loop
method. It is responsible for checking onboard modules, performing periodic
tasks, and handling communication with the Particle Cloud. Based on the location
settings, the location callback will be called automatically wherein it reads
the latest data from the BME680 and places it into a JSON object named
"weather". Then when the loc event is set to the Particle Cloud, "weather" is
nested inside the "loc" object.







COLLECTING DATA

Seeing the events appear in the Particle Console was great, but I also wanted a
way to store historical data for future analysis.



To do this, I followed Particle's IFTTT integration instructions in order to
make the Particle Cloud send a POST webhook on each loc event publish and store
the data in Google Sheets. After letting it run for a while, I had dozens of
rows with time, location, and weather information.

1 / 2






GOING FURTHER

The Monitor One is a great choice whenever a combination of connectivity,
location tracking, and resiliency are required. Since its power management
system supports charging from 6V all the way to 30V inputs, adding a solar panel
would be a great way to provide indefinite battery life, and other integrations
could be added in the future for improved data analysis. To get started with the
Developer Edition kit, you can view its quickstart guide here on Particle's
website.

Read more



CODE


REPOSITORY






CREDITS


EVAN RUST

115 projects • 1019 followers
IoT, web, and embedded systems enthusiast. Contact me for product reviews or
custom project requests.
Follow ContactContact



COMMENTS

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