Mobile weather stations

Low-cost weather stations help monitor the weather more closely, helping rural communities better prepare for floods and landslides. These devices automatically measure and transmit weather information — rainfall, temperature and wind speed data — every five minutes. They operate autonomously, powered by solar energy.

The stations are locally assembled using off-the-shelf technology and open-source software, like Arduino boards and code. The data is stored in microSD cards, and can be accessed directly from the card or received via SMS text message alerts. Users can use additional sensors and reprogram the software, making these stations incredibly flexible for a variety of applications.

The weather stations can last up to ten years and cost only $350 each. Given their potential to reduce damage from flooding, it is estimated that they will pay for themselves in only two and a half years.

This project was funded by the World Bank, through its Challenge Fund and the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction (GFDRR), and the CGIAR Research Programs on Water Land and Ecosystems (WLE) and Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

All of the work featured here is open-source. You can copy the weather station designs, modify them, or build your own version.

The download link includes technical overview, instructions to build the mobile weather station, Arduino software source code, installation manual, and maintenance manual.