Design, Simulation and Construction of a Digital Mobile Weather Monitoring Station

Abstract

Despite the importance of weather in aviation industry, agriculture practices and other sectors, the measurement of atmospheric parameters in real time monitoring has been sparsely discussed in the literature and the importance of digital mobile weather station has not been well stressed out. In this study, design and construction of a digital mobile weather station was carried out using Arduino Nano microcontroller ATMega385p. The circuit was simulated using Proteus v8.7. The constructed device was used to measure temperature, humidity and sunlight. The device readings were compared with standard measured values obtained from Nigerian Metrological Agency (NIMET) in the month of February and August. Result shows that the slope of the regression line (zero intercept) relating device measurement to standard readings from NIMET in the month of February for temperature was 1.01 (R 2 = 0.923) while that of humidity was 1.006 (R 2 = 0.987), and sunlight was 1.002 (R 2 = 0.999). Also, the slope of the regression line (zero intercept) relating device measurement to standard readings from NIMET in the month of August for temperature was 0.994 (R 2 = 0.985) while that of humidity was 1.002 (R 2 = 1), and sunlight was 0.998 (R 2 = 0.991). This implies that there is no significant difference between device measurement and standard readings from NIMET since both regression lines accounts for ? 98.23% of the variance. However, the device can be used to obtain data on weather parameters with great degree of accuracy for flight monitoring, surfing, plant growth and development, and marine technology.