| Transmitter Battery | OK |
| WeeWX version | 5.1.0 |
This website is automatically updated in 5 minute intervals. Data is collected by a small station on site!
If the conditions are looking good, be sure to check our calendar to see if we're racing! Head over to our club site for all the details.
Weather observations are also posted to the following websites:
About the project
The location of the track means there is no readily accessible mains power and so the whole system relies on its own power and connectivity to the outside world. It is robust enough to handle breakdowns in cellular connectivity, days with little sunlight for solar charging and of course the weather conditions of where the system is installed.
Measurements you see on this site are taken directly from this system; cloud base and wind run are calculated based on the readings of other sensors. The forecast is sourced from Arias weather who provide access to their data in exchange for data collected by this station - it is specific for the SA Blokart Club location.
The camera is a recycled security camera housing, modified to fit a Raspberry Pi camera inside. It takes photos every 15 minutes and uploads them to a server where windy reads them to produce the time-lapse graphic you see. The image quality is carefully chosen and is a balance between usability, data usage (expense).
The battery powering the system kept charged via an MPPT solar charge controller connected to a 12v solar panel. The hardware running the system is also chosen for its low power consumption. We are using a Raspberry Pi B+, first released in 2014! We are now on the second iteration of the hardware stack having learned from the first. This new iteration ensures all components are rated for 80°C and eliminates 2 weak points of the previous version. Namely the cellular modem and an additional LiPo UPS battery that was used to shutdown the system if battery voltage got to low. We now power the system directly from the SLA battery being charged by the solar panel and can auto shutdown if the voltage ever drops too low, and boot again when it recovers through solar charge. The cellular modem is now an industrial fixture too, the previous cheap USB dongle would lock-up/crash near daily.
The software running the station is the excellent open source WeeWX package. It is "skinned" with the Belchertown theme.
We monitor a number of aspects about this station looking to continually improve it. You can see these yourself on the status page.