Physical Weather Widget

Hello

This is my entry for Office Gadget Competition proposed by TechWeek Europe.

Besides using RaspberryPi and Arduino, I also like to use and build mechanical stuff. So, my idea is to make an electro-mechanical gadget powered by RaspberryPi + Arduino + some extra hardware, to show weather condition, temperature, wind speed and direction.

This system will use RaspberryPi to read weather information from a weather API, for example Yahoo Weaher API or Weather Underground API, parse this information with a Python script and send commands to Arduino to set servo positions. Servos will move board indicators for various weather elements as you will see below.

Here is an example of how this widget may look. The widget look could be changed by user as long as servos output shafts places are taken into consideration or servos places are changed according to desired scenario.

Below is the schematic and a possible placement of components. 

For display of Day/Night is used a disk sector driven by a servo with a Sun and a Moon printed on.

For weather condition display is used a disk made from clear plastic or other light material with good mechanical strength, with drawings/pictures of different weather conditions glued to it. This disk is also driven by a servo.  Day/Night disk and Weather Condition disk are overlapped with the last one on top.

Servos are used also for Temperature, Wind Speed and Wind Direction indicators.

In order to work, this system need power and internet access, using RaspberryPi onboard LAN connector or an USB wireless adapter.

Bellow is an approximate Bill Of Materials selected from RS shop.

Raspberry Pi                                                 1

Arduino Uno                                                 1

TinkerKit sensor shield                                  1

Micro servo                                                  6

USB Hub                                                      1

ROLINE USB 2.0 Cable, Type A-B, 0.8m   1

Ethernet Cable                                               1

Power supply RPi                                          1 - may be removed if USB Hub have a good power supply

Power supply Arduino                                   1

USB Micro cable                                          1

Delrin spur gear - 1.0 module 45 teeth           2 *see comment

Delrin spur gear - 1 module 15 teeth              2 *see comment

Clear plastic sheet                                         1 - can be replaced with other suitable material.

Wood/plastic/aluminium, cardboard, paper, glue, wires, etc. - for making the frame to support all                  components.

* Usual servos have approximately 180deg. movement from side to side, so additional gears are necessary to have full 360 deg. rotation for some of the dials.