ESIP Climate Change Xplorer Station

A new paradigm in citizen science

Take Action

Become a Climate Change Xplorer with an open source,
easy to build, modular, 3D printed weather station.

Citizen scientists can build a station to put into
their backyards to share data with anyone would be interested.

Schools can build stations to teach concepts about weather and
climate change and data-driven climate mitigation.

Researchers and forecasters can build low-cost small mesonets
and weather station networks to support, operations, research,
emergency management, and community outreach.

Our team has developed tools and capacity to build
mesonets atop these low-cost sensors for deployment
into your community or program of choice.

Install your own station today and share Climate Change Xplorer
community data now.

Mission

We want to expand citizen science engagement, one 3d-printed station at a time.

Xplorer Inspiration

3D-Printer weather stations are nothing new – in fact, there are dozens of DIY projects that have created wonderful implementations of stations for anyone to print and deploy. However, many of these stations are designed for electronics enthusiasts not citizen scientists.

The Xplorer project aims to make DIY 3D-printed stations more accessible to anyone, but reducing the electronics complexity, printing time and simplifying the data capture capabilities, all while encouraging the same level of tinkering and user-driven modification typical of DIY projects.

Our initial aims are modest. Funded through ESIP Labs small grant program we were tasked to:

convert the traditional “monolithic” weather station design to a modern, decentralized IoT based design using low-cost, high quality commodity hardware and open-source software,
promote FAIR open data, open science and open engagement into climate and weather data,
install the IoT-based designs into a small Mesonet to demonstrate the capabilities and potential of the design.

But our broader aims are much more ambitous. Ultimately, we want to:

promote broad citizen science participation through weather stations that are low-cost, high quality, easy-to-deploy, 3D-printed, DIY, open-source (hardware and software), atop modern IoT-based architectures,
expand open climate monitoring data and observation networks based on this arachitecture to assess the impact of climate change in under-observed areas and all over the world, and
promote community-driven, shareable, IoT node enhancements that encourage sharing and developing new sensor nodes, measurements and data exchanges.

A weather station for anyone, anywhere.

New advances in technlogy and the rise of the internet-of-things has made it possible to re-imagine the weather station. Take action by building a weather station and contribute real data to better understand impact of climate change.

AtmosNode

The extensible, but powerful AtmosNode collects atmospheric measurements that allow monitoring temperature, pressure, relative humidity, and air quality in real time! The open source hardware and software design uses click and play wiring connectors, low cost sensors, and inexpensive micro-controllers to collect and transmit data.

AeroNode

Monitor real time wind direction and wind speed with this all-in-one wind node. This highly sensitive system can deliver averaged observations at one minute or longer intervals using digital compass and accelerometer sensors.

HydroNode

Collect real time rain measurements with the HydroNode. Using a tipping bucket and digital hall effect sensor.

Powercomms Node

System uses low power and communications overhead to deliver reliable and durable reporting of observations. This included battery storage, solar recharging, and a range of communications options to transmit data.

Are you ready to build?

Our designs are open source and ready for you to deploy.

Get Instructions

Store, share and visualize your data

Upon deployment of the ESIP Xplorer station network in Puerto Rico, an open online monitoring tool will become available. This tool will also be available to all new Xplorer users to share their weather station data with others.

Make Quick Dashboards

With Freeboard you can quickly assemble a simple dashboard of your own data with no coding or knowledge of data formats.

Explore Your Data Fully

Our platform works with the realtime CHORDS system out of the box, allowing you to share and export data, visualize relationships between data and build applications atop an easy-to-use API.

Deploy in your back yard, your school or wherever you want observations

This initial project, funded by the Earth Science Informatics Parnters (ESIP) is just the beginning of exciting deployments and upcoming expeditions to inspire you to build your own station and begin sharing your data with other ESIP Xplorers.

Build Yours Today!

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