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General suggestions or questions about the SparkFun Electronics website
By UNTEngineer
#148933
You guys should stock some cable glands and an enclosure for your USB Weather Station board. That way we all can buy all our components without having to bounce around to too many stores. I suggest this enclosure.

Also you guys really should include a battery charging circuit into the Weather board to go with a Solar Panel. It would be massively convenient to have a single board with everything on it, rather than have to include a second charging board with the Weather board.

Finally, I strongly suggest selling a Weather Station Kit: the revised USB Weather board with the charge circuit, the Weather Station, all the headers, connectors and mounting hardware for that board, plus the enclosure & mounting hardware to the station, cable glands, a solar panel with its respective mounting hardware and either a Bluetooth or an XBee. Saves us a ton of trouble having to acquire all of that stuff just to setup a simple weather station.

Thanks! :D
By waltr
#149088
How would the humidity sensor work if the board is sealed inside the enclosure?
By UNTEngineer
#149098
waltr wrote:How would the humidity sensor work if the board is sealed inside the enclosure?
I thought of that myself. I figured I would need a humidity and a temperature sensor to monitor the "waterproofness" of the enclosure to make sure all the electronics are safe, and to make sure the battery isnt overheating (though, if you think about it, the enclosure wont be 100% sealed, it will still need cable glands to let the cables come through into the enclosure). An external Temp/humidty sensor would be required, similar to this one: http://www.campbellsci.com/hmp60-overview. The shield would be this one: http://www.ambientweather.com/amwesrpatean.html. I can imagine that a company like Sparkfun can acquire a cheaper version of the two of these for use with the Weather Station. (Also here is a weather station very similar to the one Sparkfun sells: http://www.amazon.com/ProWeatherStation ... m_sbs_hg_9. As you can see, that one has the external temperature/humidity sensor with radiation shield. :wink:

Generally, its not a good idea to expose any kind of humidity to an electronics board. Thats why you put it in an enclosure. The concept is good that Sparkfun included a temp/humidity sensor on the board, but its just not practical. I think the goal behind the Weather board was to make a cheap alternative Open Source Weather Station for the masses. I simply am putting the idea out there to make one more sensor that attaches to the mast, and plugs into the Weather board.