Thanks Amy. It'd be great if you could edit this note to show us a screenshot or two of the web page after it is up and running, just to demonstrate the payoff for setting up the weather station.

I'm interested in piggybacking particle sensors onto weather stations-- does yours let you plug in new sensors? existing commercial sensors are usually hooked up to expensive commercial connections, and need other weather data for calibration

It seems there's a big community of people running weather stations and it would be really cool to add to their existing monitoring.

The weather station we have does let you plug in new sensors - the issue would be that it wouldn't display on the display - as that is limited to working with the seonsors the kit you buy to begin with. That said thouh, the data will appear alongside the data from the other modules when you go into the software on your PC. Also, some additional sensors come with their own displays (off the top of my head I seem to remember a UV Sunlight sensor doing this). Weatherunderground.com does a good job of integrating data. Also, I just happen to have one of these babies: http://www.netatmo.com - you can get their weather station with different modules to attach to it - in particular there is a particle sensor that can be added onto this as an additional unit. The outdoor module just does the same as a basic weather station & calibrates itself via the web. The indoor sensor is pretty interesting though - it tells you much CO2 is in your house - we ended up getting plants after realising our indoor CO2 levels were way too high (1000ppm which worsens respiratory conditions such as asthma). Yo should check it out.

hmmm. i can't find their particle sensor. is there a standard sensor format for these things or are they all unique?

Edit: I just realised it is the Alima that does particle sensing. My apolpgies. Netatmo tries to work our Air Quality as a whole & that is with the Indoor module.

The alima on the other hand is interested in air particles & gasses. http://getalima.com

that's in beta too. I"m thinking more inline with the dustduino or Speck's cheap sensors, only with more controlled airflow. both really need correlating weather data to make sense of their info. http://publiclab.org/notes/mathew/06-04-2014/two-weeks-with-a-speck http://publiclab.org/notes/donblair/05-03-2014/how-do-we-measure-particulate-stuff-in-the-air

Sure.

Someone I was speaking to recently was talking about the turbidity of water being an indicator of particulate matter.

I wonder if there is a way we could make something ourselves to measure particulate matter using wateras a refractor and then measuring the rate of that refraction...?

You know what... I'm looking at this image here and can't help but think we could repurposed some old CD drives.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_counter

We could then use water to scatter the light...

What do you think?

Looks like it has kind of been done elsewhere for a slightly different purpose: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2011/LC/c0lc00451k

woah. that CD idea is great! the biggest issue with particle monitoring is getting the particle counts measured in mircrograms/cu meter.

I'm also looking at using stickypads. just tape catching particles. I wonder if we could run 5" tape disks in a DVD drive?

Or spray glue on a DVD?

yeah! exactly. We have to do it in .1mm according to the article. I'm thinking about peeling the reflective layer off and making it sticky then sealing it with something.

I ripped some of the reflective part, but i bet I could learn to peel DVDs cleanly.

Thanks for the screenshot. I think it will help give people an idea of what they're getting if they should choose to use this meteorological station.

Also I like graphs. :)

There is this really cool trick for peeling CD's. This video shows how it works: CD spectroscope: http://youtu.be/-cH_2mbsvBo

Woah! Awesome thread...