Remote Solar-Powered Weather Station

With today’s readily available wireless tech, remote weather monitoring stations are well within the grasp of makerdom. Power, however, is something of a sticking point, and since “Open Green Energy” didn’t want to traipse out to his remote station over and over to keep it running, he implemented one that runs on solar power.

The heart of the device — which is actually version 2.0— is a Wemos D1 mini Pro board, along with sensors to measure temperature and pressure, plus humidity and UV index if desired. An external antenna is used to increase the wireless signal’s range, and the ESP8266-based board is put to sleep when not needed to conserve power.

With the unit’s location sunlight-wise taken into account, the panel was spec’d to run the system at a very conservative of one hour of sunlight per day. An 18650 battery supplies power to the board rain or shine, and in order for the 5V panel to charge it correctly, a TP4056 board was employed to output the proper battery charging voltage. Components are mounted in a professionally-made PCB, and everything is housed in a nice 3D-printed enclosure.

Especially after this revision, it looks like an excellent project to duplicate or build on. Check out the earlier, and physically quite similar, revision in the video below.