Addition of wind and direction sensor to RPi Pico weather station

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Hi team

I would like to add a wind and direction sensor to this project. Any suggestions regarding the choice of device and connecting to the Pico.

Also has anyone been able to get LoRaWAN and Lora P2P working on the same device at the same time i.e. join TTN (class A or C) and uplink at set intervals as well as send and receive payloads P2P to other devices?

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You may consider wind vanes. Here is a good content about how to use these with a full fledged Raspberry Pi. You can do the same with pico also:

https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/build-your-own-weather-station/7

You can also consider making a PCB for your weather station like this one:

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Hi Clint,

Unfortunately there arent any devices with ready to go libraries for the Pico and allow for other modules to be stacked on top.
A module like this could work but will definitely require the library to be ported: Weather Station with Anemometer/Wind Vane/Rain Bucket | DFRobot SEN0186 | Core Electronics Australia

The E5 Chip onboard won’t allow for test mode and LoRaWAN mode to be run at the same time, What is your use case for wanting to operate in both modes at the same time?

Liam

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Thanks for that. I’ll take a look.

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Hi Liam

We have LoRaWAN (Seeeduino) devices at each end of a flying fox which has a 400m span.
We are sending LoRa P2P messages between the devices to turn lights from red to green etc when it is clear to dispatch riders. We can swap out these devices if necessary as requirements evolve e.g. to Raspberry Pi etc. It would be good if one of the devices could also be connected to TTN via LoRaWAN to uplink data for logging purposes etc. We are currently doing this by switching from LoRa P2P mode to LoRaWAN mode at the end of the day to uplink the logs and then switching back to P2P. This is a bit clunky and it would be good to operate in both modes at the same time but this may not be possible. We also want to capture wind speed and direction in real time and display locally via a local WiFi webserver running on one of the devices to an iPad or equivalent.

Thanks Clint

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There is another way to measure wind speed that might suit someone good at the data integration:

A cluster of dev boards such as BME680, an IMU and this would do the trick. I’d also 3D print a cock to mount it on.

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Hi Clint
I have just had a bit of a read of this thread and I noticed.

Do you have human passengers on this flying fox ???

If so are you sure you are using kosher equipment here. I get the impression that the RPi series of devices and all the little add ons along with their libraries are targeted at the hobby and educational type market.

Personally if I had any inkling that my personal safety and well being was dependent on any of this category of gear You would not get me within miles of it. You only have to look through this forum to see lots of problems like flashing this and flashing that multiple times and eureka!!! it now works. Also things like It has been working for days and suddenly stopped, reloaded the operation system and all OK. And so on.

While all this stuff has a HUGE following and is very good value and seemingly lots of fun and good at doing what it is intended for I don’t think human safety comes into that category.

This is not a put down of your project but a suggestion to be very careful. If perchance someone gets injured the first thing that will get closely scrutinised will be any safety arrangements. If found lacking, especially due to the use of non approved equipment there is likely to be lots and lots of trouble for the operators, Namely I assume You.

I would have a think about what role this category of device has in the overall operation and take adequate precautions.
Cheers Bob

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Thanks Bob and good advice. In this case, the system we are developing is only for informational and logging purposes and not for the primary operations.
You also raise a good point regarding the devices and libraries etc. My understanding is that RPis etc are used in many industrial use cases so they do have a role to play but your point is valid regarding the libraries.
Cheers
Clint

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Hi Clint
All OK. Just thought I would bring up those concerns but it looks like you have that in hand.

Sorry I can’t help with the rest as I have about zero experience with RPi.
Cheers Bob