I’ve been thinking of how useful a little computer on the balcony would be. Not for any kind of interactive use, but for data collection and light controls and other such things. I thought I’d make up a list of these “such things”, to see what it would take to make it a reality.
The original seed for the idea was a weather station, just to see how cold and windy-ish it was, as well as barometric pressure readings. Since it’s on a covered balcony, the wind readings will be interesting but probably quite local. I’m also not going to worry about precipitation measuring, nor wind-direction measuring at first. It shouldn’t get much rain, nor will the direction of the wind be generally useful most of the time I don’t think. I’m certainly prepared to be wrong on that, but that’s what the prior versions will be for.
Since the computer is out there, why not have it control some festive lights. Multicoloured LEDs, protected from the elements and relatively inconspicuous looking when turned off or in the daylight. Controllable with what ever kind of festive light display I’d like to show (flickering candles, icicle effect, multicoloured party brilliance…).
I also thought it would be interesting to have a small GPS receiver. This would give positional information as well as providing an accurate time source.
I’d also like to have a camera (preferably the RPi camera if using an RPi) mounted on a pan/tilt gimbal to take pictures/video of the neighbourhood, or maybe function security-camera style. With a microphone would also be very cool. Future upgrades that come to mind for the visual/auditory systems are stereo+ audio recording, video in infrared/ultraviolet/etc. spectrums * stereo+ video recording.
It all needs to be protected in an appropriate container or container(s) attached together, making sure the conditions are correct for accurate sensor readings (protect temp from wind/sun/etc for example).
I’m unsure currently how to collect the various informations in a computer-friendly way. It’s easy enough to set up a website I can ping every so often to check “current conditions” (temperature/motion on camera/etc). Time can be shared just by setting the system up as a GPS-backed time server. I could share the appropriate sensor readings with wunderground or some other such place as well, but it would be nice to keep some sort of local repository of all the various information(s) about my scattered systems. Maybe I’ll look more into hacking snmp.
Needed:
- SBC (Raspberry Pi probably)
- Balcony-safe power source
- Weather-safe container & mounting system
- Sensors:
- Temperature
- Barometer
- Wind speed
- GPS (including using the time)
- ‘security’ camera
- microphone
- “network” connection