Weatherbot Software

This software was developed as part of a senior project for Cal Poly, sponsored by FarmBot. It is meant to be run on a Raspberry Pi Pico that manages a weather station.

It interfaces with all of the integrated sensors, collects data from them and organizes them into a JSON object. The Pico will also connect to the network the Ethernet cable, request an IP address, and then serve an HTTP server that will respond to GET requests with the JSON object containing the data.

Hardware

This software was built to integrate with multiple off the shelf sensors connected together. The sensors used include:

• Light Sensor - VEML7700
• Pressure Sensor - BMP384
• Temperature/Humidity Sensor - DHT20
• Rainfall/Wind speed/Wind direction - Sparkfun Kit

This integrates with a Raspberry Pi Pico with an integrated Wiznet Ethernet driver and port which can be found here as of June 2023.

Setting up a developer environment on your machine

Code development for this project is done using the Arduino CLI which can be installed to your local computer by following the instructions found here.

Installing necessary libraries and developer tools

The software uses a number of open source libraries in order to function. These all can be installed on Mac or Linux by running the included shell script auto_download_required.sh in your terminal:

cd weatherbot/
./auto_download_required.sh

Testing your setup

Compiling Code

At this point, code should be able to be compiled. The easiest way to compile code is to use the included compile.sh helper script:

cd weatherbot/
./compile.sh main/

It should have a lot of logs, and have no error message at the end of compilation. It should also create a new directory called build/ that contains a lot of build artifacts but also the built binary, main.ino.uf2.

Uploading Code

To upload code, you have to start with the Raspberry Pi Pico unplugged from your development machine. You will soon connect the Micro USB for data on the Pico to a USB port on your development machine. Hold down the BOOTSEL button, and with the button held, plug the Raspberry Pi Pico into your USB port. You can now release the BOOTSEL button. This boots the Pico into a state that allows it to be programmed.

Now, use the included helper script upload.sh to upload the compiled uf2 file to your Pico.

cd weatherbot
./upload.sh build/main.ino.uf2

This should take a small amount of time, and produce no errors. Once you regain control of your terminal, the process should be complete, and you should unplug and replug the Pico. This boots the Pico into a state where it should now be running the compiled code.

Setting up a developer environment on a Raspberry Pi 3

The full WeatherBot for the senior project included capabilities for Power over Ethernet, and had a dedicated Raspberry Pi 3 for networked communication. This Raspberry Pi 3 was meant to simulate a possible setup with a Raspberry Pi on the FarmBot. However, to allow for networked communication between the Pico and the Pi 3 and allow a developer environment, a complicated network setup was necessary for the Pi 3 that should NOT be necessary to work on a FarmBot.

Currently, a Raspberry Pi 3 developer environment for the Weatherbot involves turning the Pi 3 into a Wifi access point with ethernet communication. It cannot access the internet in this configuration, so it's necessary to download and install all necessary packages before setting it up. It's a complicated process, but there are bash scripts that automate most of it, and there is a separate README for this that can be found at pi3b-setup-guide.md. The relevant scripts that automate the installation process on the Pi 3 can be found at setup.sh and access-point-setup.sh.