News — wifi

I have built an environmental monitoring unit for my workshop. This measures: Air Temperature, Humidity & Pressure PM2.5 and PM10 Particulate values Radiation levels It shows the data on a small OLED screen. There is a large LED RGB display which changes colour if data goes above warning levels. This unit sends data to AdafruitIO via MQTT messages. This is all based on the 'Cheeseboard', which is an ESP8266 development board, based upon the NodeMCU. Pretty pleased with the end result. You can view my data here on Adafruit IO dashboard. (Please note: there are a few blips in the data...

This post covers adding a radiation sensor (Geiger counter) to my environmental monitoring system.   A while ago I had purchased a NETIO  GC10 v2.4 Geiger Counter. This measures Beta and Gamma radiation and has a serial output, at 9600 baud. The unit was designed in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster as a low cost way for monitoring radiation levels. Some more links to this unit are here: Manual for GC10 NetIO Unit (assembly in English) NetIO Shop (currently sold out!) GC10 (aka 'Kinoko Geiger') users group (mainly Japanese) Review of the unit (youTube) I wanted to include this sensor...

I've been interested in environmental sensing for a long time - mainly for monitoring renewable energy sources. I've been collecting interesting sensors for a while and one of those was a "Nova PM Sensor SDS011 High Precision Laser PM2.5 Air Quality Detection Sensor" (mine came from Bang Good, but available in lots of places). This is quite a large sensor with a fan to control air flow over a laser detection sensor. The datasheet is available here.     The data is obtainable via a digital output (pulses when particles are detected) or via a serial connection (at a default of...

Setting yourself a small challenge in the form of an interesting project is a great way of learning - even if it involves a fair bit of failing! I set myself a weekend challenge of using our CheeseBoard ESP8266 development board to obtain and display some data from a website using a wifi connection. My original challenge was to show real time data about the electricity supply mix within the UK. As I looked into this problem I realised that it was far too complex for me to start with. So I reduced the challenge to display some data from...