2017 2nd International Conference on Automation, Cognitive Science, Optics, Micro Electro-Mechanical System, and Information Technology

(ICACOMIT), October 23, 2017, Jakarta, Indonesia

Design of Real-time Weather Monitoring System

Based on Mobile Application using Automatic
Weather Station
Aris Munandar*, Hanif Fakhrurroja, Muhammad Ilham Rizqyawan, Rian Putra Pratama,
Jony Winaryo Wibowo, Irfan Asfy Fakhry Anto
Technical Implementation Unit for Instrumentation Development (UPT BPI)
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)
Bandung, Indonesia
*[email protected]

Abstract—This paper proposes the design of real-time This research aims to develop a custom information
weather monitoring system based on a mobile application using system and UI design for the weather monitoring system.
Automatic Weather Station (AWS). The system connects to the Therefore, it can be managed on a standalone web server and
AWS equipped with several sensors for collecting data and can be developed on a mobile application such as Android.
storing the data to the web server. Data from weather sensor is
taken from the AWS-Davis Instrument using the WeatherLink II. AUTOMATIC WEATHER STATION
software. The data is transmitted through the data logger using
AWS is a meteorological station to observe the weather
serial communication, uploaded via FTP and stored on a web-
server. The Android application reads the files and displays the and to send the results automatically [6][7]. In AWS,
information provided by the web server in real-time. The system measuring tools reads or receives a data using the data-
has successfully show real-time monitoring of weather through acquisition device unit. The data from measurement devices
the mobile application with a flexibility in the parameters and the can be processed locally at the AWS itself or processed in
need of user interface (UI) design compared to the other solution. other places such as the central data processing [7]. AWS can
be designed in an integrated manner using a variety of
Keywords—real-time monitoring; automatic weather station; measurement devices such as integration of instrument
mobile application systems, interfaces and processing, and transmission unit
called Automatic Weather Observing System (AWOS) or
I. INTRODUCTION Automatic Surface Observing System (ASOS).
Weather is an air condition in a certain place and in the Based on presentation of the data, AWS can be grouped
relatively short time that includes conditions of temperature, into real-time AWS and off-line AWS. Real-time AWS is a
humidity, and barometric pressure as its main component. weather system that presents data in real-time. In general, this
Weather changes can be observed by using a device called AWS is equipped with communication and alarm system to
Automatic Weather Station (AWS). AWS has been widely alert the user in case of extreme weather conditions. A real-
applied in various fields such as environmental research for time AWS features has the collection of data units, the data
geo-statistical[1], analysis of temperature measurement [2], storage and the wireless data communications using
prediction of wind energy potential location [3], measurement GSM/GPRS module that has capability for providing data
of the movement of the mass balance [4], and estimation of communications in a wide range [8]. Off-line AWS is weather
crop water needs [5]. stations that only record data and store data on storage media.
There are many kinds of AWS used for a monitoring Stored data can be retrieved at any time as necessary [9].
system. One of them is the Wireless Vantage Pro 2 weather AWS has features with several sensors, including a
station by Davis Instrument. To display the data on a website thermometer for measuring the temperature, an anemometer
or mobile devices, an additional module called WeatherLinkIP for measuring wind speed and direction, a hygrometer for
is needed. This module serves as a data logger to upload data measuring humidity, a barometer for measuring air pressure, a
from the console Vantage Pro directly to the website Weather rain gauge for measuring rainfall and pyrometer for measuring
link. The weaknesses of this system are the limited user solar radiation.
interface and the additional fee. The user must pay the
modules purchased separately. Furthermore, users cannot III. METHODS
change the default user interface and manually select the A. System Design
required data to be displayed on the website or mobile devices.
Wireless weather-link Vantage Pro 2 by Davis is used as
the AWS tool for the system development. Fig. 1 shows the

978-1-5386-0510-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

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design of the weather monitoring system. Weather sensor
consists of a rain sensor, temperature sensor, humidity sensor,
wind speed sensor and a solar radiation sensor. It is placed on
the roof of UPT BPI LIPI Building with the height of
approximately 17 meters from ground level. The PC Server
and the data logger is placed on the second floor. The web
server can be accessed at http://meas.bpi.lipi.go.id with IP
192.168.236.99.
Wireless transmission with the range of 300 meters is used
for the outdoor data transmission from the weather sensors to
the data logger. Weather data is processed on the web server
and can be accessed via the internet using a PC, tablet, or
mobile device. Fig. 2. HTXfiles conversion into PHP files.

B. AWS Data management

AWS data management required data of weather parameter
is taken from the Vantage Pro data logger with data
acquisition process using serial communication. The process
of data acquisition uses WeatherLink software for Windows
version 5.7.1. The software is used to configure the station, set
the unit of measure components of the weather, set the
configuration of the Internet, and retrieve weather data from
the Vantage Pro data logger console.
There are two types of data taken from the Vantage Pro
data logger console. The first type is the image data that
consists of current image data indicating the state of the
current weather and historical data image. It present the
changes of the weather in 24 hours. The second type is data in
the form of HTX file. The HTX file is used to design the UI
display and to store data temporarily. This file will be
converted to a PHP file. The conversion result of HTX file Fig. 3. Web design files scheme of weather monitoring system.
into PHP file is shown in Fig. 2.
The HTX file consists of HTML, PHP, and weather tags
Weather Sensor Smatphone/ with <! - -> format. Whereas, the PHP file consists of the
PC
(Temperature, Tablet HTML and PHP tag. The weather tag is translated to the real
humidity,
Windspeed, Rain, value of the tag itself. Web design scheme files is used to
Solar Radiation) design a monitoring system as shown in Fig. 3.
Wireless Template files of the data that will be uploaded to the web
Internet
Transmitter
server are shown in TABLE I. The template of image data on
current weather and the file template image data of 24 hours
historical weather are shown in 0TABLE III.
Fl.3
Wireless Receiver
Vantage Pro 2 –
Data Logger
TABLE I. TEMPLATE FILES UPLOADED TO THE WEB SERVER
15 M
RS232 Input File .htx Output File (.php) Description
Fl.2
Web Server index.htx index.php Files that will be
accessed when you
first opened web page
provides weather tag
Fl.1
Modem
<! - ->
data.htx data.php Row files that stores
data used to determine
Fig. 1. Design of weather monitoring system. the weather parameter
at sunrise, sunset, rain,
and no rain in the
displayed User
Interface

TABLE II. IMAGE DATA CURRENT WEATHER PARAMETER

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 • menu-solar: display the graph of solar radiation
Parameter File Output Description
Input (.gif) changes. This menu can be seen in Fig. 5.
Outside Data changes will occur during the menu transition (page
OutsideTemp.gif Current state of the temperature (oC)
Temp
OutsideHumidit
refresh) or when the 5-minute time interval has run-out. For
Outside Hum Current state of humidity (%) example, to determine the status of rain, the data is taken by
y.gif
Wind Speed WindSpeed.gif Current state of wind speed (Km/h) reading the data in the dat.php file. The status will display
Day Rain Rain.gif
Current state of rainfall situation at “rain” when the value of the <! - Rain -> is greater than 0.0
this time (mm) mm. The changes of weather parameters are displayed in 24-
Barometer Barometer.gif Current state air of barometer (mb) hour time scale, so the characteristic of weather parameter
Current state of solar radiation changes can be observed by hourly-basis.
Solar Rad SolarRad.gif
(W/m2)
To optimize the usability of the user interface, the color on
TABLE III. IMAGE DATA 24 HOURS HISTORICAL WEATHER PARAMETER the graph changes based on the weather parameter. This way,
it is easier to distinguish each parameter. The temperature
Parameter File Output Description changes, humidity changes, air pressure changes, precipitation
Input (.gif) changes, and solar radiation changes are indicated by red,
Outside OutsideTempHi Graph of outside temperature cyan, black, blue, and yellow, respectively. Fig. 6 to Fig. 10
Temperature story.gif changes during 24 hours
Outside OutsideHumidit Graph of outside humidity changes
show the graphics display of weather parameter changes
Humidity yHistory.gif during 24 hours during 24-hour on the mobile device.
Graph of rain changes during 24
Rain RainHistory.gif
hours
BarometerHistor Graph of barometer changes during
Barometer
y.gif 24 hours
Solar SolarRadHistory Graph of solar radiation changes
Radiation .gif during 24 hours

Fig. 4. Android application making use AppGeyser.

PHP files and image files are uploaded to the web server
using FTP with the data transmission time interval for 5
(a) (b)
minutes. Then, the data is read by the mobile application that Fig. 5. Weather monitoring system in the Android application a) The current
installed on mobile device. The mobile application is created weather condition, b) Graph changes the parameters for 24 hours.
using open source web service named AppGeyser
(www.appsgeyser.com) which serves to make the web
interface in android application packet format (APK). The
processing and the reading of weather data in the application
are shown in Fig. 4.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The system has been tested using a mobile device with the
5.5-inch screen and a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels (~ 267
ppi pixel density) using Android operating system MIUI v.6
Kitkat 4.4.2. The main display consists of six menus, namely:
• current menu: display all current measurement
parameters of weather conditions;
• menu-temp: display the graphs of temperature changes;
• menu-hum: display the graphs of humidity changes; Fig. 6. Graphic display of temperature change for 24 hours.
• menu-bar: display the graph of air pressure changes;
• menu-rain: display the graph of precipitation changes;

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 Before being installed on the mobile device, the file size of
this application is 684 KB. After the application is installed, it
takes 1.93 MB of the storage on the Android device. The size
increase is mainly caused by the allocation of cache memory.
In addition, the application uses an approximately 58.7 Mb of
RAM.
V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents the development of real-time weather
monitoring system based on a mobile application using
automatic weather station. The system is able to display the
information of the weather parameters via a mobile
application installed on the Android device. The application
Fig. 7. Graphic display of humidity change for 24 hours. shows the real-time weather information through the chart.
The measurement parameter includes temperature, humidity,
air pressure, rainfall and solar radiation. The user can monitor
the weather continuously through this mobile application and
can leverage the information to their needs. Through the
development of this monitoring system, the cost of the service
can be reduced, and the UI including the required weather
parameters can be adjusted. The use of 58.7 Mb RAM allows
applications to run and installed on Android devices that have
minimal RAM of 512 Mb.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by the thematic program 2017
through Technical Implementation Unit for Instrumentation
Development, Deputy for Scientific Services, Indonesian
Fig. 8. Graphic display of barometer change for 24 hours. Institute of Sciences Indonesia.
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Fig. 10. Graphic display of solar radiation for 24 hours.

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