Development of a Cost-Effective IoT-Based Weather Monitoring System

This work explores the development and deployment of a cost-effective IoT platform to monitor and archival weather data, namely temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, and dust particles in a residential area, using open-source technologies. The IoT device sends the data to a remote virtual private server (VPS) over the Internet. A server application runs 24x7 to collect the data and logs it into a database. The necessary steps to set up a VPS server, secure it and install the IoT server application implementing the message queuing telemetry transport protocol are also described. The complete system is verified by real-time implementation using IoT devices, namely NodeMCU ESP 8266 and Raspberry Pi Zero W, along with suitable sensors. The work demonstrates the proof-of-concept feasibility of developing and deploying a scalable weather station from scratch using open-source technologies for faster time to market and the privacy and safety concerns with the end product.