How's the Weather Up There?
Want to learn more about the weather than just whether or not the sun is out? The SparkFun micro:climate kit for micro:bit lets you measure, view and record the weather around you.
Springtime in the Rockies can bring with it some very interesting weather. So this week, I decided to grab our SparkFun micro:climate kit for micro:bit, put it all together and see exactly what was happening outside our windows here at SparkFun HQ. I've programmed it to record and broadcast temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and rainfall, although that last one takes a bit of patience. And while my desk is right on the edge of the micro:bit's Bluetooth radio range with the interference that the building creates, I can walk over to the breakroom and watch all the information scroll by perfectly on my second micro:bit. And by using the SparkFun OpenLog (included in the kit) to record all of the data to a file every sixty seconds, I can always go back and see what happened out there while I was locked inside our windowless studio.
If you haven't yet worked with the micro:bit, or if you want to start digging into block coding (with Microsoft MakeCode), MicroPython or even JavaScript, this kit will help you gain a mountain of working knowledge, with a very gentle learning curve.
Rob mentions programming this project in microPython, and I'd love to, but I can't seem to find that. Nor can I find anything about using the second micro:bit as a remote. Is it deeply hidden, or do I just need new glasses?
TBH, for this demo, I simply used the MakeCode Editor. However, MicroPython is pretty straightforward, and there's great documentation for its use on the micro:bit here [ https://microbit-micropython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ ].
To use a second micro:bit as a receiver, I just used the radio command set. In microPython, it would probably mean adding something like this to the board on the micro:climate kit: radio.send("Windspeed is ", weatherbit.windSpeed())
Then on the receiver, all you need, no matter how many values you send, is new_message = radio.receive() display.scroll("Windspeed is", new_message)
(Doing this off the top of my head, so it may not be exactly right, but it's close.) Definitely check out the micro:bit MicroPython page, in particular the radio section. That should help!
Happy Hacking!