Weather Station with SenseCAP ONE S700 & Raspberry Pi

In this article, we will show you how you can create your very own weather station with the SenseCAP ONE S700 and a Raspberry Pi! With minimal setup and easy-to-use code, this is a great tutorial for beginners who want to get going in no time.

Why a Weather Station?

When we think about weather data, it’s a given to recognise its importance in aviation, maritime and construction industries, as well as in predicting extreme climate. To the average individual, however, such information may only be relevant when we need to decide whether to bring an umbrella as we leave our homes.

What if I told you that, thanks to new applications, the potential that weather data holds and its relevance will only become greater?

In the clothing industry, about 35% of annual loss in revenue is caused by inaccurate sales forecasts and statistics on the relationship between apparel sales and factors such as time, seasonal and weather changes, holidays, etc.

To mitigate this, how about using accurate weather forecasting data to plan the allocation of inventory to a given area? For example, we can estimate how the demand for down jackets will rise or fall given future changes in the weather.

In fact, many countries are already using meteorological data to drive business decisions. In Germany, the Beer Index states that beer sales will skyrocket when temperatures exceed 22^OC. And for every further 1 degree rise in temperature, 2.3 million more bottles of beer are sold per day. Absolutely brilliant!

In addition to the Beer Index, there is also a car index, ice cream index, swimsuit index, food mold index and more, according to which businesses can develop production and marketing plans in advance. As you can see, the commercialization of meteorological data has a lot of room for imagination.

Today, data on localised weather, known as microclimates, is the new frontier for more precise and accurate weather forecasting. As a result, the collection of weather data is becoming increasingly smaller and gridded. In light of this, weather stations, which are the most convenient means of collecting weather data, are seeing a rise in demand. In today’s demo, we’ll show you how you can have your very own weather station up and running in just a few steps using the SenseCAP ONE S700 and Raspberry Pi.

Required Materials

To follow along with this tutorial, the following materials are recommended. You can also use an older Raspberry Pi 3 if you have one lying around, but the Pi 4 will give you much more power and versatility if you would also like to use it for other projects.

• Raspberry Pi 4 8GB x1
• RS-485 Shield for Raspberry HAT x1
• SenseCAP ONE S700 x1

Hardware Setup

First, assemble the Seeed RS-485 Shield onto the Raspberry Pi, taking care to align them with Pins 1 to 25 on the Raspberry Pi as shown in the figure below.

Then, connect the SenseCAP ONE S700 to the RS-485 Shield with the RS-485 Connection. That’s it!

Software Setup

Step 1: Configure SenseCAP ONE S700

We will first have to set up the protocol on the SenseCAP ONE S700. First download and install the latest SenseCAP ONE Configuration Tool for your operating system here.

Once you have opened the configuration tool, connect your SenseCAP ONE to your PC via USB Type-C and select it under Serial Port. Then, click Connect.

Next, select Settings. Under Main Port Protocol, select RS-485 ASCII, like shown below. Then, select Write To Device.

Step 2: Configure Raspberry Pi

This tutorial assumes Raspberry Pi OS running on a Raspberry Pi that has internet connectivity set up. If you are new to the Raspberry Pi, you can learn how to get WiFi up and running here.

First, make sure that Node.JS v10.22.x is installed on your Raspberry Pi. Else, run the script below to install it.

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tj/n/master/bin/n -o n
bash n 10

The next step is to enable hardware serial on /dev/ttyS0. In your terminal window, run the Raspi Config tool with:

sudo raspi-config

Navigate to Interface Options and enable Serial. Now, reboot your Raspberry Pi to apply the changes.

Run the Weather Station

After the setup, it’s easy to get the weather station up and running. On your Raspberry Pi, execute the following commands to install and run the weather station server & website.

[email protected]:Seeed-Solution/SenseCAP-WeatherStation-Raspberry-Pi-Visualization.git
mv SenseCAP-WeatherStation-Raspberry-Pi-Visualization /opt/SenseCAP-WeatherStation-Raspberry-Pi-Visualization
cd /opt/SenseCAP-WeatherStation-Raspberry-Pi-Visualization

cd server && install --unsafe
cd website && install --unsafe

# pm2 start
npm install -g -y --unsafe pm2 http-server
pm2 start run-server.sh
pm2 start run-website.sh
pm2 save
pm2 ls

With your PC and Raspberry Pi under the same local area network, access the weather station data through the following URL in your browser.

http://{Raspberry Pi IP}:8080

If you are unsure of your Raspberry Pi’s IP address, you can run the command below and take note of the IP next to inet.

ifconfig wlan0

We’re Done!

Once you completed all the setup and visited the URL successfully, you should see the weather data being visualised in real time like shown below. SenseCAP ONE S700 is an all-in-one platform that not only allows us to get basic data like temperature and humidity, we can also view advanced information including wind direction and speed, air pressure, rainfall and even the amount of light.

With this, we not only have a fully functional weather station in a matter of minutes, we can also extend it to visualise data remotely. Alternatively, we can also store the weather data for powerful data analytics and forecasting.

Summary

We hope you have enjoyed the demonstration of how you can create a weather station in just a few steps with the Raspberry Pi and SenseCAP ONE S700! Although this project is simple, the possibilities it enables are only limited by your imagination. Now, how will you use your very own weather station?

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