03 October 2020 - 09 October 2020

Got Buildroot running on Raspberry Pi Zero W. It's a continuing mystery why the MAC address changed a couple of times; setting the MAC explicitly appears to stop it from changing.

See

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/68513/pi-using-a-random-mac-address-after-every-reboot-how-do-i-stop-this-behavior

Interfacing the sensors to the RPI0W is going to require another board because the particle sensor needs a UART and I don't want to use a soft UART or the console UART for it, and the anenometer needs an A/D.

I'd love to write the whole weather-station suite, but I'll probably just get WeeWX running instead which is what I use for my Alum Rock weather station.

I was originally going to use the Adafruit ESP8266 board, but it stopped working on RIOT OS because of https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/issues/15137

The search continues for a small 802.11 interface with no binary blobs.

Sensors are being brought up on a Nucleo-F303RE using RIOT OS.

This will probably change to something Arduino-like for RPI0W interfacing via SPI.

Apparently the VEML6075 is no longer in production. An outstanding question is how to protect the sensor from the elements. My original plan was to break apart some old UV-erasble EPROMS for the quartz windows, but an app-note for Si1133 UV sensor ("Not recommended for new designs" but don't know what the replacement is) uses Teflon FEP films. Looking at Teflon datasheets does appear to show that some Teflon films are reasonably transparent to UV. The question here is how to avoid spending $50 for a square inch of cover.

Planning to hang the sensors off the DS-15901 mast, using something that looks like a circular Stevenson screen. There's a name for it that I can't find right now. Started outlining the design using swocer.

Trish suggested using the roof corner off the quilt room as there's an electrical outlet below the corner. I can use some 1/2 EMT to attach the mast to the eaves. Did a 24hr test communications run with the RPI0W outside. Link not terrible.