While I enjoy working on the software, it was time to get back to work on the weather station hardware.  Working with indoor readings is useful for debugging, but the whole point is to get this weather station outside and get some real world readings.  It was time to get back to work on the hardware side of things.  The software still needs a lot of work, but it can wait for the hardware to be working properly.

First I wanted to solder the new humidity sensor on the temperature/humidity board.  That meant I needed to peel off all of the liquid electrical tape I had used to weatherproof the board.  That took about an hour of peeling.  That stuff really sticks well.  It even pulled an electrolytic capacitor off of the board when I peeled it off.  Luckily none of the traces came off with it.  It was a simple job to solder that cap back on.  I must not have done such a good job of attaching it the first time.

Next I removed the old humidity sensor from the board and soldered the new humidity sensor on.  I kept careful track of which way the old one was facing so I could get the new one on correctly.  I had soldered the original on backwards when I first built the board, and it doesn’t work at all that way.  I had to remove and re-solder it correctly.  I wasn’t going to make that same mistake twice.  Or so I thought.  After I soldered the sensor on and tested the board, it was completely dead.  It turns out I repeated my old mistake, and soldered the sensor on backwards again.  Once I corrected that mistake the board worked fine.  The humidity in my house no longer reads as 100%.  It’s now 36.25%, which is a lot closer to correct.

I also replaced the photo diode on my solar sensor.  Again, a full hour of peeling off the liquid electrical tape gunk.  At least I managed to solder this part on the right way.  Plugged it in for a test, and it is reacting to the sunlight coming in through the window.  Of course the readings aren’t calibrated to any known scale, so they don’t have a whole lot of meaning.  It just provides a way to compare the relative amount of sunlight at different times of the day and different days of the year.  Maybe one day I’ll try and put together something a bit more accurate.  But for now it works.

Next will be the fan aspirated solar radiation shield.  I’ve already made a lot of progress on it.  Just need to take some pictures and do the write up.  I may also add a picture of he temp/humidity board (with the sensor facing the right direction) and the solar board.