Remote APRS for Temp/Humidity/etc

[ToddDubya]

I'm thinking about dabbling in APRS for my remote super secret squirrel hideaway. I'd like a small system that I can either run on batteries (that I could swap out every week or two if needed) or with solar, that will transmit weather data. Ideally I'd have a proper weather station, but maybe at first just do temperature and humidity and add other capabilities as needed. I'm pretty sure that location is close enough to the Greylock repeater (K1FFK) to get onto aprs.fi that way.

I know there are systems that you can connect to an HT like the beloved/maligned Baofeng but I can't run that for long on batteries. I'm thinking more like a dedicated transmitter like the Byonics Microtrak (Byonics - MicroTrak) which might do what I want. I'd need something to talk to it, perhaps an Arduino/RPi to read sensors and maybe even control the power to everything.

If this works, I'd REALLY like to add a way to measure snow depth since I was last there. This location can get a lot of snow, so it'd be nice to know if I need to drag the snowblower up there or not. A friend suggested a proximity sensor, which would be just about perfect. Set it at X feet above the ground, measure, X-measured = depth.

Anybody messed around with APRS, or even better done something like what I'm thinking? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

 

[UJay]

The best way to measure snow is to have a camera pointing at a ruler/measuring device on the ground. Get the full story.

An ESP-32 arduino with a camera uses very little power and has embedded wifi if you can hit some sort of AP up there;
example after a quick search;
ESP32 Based IoT Weather Station

I used to have a weather station, but the weather station was cheapest available that had an interface to upload it's data to a host PC.

The sensors were vaporized while contesting/operating high-power on 160m and never replaced it.

I use APRS now for tracking.. Here is a snowmobile trip a couple of weeks ago;


Good luck, keep us updated.

 

[ToddDubya]

Thanks, I'll look at that. This is a wooded property and I have no power or anything. As luck would have it my property is about the only place around to get cell service, so locals often park in my driveway to make calls. So a cellular option would work, but that defeats the purpose and I don't want another cell plan.

I'll dig into this a bit but if it looks like it's not going to work I'm sure it'll fizzle.

 

[UJay]

There could be a APRS host/gateway nearby... bring and HT see if you hear stuff on 144.390... Wouldn't get the camera, but WX data would be possible.

 

[AHM]

This is a wooded property and I have no power or anything.

Ask yourself if you can see any place with broadband
(even if you have to climb a tree to see it).

You know how LA is a plain surrounded by mountains with canyons carved up the side,
and the canyons have roads with houses up them?

Back in the day when broadband was rare,
some ham dude lived up a canyon,
and he really wanted broadband,
but there was no cable broadband,
and they hadn't run DSL up his canyon.

So he got on his roof and figured out what neighborhoods he could see
down on the valley floor; the plain.
And then he walked the neighborhood until he
recognized a house he could see, and chatted up the homeowner.

They had broadband.
The ham made a deal:
"I'll pay half (all?) your broadband bill
if you let me mount a WiFi transceiver
with a Pringles can beam antenna
aimed at my house in the canyon [points at house]".

The homeowner said, "why not"?

So the guy got broadband with a private WiFi link to civilization.

I think I told the story in some old thread where someone was
building a cabin in the nosebleed latitudes of NH,
and couldn't figure out how to get cell or broadband in the howling wilderness.
He didn't do that, but no one at the time said it couldn't work.

Slightly more conventionally, check out:

Broadband-Hamnet

Broadband-Hamnet - Amateur Radio Mesh Networking

www.broadband-hamnet.org

Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network

www.arednmesh.org

Maybe there's a mesh node in sight of your place.

 

[ToddDubya]

There could be a APRS host/gateway nearby... bring and HT see if you hear stuff on 144.390... Wouldn't get the camera, but WX data would be possible.

Wouldn't I just hear people transmitting such as people with APRS in their vehicles?

 

[UJay]

Wouldn't I just hear people transmitting such as people with APRS in their vehicles?

Maybe. Let us know.

Gateways are pretty strong and consistent and you could be lucky with one on a high mountain nearby. Look at aprs.fi maybe something plotted in the neighborhood.

 

[ToddDubya]

There's an APRS weather station a few miles away as the crow flies, at about the same altitude as me but I'd have to bend my eyeballs around some mountains a little to see it. That was actually what gave me the idea. But I don't see any gateways.

 

[AHM]

Wouldn't I just hear people transmitting such as people with APRS in their vehicles?

APRS::={modem noise}

 

[ToddDubya]

APRS::={modem noise}

Yeah, I can hear some stations from my house on an HT. Someone must have been having a conversation because there was lots of it.

 

[AHM]

Yeah, I can hear some stations from my house on an HT. Someone must have been having a conversation because there was lots of it.

There's probably a smartphone app (albeit possibly for-pay)
that will decode the noise if held up to the radio speaker.

And there's definitely digital signal shrines on the web
that have samples of every possibly modulation technique.
But if it's on 144.390, I don't think it'll be some other system.