Taking temperature readings with an Arduino seems pretty straightforward — generic thermistors are easy to wire up. But I wanted something a more precise, with actual temperature readings.
So I got this air temperature and humidity sensor, and this week I gave it a whirl.
Usually the documentation and code Sparkfun posts with its products are great. This time, they were cryptic and unhelpful (at least to me). But there’s a writeup of this kind of sensor on the Arduino.cc site, which led me to the Github page for Rob Tillaart, who wrote some code to test just this kind of sensor (and several others).
I downloaded Rob's whole Arduino package, and moved the “DHTlib” file (DHT is the kind of sensor) into my Arduino’s library folder.
Here's a diagram for the pins on the sensor:
And here’s how I wired it up, according to the instructions:
I edited Rob’s example to be specific to my version of the sensor (DHT-22), and that code is here.
After loading it onto the Arduino, I opened up the serial monitor and yay!
Next up, figuring out how text this data directly to me.
#MakeEveryWeek is a challenge to myself to do just that for all of 2015. The original post on the idea is here, and the running list of projects is here.