Senior Member
Joined: 11/09/2011
Location: AustraliaPosts: 275
| Posted: 02:58am 08 Mar 2012 |
I am interested in this topic and while i have not applied a Maximite directly to the task as weather station controller (I have used Picaxe) I am currently coding a Maximite as a base station to receive data from the weather station as well as other data providers around the house i.e. Electricity Smart meter monitor and Brewing controller (which I believe may also have been mentioned in a recent post).
All of these devices are sending the data via RF modules (I am using Xbee) which is currently being collected by a Windows XP laptop running a VB6 application which includes a built in HTTP server. The Maximite project will probably not replace the windows application ( as is will not have the advantage of HTTP server for one thing) however it will be able to provide a more portable data display (3.5 " LCD) around the house, of electricity use, outside temperature and importantly that the "brew" temperature is staying constant.
My interest initially was to develop a reliable RF data network for use on the picaxe that allowed data collection and also commands to be sent to picaxe controllers for various tasks but of course there is no reason that the maximite cannot be used at both ends , providing very powerful controllers indeed.
The Weather data currently being collected by the picaxe controller is just temperature. The reason for this was that I already have a weather station (Jaycar XE0348) but I found that the temperature was not totally accurate beyond ~23 degrees C and I needed to provide a more stable temperature measurement. The picaxe controller also has a solar PV capability to provide power for the whole installation.
For anyone interested , updates will be on my website soon.
Mike