OpenWP is an IoT personal weather station with an entirely new concept in measuring Wind dynamics (ie. the Anemometer). OpenWP is based on the ESP32 microcontroller & two sensor modules mounted inside a 3D printed, specifically designed pendulum style enclosure as shown above. It is cheap (about $50 cdn) & relatively easy to build. The Anemometer, is simply a free swinging ‘Probe’ (pendulum) containing an IMU (movement) sensor in the center of the ball, which is the only moving part. Wind Speed & Direction are determined by calculating the vector forces on the ball, which is then translated into wind speed and direction. For general users, there is a built in SVG based web display, which can be viewed by any browser device within your local network. It also has a very strong Amateur Radio component, with the ability to send weather & telemetry data to the APRS-IS network. Note that the UHF folded Dipole above the weather head is NOT part of the OpenWP station.
In the microcontroller world, this device is known as an IoT (Internet of Things), which basically is any controller project that connects to the internet for interaction with the user. There is no ‘Logging’ by the OpenWP other than a 24 hour barometer graph & the past 60 minutes of blue “Wind Streaks”. Licensed Amateur Radio operators can log their stations data for up to a year by enabling and configuring the built in APRS-IS option.
The station pictured above, VO2WL-15, is the second operating OpenWP station, after my own personal station, which has been the test prototype for the past 6 months & survived a Labrador winter remarkably well. The VO2WL-15 APRS weather page can be seen HERE or the Built-in web page, served directly to you from the ESP32 on the tower, can be seen HERE. As a comparison, HERE is the official ~hourly Environment Canada weather readings from our local airport, a little over 2km away. The internal web page updates once per minute whereas APRS is only updated every 10 minutes.
The station also sends some Telemetry to the APRS-IS network which contains other weather parameters not available on the weather page. Windchill & Humidex are the top two graphs, then battery & buss voltages graphs, which can be very informative on solar powered battery stations. VO2WL telemetry page can be seen HERE.
For anyone wishing to build their own OpenWP, I would put the project level around Intermediate. The entire unit contains only four (4) active electronic components, nine (9) 3D printed parts, one (1) piece of carbon fiber, a few fasteners, and 15 wires (9 if you don’t install voltage dividers) to solder. The image below is all the parts laid out that were used to build the VO2WL-15 station. There some minor changes made to a couple of the 3D parts since this photo was taken. Parts #1-9 are the 3D printed parts, #10-16 electronic components, #17 is a Carbon Fiber tube & All the respective mounting hardware.
This project is still very much under development so 3D print files, parts lists, documents & code are not ready for public distribution yet, but should be within the coming months.
If you are intrigued by this project and would like to help out, or know someone else who may be, please reach out. No need to be a licensed Ham Radio operator. This project is meant for anyone who wants to monitor the local weather, can do basic circuit layout/soldering and has access to a 3D printer. Our local ‘Maker Space’ will be involved in the project once they open their doors, and they have some very nice 3D printers, available for public use at our local Library.
Despite what some may believe, I am just a maker, not a coder, and fumble my way through code until it works. As of this writing, the code… ‘does work’… but is very inefficient, especially in memory management, and in desperate need of a set of well trained eyes. If you are familiar and feel comfortable using the Arduino IDE environment and the ESP32 controller, any assistance would be incredibly valuable in getting this project out there much faster.
A developers package is being put together to distribute to anyone wishing to help out. Once that is finished, any further project development will be on pause while I take a Siesta for a month or two 🙂
Many thanks to Hams of Western Labrador (HoWL) for providing this venue for me to introduce the OpenWP project.
Regards & 73
Glen
de VO2GO