Automatic And Wireless Weather Monitoring Equipment
The weather patterns and climate conditions are one of the most important factors which affect the quality of life and the activity of the mankind. The current means of meteorological data collection make use of some very expensive weather stations, leading to a lack of comprehensive monitoring due to cost constraints and inconveniences in some countries. One of the prerequisite conditions for the accuracy of weather forecast is the acquisition of comprehensive meteorological data. If the data gathered of meteorological parameters is insufficient, the publicly available information about weather forecast would be inaccurate. A computer calculated model is used for the weather forecasts to predict the weather, by entering the meteorological data into it. They cover a big area by taking the data from several weather stations, installed at different places. The upper layers of the atmosphere are also measured for weather parameters by weather balloons. For making long time forecasts weather pictures from weather satellites are also used.
The most important use of the weather parameters is in weather forecasting. Beyond this, there is a great importance of weather data in agriculture. It is very necessary to know the past and current conditions on the fields, the weather patterns to plan the use of aerial spraying, fertilizer, watering or harvesting. In zoology also the population of insects and bigger animals is directly affected by the weather conditions, which makes this data necessary and useful for research and fight against the upcoming pests.
Today in hospitals, the weather conditions and parameters are being studied by the doctors to make the patients aware of the side-effects of weather and choosing the proper medications for the patients. Weather parameters are very useful for generating healthcare alerts and precautions. For example, high humidity may be dangerous to asthma patients while some people may experience difficulty in breathing too. It may lead the sufferers to hyperventilate & in response it may cause sensations of faintness, numbness, and loss of concentration etc.If we talk about wind data, it also has various applications other than forecasting. It may help in generating alerts such as high pollution, when the wind is coming from a direction where some industry is present, causing high pollution levels.
In this proposed work we have developed and tested a completely automatic and wireless weather monitoring equipment which measures the parameters of the weather by low cost digital sensors. The automated remote weather station uses a sensor network to measure different atmospheric parameters. A sensor network is a network of microcontroller integrated with spatially distributed smart devices and sensors. A sensor is used for monitoring a real world physical condition or variable such as light intensity, humidity and temperature. An automated remote weather station is used minimise human effort, and to enable measurement of weather parameters from remote areas that are not easily accessible to human beings. The disadvantage of the manual weather station is that it requires human effort, skills, power and energy to get its results.
This project will design and implement a GSM based remote weather station using an embedded system to monitor the weather parameters at a remote location through sensors. GSM technology is widespread cheapest wireless technology that is convenient to use since almost everyone owns a mobile phone. To check the status of the weather, the user will send a Short Message Service (SMS) text to the remote weather station and get a reply about the status of the weather conditions where the remote weather station is located. The wireless remote weather station will be designed using basic and cheap components such as GPRS/GSM shield.
Problem Statement
Traditional weather stations lack self-sustainability, autonomous logging capabilities and the ability to transmit data wirelessly. Furthermore, professional weather stations are too expensive for the average consumer and they have got a limited range of transmission. Although it is not possible to monitor the weather parameters of all the places as some places are not easily accessible, the advancement of science and technology can provide us a way to get information of such places by the use of wireless devices. With the use of GSM based remote weather station, we can monitor the weather conditions of desired remote places. The data from the remote location is made available to the user by sending an SMS text containing values of measured weather conditions, using the GSM network. At any time the user is able to send an SMS to the remote weather station and get a reply about the status of temperature, humidity and rainfall. The proposed system will use wireless communication technology to provide real time access to weather conditions at a remote place.
Literature review
The researcher carried out extensive literature review related to the design and implementation of a remote weather station in order to find out previous work carried out by other researchers. In previous studies most of the researchers have used both wired and wireless technologies to transmit measured weather parameters to a remote user. The system has, a microcontroller, Gas and humidity sensors. The microcontroller acquires the data from sensors and sends it to a computer through the Serial port. There are many systems for remote weather stations, designed as commercial products or experimental research platforms using various techniques. The techniques used in some of these researches were quite expensive and were not global. However my proposal is to design and implement a remote weather station using open source hardware and software. The system will use modern digital sensors which are more compact, robust and efficient. At the heart of the system will be an arduino microcontroller that will send the measured parameters to a GSM module which transmits the data wireless to the user. The advantage of using GSM technology is that it is widespread in worldwide. Using wireless technology also offers the ability to measure weather data during disasters when human beings cannot be physically there. The hardware and software components used in the design and implementation of this project will be discussed and show that they are a suitable choice to reach the objectives set for this project.
Weather monitoring by using simple instruments
For many years simple instruments and techniques have been used in order to measure weather changes. Basic weather measuring instruments like cup anemometer and wind vane had been used to measure wind speed and direction. These instruments are still widely used in most common weather monitoring technologies today. Barometers, thermometers, rain gauges and hygrometers, are the vital tools for weather monitoring, from which more advanced technologies used in weather monitoring are developed. A thermometer measures the air temperature. Most thermometers area unit closed glass tubes containing liquids equivalent to alcohol or mercury. Once air round the tube heats the liquid, the liquid expands and moves up the tube. A scale then shows what the particular temperature is.
A weather balloon could be a balloon that in meteorology is employed for transportation of instruments and radiosondes into the atmosphere. A typical weather balloon is usually made of rubber and encompasses a weight of solely concerning 200 grams. The skin of the weather balloon is extremely sensitive and delicate, in order that they should be touched only if carrying protecting gloves. Even lowest injury could end in progressively risk exploding at high altitude. The balloon is stuffed typically with atomic number 2 or chemical element. The probe is hooked up to the weather balloon at enough distance thus it won’t mess with the balloon flow. The weather balloon will reach heights of 20-30 metric linear unit before it bursts and therefore the probe returns with a parachute to the bottom.
A measuring system is associate instrument wont to live ratio. Humidness is that the live of the quantity of wet within the air. A hygrometer is associate example of a measuring system. A hygrometer uses 2 thermometers to live relative humidity; one measures the dry-bulb temperature and also the different measures the wet-bulb temperature. The thermometer contains water within the base that evaporates and absorbs heat that decreases the temperature reading. To see the ratio, the temperatures square measure taken from the thermometer and also the temperature distinction between the wet and dry bulb thermometers. From these measurements, a table is employed to seek out the ratio at an explicit location.
A rain gage is an instrument accustomed live the number of liquid precipitation over an exact length of your time. In its simplest sense, a rain gage is nothing quite a will that collects water that falls from the sky as rain. The depth of the rain will be measured with a ruler. Within the us precipitation is sometimes measured and reported in hundredths of inches[image: ]However measuring weather data using this traditional way has the disadvantage that the system requires constant intervention of the human being to record the data manually. Furthermore it is difficult to monitor the weather station remotely as it cannot be easily integrated with modern technologies.
Automatic weather station (AWS)
Automatic weather station (AWS) is a system that enables the collection of meteorological observations automatically. An AWS comprises a number of sensors, a data logger (housed in a waterproof enclosure) and a power supply. Typically, an AWS has got sensors that measure various weather parameters like rainfall, atmospheric temperature, wind speed, humidity, pressure, and direction. The advantage of AWS over a traditional manual weather station is that it is far less labour-intensive. Provided an AWS is regularly checked to ensure that it is functioning properly, it does not need to be physically attended so that results can be manually recorded. Professional AWS such as the one depicted in the fig below are available online.However, the capital-intensive nature of AWS often means that it is too expensive to set up a large number of stations. Consequently, data-hungry forecasting models, which operate best when fed with a vast quantity of observations from a very dense network of AWS, cannot operate to their full capacity. In addition professional AWS are not available on the local market.
Digital weather station
This journal proposed to build a weather station with a digital display. This weather station is powered by a power supply. The analog signal from sensors is converted to a digital signal. This weather station provides reading parameters for pressure, rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind direction and wind speed and could only display one parameter from the weather station at one time . The limitations of this system are that it cannot be monitored remotely and requires the physical presence of the human being to take readings. Moreover the system lacks autonomous data logging capability which is crucial for future weather forecasting and prediction.
Monitoring system of a weather station via IP
From this journal, a monitoring system for weather station was developed. They converted analog signal from sensor to digital signal to be read by computer via data acquisition card usb- 6009 and using LabView as application software to interface the data from weather station. This method is limited by availability of internet connection to access the remote weather station. This system cannot be used in rural areas since internet access is limited and some areas are not covered at all.
