-------------------- Tech Support Tips/Troubleshooting/Common Issues --------------------

Error in Weather_Shield_Weather_Station.ino where "windspeedmph" reads "0.0"

If your code is reading "windspeedmph=0.0", this is due to an error in the code not updating "windspeedmph". For more information, try reading the issue https://github.com/sparkfun/Weather_Shield/issues/24. There is a Pull Request to fix this issue. By downloading the Weather_Shield_Weather_Station.ino code, it will update windspeedmph.

Humidity, Temperature, and Barometric Pressure Not Reading?

If you are seeing this as the output in your serial monitor, make sure that you are connected sufficiently to the shield:

$,winddir=113,windspeedmph=0.0,windgustmph=0.0,windgustdir=0,windspdmph_avg2m=0.0,winddir_avg2m=86,windgustmph_10m=0.0,windgustdir_10m=0,humidity=998.0,tempf=-1766.2,rainin=0.00,dailyrainin=0.00,pressure=-999.00,batt_lvl=16.32,light_lvl=3.21,#,

This is due to the connection to one of the sensors that is using I2C. I2C is sensitive to loose connections and it will not function correctly if the connections are not secure. Keep in mind this setup did not include the wind meter and rain gauge.

Issues using the Software Serial with GPS?

Having issues connecting to the weather shield but you are not using the ATmega328P microcontroller with an Arduino bootloader? The issue is probably due to your connections. There are two ways to connect to your GPS using the UARTs looking at the Eagle files. There is either the hardware UART pins (pin 0 or 1) or the software serial UART pins (pins 4 and 5). The weather shield was designed with the Arduino Uno footprint. There can be some compatibility issues if you move to other packages like the Arduino Mega. You would need to reroute the pins for the GPS if you were using software serial. Not all the pins are compatible for software serial on the Arduino Mega => https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/SoftwareSerial . If you redefine the software serial pins and reroute the location of the pins that the shield is using, you shouldn’t have any issues when using the software serial pins. You can also use the hardware serial UART pins on the Arduino Mega but I don’t recommend doing that. You can have issues when uploading code to the Arduino Mega since it uses the same serial UART pins.

Try looking at this comment to reroute the pins and redefine the pins https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/arduino-shields/discuss#comment-54cc220cce395ff2068b4568 .

BAS16 Diodes

If anyone is wondering why the two BAS16 diodes are connected in series with the respective power supply terminals and an I/O pin between the diodes, the circuit was placed on the board for static protection by an engineer. This was just in case static electricity built up with the weather meter when it is out in the field or if long wires were used between the sensors and Arduino. This would safely protect the Arduino's I/O pins in case there was discharge.

If you search online for "static protection diode," you will find a few application circuits and an explanation. There are even packages manufactured for static protection. We just happen to use diodes already in our shelves for the application circuit.

i tried to hook this with si1145 sensor for measuring potential evaporation. the barometric pressure and temperature get negative readings at the moment when sda and scl of si1145 get inserted. the problem is completely reproducible as i have two weather shields and four si1145 for trying.

How does the light sensor work if you put the shield in a box?

looking for one that already have the headers so I don't have to do any soldering.

im using it with raspberry pi2 with win10. rain pin works fine (reports immediately) but wind speed is weird, it reports nothing for 10-20 secs and then starts reporting and stops, wind sensor can spin all the time but events arent registering or registering occasionally (not continualsy). how does it work with arduino? any ideas? thank you

Why would my weather shield stop working after 20 minutes of readings?

Any suggestion how to connect this shields Analog pins to Pi2 via MCP3008? Thank you.

Hi everyone,

I am planning to use Arduino Pro Mini board with this shield and couldn't find information relating pin description of the shield.

Any pointer is much appreciated.

Jami

As I implement the my server-side software, I'm staring at the fields dailyrainin and windgustmph/windgustdir, trying to determine their use in reporting observations.

As written, the sample driver merely accumulates data in both fields, never resetting them to zero.

My main thought is to discard these fields. A reliable method of resetting them at (say) midnight local time would require a bit more programming.

Any thoughts? To discard or reimplement?

My temperature will only show up as "tempf=-1766.2". The humidity is working however. Anyone know what could be the issue here? Any help would be fantastic.

Folks, I wonder if someone has used this shield with the Intel Edison board. I connected this shield to the Edison and the the 2 IC2 addresses (0x40 & 0x60) are not recognised by the board. The same shield work quite well with the UNO and MEGA boards. I want to build a robust weather information server and this shield could fit quite well if I am make it to work. Thanks. AC/.

BTW: The shield works perfectly with the Arduino Galileo, so it is not related to the hardware architecture

I am about done with my weather station. I added Xbee Wifi, Sparkfun Data, RTC and most importantly, support for the AS3935 lightning sensor located here: https://github.com/THP-JOE/AS3935_Wire which Joe rewrote to use Wire.h

Next weeks build should include 6) UV sensor added (I2C) 7) Cloud sensor (this is a tad experimental but it uses non-contact temperaure measures to read the cloud )I2C

This all works fine on my duemilanove/328 but when I try it on my Mega/ADK with the same sketch and same shield, the humidity, temperature and pressure are wacky. Do I need to change something in the i2C setup in the sketch for the Mega? These readings are what I get and they don't change: humidity=998.0,tempf=-1766.2,pressure=-999.00

The suggestion below on using separate power makes no difference in my case. Any thoughts?

What the purpose of the milled out channels in the middle of the board near Humidity and Pressure?

Cool!

How exactly do I use this PCB? Do I just use it as an extension to a PC motherboard? This is my first time here and I'm still learning about PCBs.

The link above for the Hands-on-Lab IoT Weather Station no longer works. Looks like hackster changed the URL from https://www.hackster.io/windows-iot-maker2/build-hands-on-lab-iot-weather-station-using-windows-10 to https://www.hackster.io/windowsiot/build-hands-on-lab-iot-weather-station-using-windows-10

Anyone else have an issue getting this onto the latest Redboard with the ISP header populated? On the Redboard I received, the ISP header is taller than the pin connectors so when I try to stack my shield onto my redboard, I hit the ISP header before I can get the shield down flush with the top of the pin connectors.

Hey all. I am new to Arduino and lost some hours with the light sensor on the weather shield. I had strange readings when I put on a LED-headlight for testing purposes. The value on A1 went up but came down again to initial low light value without a reason. You guess what happend.. the sensor is so fast, it reacts on the fast flashing of the 1W LED headlight. After putting a 10uF tantalum condensator from A1 to ground, everything works fine. I guess you may encounter wrong values also from flashing of 50Hz or 60Hz lighting. So it turned out, the board is fine, all the sensors seem to deliver correct values. Hope that helps, have fun!

Hey all. I am new to Arduino and lost some hours with the light sensor on the weather shield. I had strange readings when I put on a LED-headlight for testing purposes. The value on A1 went up but came down again to initial low light value without a reason. You guess what happend.. the sensor is so fast, it reacts on the fast flashing of the 1W LED headlight. After putting a 10uF tantalum condensator from A1 to ground, everything works fine. I guess you may encounter wrong values also from flashing of 50Hz or 60Hz lighting. So it turned out, the board is fine, all the sensors seem to deliver correct values. Hope that helps, have fun!

Is there a timeline as to when these will be produced? I could really use one for a project I want to do.

What is the lifetime of one of these, a connected arduino and an xbee transmitter? Someone mentioned their's lasted six months, but that seems short for the cost of the boards. I am a complete noobie though so what do I know

i just want to ask if i will order this, what is the estimated time of arrival.? my location is philippines.

Well, after 6 month of operation, my Weather Shield finally quit working. The MIC5219 died and now there is a short somewhere on the 3.3V supply. It could be anything... The shield was outside, in a waterproof enclosure. Time for a new one or move on to something else?

I have spent past few week doing set up and I cannot figure out what I’m doing wrong. im using (Arduino + XBee + Weather) as my hardware. I have the weather shield and the XBee shield and I can only get the weather stuff to work with (displaying on the serial console). plug in Xbee the wifi cant find the Xbee or the wifi to work (sending some data to Sparkfun Data) but it I try to get them both working it seems like the communication with the XBee gets trashed. i put Xbee on top on weather shield and weather shield on top on arduino Uno. Would love to see how you’ve managed to do this…any hints would be appreciated!

Any chance this can be used on a 3.3V Arduino Due with some mods ?

Is this easy to integrate with a Beaglebone or Beaglebone Black using a Proto Cape and mini breadboard? Sounds like a good first weather project.

Is this easy to integrate with Beaglebone and Beaglebone Black with a BeagleBone Black Proto Capem and mini breadboard? This looks like a good first weather project,

I am building a weather station using the wimp weather tutorial and I'm a little confused by how this is being powered. I didn't see a good explanation in the tutorial but it looks like it is supplied power through the electric imp from the Sunny Buddy and wired to the 5V pin? I am currently supplying power through the barrel jack on the Uno which works with a wall plug / 9 volt battery but doesn't work with the power from the Sunny Buddy, when connected this way it appears to not gather info from the weather shield and reports no data to send then goes to sleep.

I am pretty new at this so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Weather Shield and pcDuino I have had mixed success using the Weather Shield on a pcDuino 3s. I have loaded the latest kernel (20140721) and the latest lUbuntu (20140430). I also have loaded the pcDuino with Qt version 4.8.6 and Qwt 6.1.0.

My first attempts to duplicate the output of the Weather_Shield_with_GPS sketch running on an Arduino Uno resulted in many discrepancies. * I could not get the serial output to work. Several web queries leads me to believe that the SoftwareSerial library does not work on the pcDuino. So, I turned the switch on the Weather Shield to route the GPS output to UART2. This did not work at first until I obtained a copy of the setuart2 program that can be used to turn the UART on or off. Now, I was able to receive and process the GPS data.

• While the HTU21D module's humidity and temperature seem to be working properly, the same could not be said for the MPL3115A2 pressure and temperature. I have not yet determined why this the case. It should be noted that the HTU21D readings returned are skewed by the heat given off by the pcDuino board.

• The readings returned for battery level and light level were wrong. The light level never seemed to change. I finally determined that there were two problems. First, the value of /proc/adc1 which should be the light level always seems to be 63 no matter how much light is shining on the light sensor. However, I discovered that if the unused AD0 pin is grounded (I don't have the optional wind and rain sensors), then the value of adc1 (/proc/adc1) would change. However, the program still didn't display a good value for light_lvl. This turned out to be because the ad0 and AD01 pins are only 6 bits resolution instead of 12 like the others. So, the value returned has to be shifted: change the get_light_level function line where the light sensor is read from: float light_sensor = analogRead(LIGHT); to float light_sensor = (analogRead(LIGHT)<<6) | 0x37;

I have developed a Qt graphical application using the Weather Shield and would be glad to share my code. And if anybody knows why the MPL3115A2 doesn't work, I'd appreciate it.

I'm using a Minnow board, and the I2C isn't working. Specifically, the ACK bit is oscillating. Looking with a scope, I see the start, an address (C0, write to pressure sensor, then a bit time of oscillating levels (alternating ones and zeros at a much higher frequency) when there should be an ACK (low level). Any suggestions?

Can you confirm which pins are not used ? If I read the schematic correctly ( a bit of a leap) it looks like 9-13 are unused.

I have successfully gotten the XBee Wifi and the weather station to post to sparkfun.data and I am (with help) integrating the lightning detector into the software. I need one more pin to create a custom interrupt.

Thanks

I am having a problem with the humidity sensor. When I power up the board, the humidity data is negative. The data eventually switches to positive (example: switching from about -68% to 56%), although this can take less than a minute to almost 10 minutes. The Temperature data is fine, and I am using the HTU21D_Arduino_Example program. Does any one know what's going on? Update: the humidity sensor is bad - returning to sparkfun.

Anyone tacked on a lightning sensor yet ?

I just bought the weather shield and weather meters and I am trying to make it work with Arduino UNO R3.

I connect everything like in the hook up Guide.

But when I run the example you provide, I get this wrong values.

$,winddir=113,windspeedmph=0.0,windgustmph=0.0,windgustdir=0,windspdmph_avg2m=0.0,winddir_avg2m=26,windgustmph_10m=0.0,windgustdir_10m=0,humidity=998.0,tempf=-1766.2,rainin=0.00,dailyrainin=0.00,pressure=-999.00,batt_lvl=17.18,light_lvl=3.00,#

Arduino is connected with the shield through stackable headers like the example and the meter is attached with 2 x RJ-11 6 pin coonectors.

I am running this on a retina mac with 10.9.4 OS and 1.05 Version of Arduino

Could anyone help? cheers

Hie guys, does this module work with the netduino plus? does anyone have any pointers to code, instructions? thanks

Hi, I cannot find this shield in the Fritzing software, could someone help? Thanks

I have some problems with the shield. First the temperature from the HTU21D seems to be a bit to high. Second the MPL3115A2 was working fine for the first few days. But now both pressure and temperature is way off (and not changing): 481.27hPa and 34.94C (it really is 1017.9hPa and 25.6C). Also the "Who_Am_I" register is supposed to return 0xC4, but now I get 0x2E for some reason.

How do i use Arduino Yun with the SparkFun weather shield?

I am using weather shield with my arduino yun. im getting 998 for my temperature ,humidity and pressure sensors. how do i solve this problem?

How do you use the Weather Shield with a Mega R3. If not as a shield then what pins do you use? Also can you use it with a Due?

Hi guys, I have an issue with the software. The generated results from my humidity and temperature sensors while connected to an arduino hardware gives a constant 5volts. The sensors a4 and a5 are HV_SDA and HV_SCL respectively. I am unsure if there are coding required to activate these sensors, or would any resistors be required to enable the sensors to work? Any assistance is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

i keep getting "temperature:998.0C Humidity:998.0%" for my readings. Whats the problem?

So I have both the old weather board and the new weather shield and while my opinion is unencumbered by the thought process, here it is.

I know Sparkfun is updating the weather board but I like the shield better. Having an Uno underneath is less of a burden and it does make the whole process of development simpler. My suggestion would be to add a second shield. Take the current Xbee shield (which I love) and add LIPO charging circuit, an I2C RTC, and an SD slot. This would take the current shield and make it easily standalone. Xbee for wireless, LIPO for remote power, the clock and shield to store data if the wireless link drops. The Weather board will end up pretty dense pretty fast and having 3 boards isn't a big deal.

Just my thought

Can the GS407 gps unit be used with this, in place of the GP635T?

Sparkfun, What is the minimum number of pins required to use this shield and get all of the data from it? I am looking at locating this away from my Arduino in a separate enclosure and connecting it via an 8 conductor cable and RJ-45 connectors. Will 8 conductors be enough or will I need more? Thanks.

A sensor that measures Solar Radiation in W/m2

A sensor that measures Solar Radiation in W/m2

Is there something for Solar Radiation Sensor?

How accurate does this read the temperature? I thought I remembered reading + or - 0.3 C, but that seems like a big error.

Im looking to connect this to your weather meter (so far so good) and transmit wirelessly to a raspberry pi. However, I would like to connect this straight to an Xbee, without the Arduino. Basically keeping it even simpler. Is that possible?

I got the idea from the Wired (http://www.wired.com/design/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Sparkfun-Weather-Board.jpg) but that's using your old board.

Of course, otherwise I would simply have to go with an Arduino, but it's another thing to program and maintain that could break when the -20c winter comes :)

Just got my weather shield, but forgot to order headers. (In my impatience) I slapped on what I had, forgoing VIN, and pins 8 and 9. It took me a visit to the schematic to figure out why I was getting bogus values without VIN connected, but now that it's working I've still run into some interesting issues with the example sketch on the Leonardo:

1. The serial seems unreliable, starting indeterminately. I think this is a known issue with the serial reset on the Leonardo.
2. When serial data is being output, everything looks in order, except for the rain sensor. It just keeps racking up values despite being disconnected.
3. After the anaeometer spins for the first time, serial data is only output when the aneometer is still spinning. Otherwise it stops sending.

Any suggestions?

Edit: Guessing that this is an interrupt problem, further inspection of the datasheet reveals that the anaeometer is supposed to close a switch once per revoluion, but checking it on a multimeter it's actually a normally closed contact that opens when the magnet passes. Did I get a deffective/different anaeometer, or is this just an interrupt issue?

Edit 2: I isolated the issue to interrutps being fired whenever working with the I²C bus to read the barometer, etc. The Leonardo uses pins 2 & 3 for I²C, so an interrupt gets fired every time data is sent. As a work around in software, you can detach the interrupts for the weather sensors before using I²C data, and reattach them when done.

I am using this with the weather sensor kit. Mostly working, but I noticed that with the rain sensor, i'm getting some false readings. It seems to be worse when the units are outside, but I get them inside as well. I left it running indoors for 12 hours today and measured .03 inches of rain, yet the house was quite dry. :-) When the sensors and arduino were outside (arduino was under an enclosure and on a covered patio) the number of false readings was much greater - every few minutes at some times. Any clues?

The status LEDs should be labeled "Blinding Blue" and "Is It On? Green" since the mcd ratings are not matched. =P Or is that so the light sensor can measure the dark? I feel the ambient light sensor circuit needs some work... Mine reads 0.00 right now sitting above my monitor in very softly lit room. I'll probably grab a few to experiment with an op-amp.

I wish I looked at the schematic closer before purchasing; the Wind pin-out is not compatible with the Davis anemometer I already had lying around.

hi, i am interseted in using the weather station (and the weather board)with the arduino ethernet shield.Is that possible to happen and how it will be the best to put together the three boards (arduino+ethernet shield+weather board) I mean which comes first is it of any importance?if you know any tutorial regarding that I would be grateful too thank you in advance!

How can I get the sensor library files that are needed to run the example program for the Sparkfun weather shield? Looks like I need 3 libraries, HTU21D, MPL3115A2 and maybe ALS-PT19.

I tried to use the libraries in mpide because i use chipkit of digilent, when i compile the program show me problems about wire.h can you help me please to solve this problem?

Below freezing I got some strange results using the example code. It appears that MPL3115A2.cpp does not take into account the 2’s complement nature of negative numbers used by the device; (see Application Note). The following shows additions to readTemp() which appear to fix this:

…

    word foo = 0;
    bool negSign = false;

    if(msb > 0x7F)
{
            foo = ~((msb << 8) + lsb) + 1;  //2’s complement
        msb = foo >> 8;
        lsb = foo & 0x00F0; 
            negSign = true;
}

// The least significant bytes l_altitude and l_temp are 4-bit,
// fractional values, so you must cast the calulation in (float),
// shift the value over 4 spots to the right and divide by 16 (since 
// there are 16 values in 4-bits). 
float templsb = (lsb>>4)/16.0; //temp, fraction of a degree

float temperature = (float)(msb + templsb);

if (negSign) 
    temperature = 0 - temperature;

return(temperature);
}

This affects pressures also, if there is a negative value.

Note that -999 results indicate a timeout. In the cpp, the timeout values have been increased versus other examples.

Also, there was question about the Ethernet shield. It’s fairly easy to combine this code with the Arduino BarometriPressureWebServer example. But, keep in mind that the Wiznet W5100 is quite hot and very close. It added about 10F at room temperature.

It’s 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit right now. Sorry about not knowing how to use GitHub…

Got this board and ordered the anemometer/rain gauge. I'm trying to make this wireless, but I'm somewhat of a newbie. I was hoping to use XBee (series 1), and I have the parts needed, just having trouble on the software/comms side. The Xbee tutorials seem to use a much older version of the X-CTU, and I can't find how to set up the XBees to my network. Is there a better way to do this, or someone willing to help dumb-down the XBee comms for a newbie? Thanks!

Brain freeze the units are good. I mistook psi for in" of HG when comparing. (I wish we would just move on to SI units like the rest of the world) Ken

Cool Board, I am having fun with it so far. Working to make it solar powered and log to a SD card to "duct-tape" to a hang glider.

I am getting a nonsensical value out from the pressure sensor. 94967.75 What units are these? The data sheet claims Pascals. I am at about 610m. The altitude reported is 548m (in altitude mode). This is much closer than the pressure value reported yet is not corrected to known weather pressure conditions. Raw pressure would be more useful to me in my application.

The values change with altitude with sensitivity that seems to be within the 30cm.

Thanks for any comments or ideas Ken

I'm using this shield with the freetronics EtherTen Aurdino clone and it came right up using the provided libraries. I have noticed that the HTU21D always reads 1°C higher than the MPL3115A2, and both seem to read a bit warm. I guess I need to calibrate them and adjust the readings in software...

For anybody else using this with the EtherTen, you can cut out a slot in the weather shield where the RJ45 jack protrudes. This cuts the traces to the dedicated I2C pins (for R3 arduinos) and the serial wires (for GPS). You don't need the I2C pins with the EtherTen, and if you need to use GPS, you can add the serial lines back with a couple wires. This allows the weather shield to seat onto the EtherTen without extra spacers. The only negative is that it places the sensors about 1cm closer to the warm chips on the EtherTen. Also, it voids your warranty and removes the SparkFun logo, so I guess those are negatives too ;)

Will this work with the ethernet shield too ?

Will this work with the Yun?

Does this require a 3.3V Regulator on the Arduino Board?

Temperature sensor?

Let's see now - The light sensor is buried on the board. So if we are in an enclosure (ventilated) there is no way to determine the light outside the enclosure. Is there any way to remote the Light sensor? Other than that it looks like a great board. I will be ordering one soon.