[ILUG] Remote weather station

[Tony Groves]

On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 18:44 +0100, Ronan Cunniffe wrote:
> Tony Groves wrote:
> > This is an interesting thread, since I have been half-thinking of
> > installing a weather station at a remote building I maintain in the
> > Wicklow mountains. There's no internet connection there, but there is a
> > mobile signal, so I suppose the solution would be to find some way to
> > attach a mobile phone to an on-site GNU/Linux machine, send the info by
> > SMS, and update the website from that. Must admit, I've done no serious
> > research yet, but since the topic has arisen, it would be nice to hear
> > if anybody has ideas about hardware/software for the communications end
> > of things.
> >   
>     I've built exactly this - a remote weatherstation/datalogger with 
> only GSM access.
> GPRS modems are not expensive - try Ebay.  Serial-to-USB converters are 
> also pretty cheap - you can even get 2-port and 4-port versions. 
> 
> EEEPCs or Dell Minis make great data loggers - the integrated keyboard 
> and screen are nice for debugging.  The only drawback is that laptops 
> tend not to have that nice BIOS option for when power is restored to 
> switch the computer On/Off/Last-State.  So for laptops, there's a 
> failure mode if a power-cut lasts long enough to exhaust the laptop battery.
> 
> Software: Basically smstools.  It runs as a daemon, and you can specify 
> a handler to be notified on every event, whitelist certain numbers, 
> etc.  However, if you want to ssh into the box, you'll have to shut down 
> smsd before starting pppd since both require exclusive access - you need 
> two operating modes and a reliable switch-over mechanism.  I have 
> scripts for doing this if anybody is interested.

Excellent, thanks a lot! I'll add this info to my project notes, and
might as well add a UPS to the hardware list.

To others out there, I didn't mean to hijack the thread, just to expand
it a bit.

Cheers.

Tony.