Build a Mini Weather Station and Gas Leakage Detection Tool for Campers

Hello there in this instructables i made one of the most needed tool for campers! Lets say you are a camper who always loves to camp in some far away place.

Yeah, I know what you are thinking! What is the relation between this project and the camping part, Is this what you are thinking? Well let me explain.

This is an local weather station that gives the readings of temperature and humidity in real time and the most important tool here is the alcohol detector that also gives real time results.

Lets say you are at a forest camping and you want to know the temperature inside and outside your camp, You can simply turn this device on and have the readings.

Secondly imagine you are sleeping inside your tent and the mini stive that you have inside starts to leak some gas then this device will detect it and give an indication so that you can be safe from uncertain situations.

This Mini Weather Station and Alcohol Detection Tool is portable and light in weight, all you have to do is plug this to any usb soure and you are good to go.

Note that instead of LED for indicator and alerting you can use a piezoelectric buzzer also, the circuit is same for both the parts.

I have 3d printed the parts so that all the components are in their respective places and you can expect the same too if you are building this.

So if you are a camper definetely this might have caught your attenstion right? Well this can be yours and it is simple to build with my step by step instructions.

Also consider watching the video given at the end of this instructables to have a look at the working of this project.

These are the required materials to make this project, If you keep all of these components handy the building process will go very fast and save a lot of your time

Arduino Uno from here

MQ2 gas sensor

DTH11 sensor

1.8inch TFT LCD module

Jumper Cables

3D printer on budget

PLA filament

Hot Glue

Programming cable

Arduino IDE

LED

Note that these are affilate links and upon qualifying sales i may receive a small comission at no extra cost to you

I scratched my head a lot when it came for the selection of an appropriate design that suits best for this project.

Finally i was able to make a cool design using Tinkercad and you can find the design files in the below step, just copy and use it for your project.

While i designed the 3d printed parts for this project my main goal was keeping the components in some sort of order so that the space is utlized very well.

The arduino uno comes in a standard size and considering the size i designed the base part and the same is with the 1.8inch tft screen the top part was made considering that size.

There is no post processing after the 3d print is complete, just remove the part from the print bed and you are good to go.

I exported the model from tinkercad to the cura for slicing, you can see the settings that i used at the time of slicing.

After the slicing is complete, i fed the file on an sd card and inserted on a 3d printer. The choice of color for 3d printing your model is your choice of preference.

I will choose red and black pla filament to print the model, the print time is usually less than an hour and make sure to have atleast 20% infill rate for this model.

After 3d printing is complete the frame is ready and we now only need the electronics that will be cased inside this frame and now we will make that too.

We have 3 different modules that are connected to Arduino Uno board and at first look you may seem that the circuit is very complex, Don't worry let me break it down for you

Connections of components to arduino uno

DHT11 Sensor

VCC from sensor to 5V (or 3.3V depending on module) and GND to GND

Di pin from sensor is connected to Arduino Digital Pin 7

MQ2 Gas Sensor

Sensor Vcc to Arduino Uno 5V and the G to GND

A0 is connected to Arduino Analog Pin A0

1.8 inch TFT Display or ST7735 connections

1. VCC to 5V of uno
2. GND with GND
3. CS to Arduino Pin 10
4. RESET to Arduino Pin 8
5. A0 or DC from lcd to Arduino Pin 9
6. SDA to Arduino Pin 11
7. SCK connects to Arduino Pin 13
8. LED (Backlight) to 3.3V or 5V

Lastly, the LED that indicates the gas and you can also replace this LED with a BUZZER if you want

After you build these connections connect the uno board to computer via the programming cable and open the ide.

Use the arduino program given below, copy and paste the program to ide, select the proper board type in our case its the uno

Select proper port and if it asks for any library install it and click on the upload button and you are good to go.

After the program is done uploading test the circuit for working, Hopefully if you have followed the instructions well everything will work fine

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After the components are ready to be installed inside a 3d printed case i would recommend you to check the circuit for its working.

Connect the board to USB power and wait for some time, the LCD will stary to show the temperature and you cna expose the sensor to gas from a lighter and see if the led and the lcd are showing the signs.

Now you can install all these on a box and simply follow the steps to do so.

I will begin by adding the Uno board to the base box or the holder. I have given a slot to plug in the uno to cable and taking this as a reference, you can place the uno board.

The fit is so good that it doesnt need any glue to stick to the base, im using a generic uno board if you are using an original one you may have to use double sided adhesive, I never had a chance to try this out.

After the Uno board is placed inside the base check for the jumper cable conenctions once again to make sure everything is in place and then we can head over to second part.

The LCD holder is the second part and with care you can add hot glue to the edges of 3d printed holder first and place the LED over it.

Then to the groves in the base frame place the dth11 sensor and the gas sensor.

Place the LED on the slots provided and we have the base ready, add a thin layer of super glue to the edges and join the base and the top layer.

Press both the parts firmly untill you have a great sealing between these parts and no gap is visible.

This is all about the finishing of the project, now we can finally test this project and lets see that in the nect step.

Using this device is pretty much easy all you have to do is power this project with any type of usb power source.

Here to get the accurate results you may have to wait for about a minute, This is becuase the MQ2 sensor has a small coil inside that needs to be heated to detect the alcohol.

The temperature readings are almost accurate and i have cross checked with my phone also, You can see the same on the above step images also.

Since i was not camping and my gas was not leaking to showcase the working of alchol sensor i used a lighter gas that was exposed to the gas sensor.

Untill the gas detection happens to a certain readings the screen shows the real time value of gas being detected and upon a certain value being reached the led light glows up

There is also a alert message that will show in the screen, If you are sleeping then adding a buzzer along with LED will be more useful.

This is all about building this project, Like always if you have any questions ask me in the comments.

If you think there can be other useful features that will benefit a camper let me me in the discussion box i will be happy to discuss.

Thank you for making it till here, Now how can you miss watching the working video of this project!

Not only this video has the working but also the complete build part from designing to 3d printig and building the circuit.

Hope you will try this project and tell me how it went for you, Have a great build and thank you