AMS Short Course on Building a 3D-Printed Automatic Weather Station
05 January 2019, Phoenix, AZ
The AMS Short Course on Weather Radar Calibration: Principles and Procedures will be held on 05 January 2019 preceding the 99th AMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. Preliminary programs, registration, hotel, and general information will be posted on the AMS Web site (www.ametsoc.org <http://www.ametsoc.org/>) in mid-September 2018.
Accurate and reliable real-time monitoring and dissemination of observations of atmospheric and hydrologic conditions in general is critical for a variety of research and decision support applications. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) with support from USAID, has started an initiative to develop low-cost automatic instrumentation including temperature, pressure, relative humidity, light, wind speed, wind direction, and tipping bucket sensors. One important aspect of this initiative is to make the designs and documentation open source to the community. The instrumentation have been developed using innovative new technologies such as 3D printers, Raspberry Pi computing systems, and wireless communications.
The goal of this short-course is to provide participants with hands-on experience to build sensor components of a 3D printed weather station using 3D printer technology, microsensors, and single board computers. The course will provide participants experience using 3D-printers to print, assemble, and test sensors (anemometer, wind vane, etc.). Over the one-day course, the participants will gain experience using the open-source python sensor code and sending data to the cloud. After the course, the participants should have knowledge to build the other sensors using the 3D-Printed Automatic Weather Station (3D-PAWS) open source project that has been developed to support education, outreach, and capacity building.
The course will be divided into two parts. The first part will be a series of presentations providing an overview of the 3D-PAWS project, the printing, assembling, software, and installation process. The second part will be a hands-on demonstration of building a 3D-PAWS sensor. During this part of the course, participants will have an opportunity to work with the 3D-printers, assembling sensors, using the Python software to make measurements. Stations will be setup in the classroom to provide participants experience working with the different components of the 3D-printing and assembling process.
The course format consists of one day of lectures followed by two hours of hands on laboratory session with exercises that can be completed any time during the conference. The instructors for the course are
Dr. Paul A. Kucera and Mr. Martin Steinson, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Boulder, Colorado.
Computers, laptops or internet access will not be available or required for this course.
For more information please contact Paul Kucera at UCAR, PO Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, (Tel: 303-497-2807; email: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>).
All short course/workshop attendees must register and wear a badge/ribbon. Short course/workshop registration is not included in the 99th Annual Meeting registration, and short course/workshop registration does not include registration for the 99th AMS Annual Meeting.