Cloud Sensor -- We have data!

The MLX90614 eval board arrived at last. I managed to get the header pins soldered on without melting much, and hooked up to the Raspberry Pi. The default firmware logs the temperature in Fahrenheit to the serial port every tenth of a second, and I was able to read it out with screen without a problem.

Next up was adjusting the firmware slightly to slow it down a bit, write out ambient temperature as well, and to switch to Celsius. (Cue feeling bad about not using Kelvin.) That took all of ten minutes, so huzzah for that.

Finally, I set up an account at ThingSpeak.com (free as in beer, plus free as in freedom software, plus export of data whenever you like), and set up a stupid simple script to send data both to a CSV file and to, you know, the cloud. The result? SWEET, SWEET FREEDOM:

Clockwise from top left, that's: sky temperature (sensor pointing up), ambient temperature, and the delta (ambient - sky). It's interesting to see how smooth the ambient temp is compared to the sensor temp.

Oh, and here's a shot of how it looks sitting on top of the BBQ outside:

Not at all weatherproof, of course, so that comes next. With the way I soldered the header pins on (all pointing up), that's going to be a challenge; I may de-solder them and have the top as bare as possible. That would let me (say) drill a hole in a Tupperware container, push the sensor through, then epoxy around it for waterproofing. As for the Pi...not too sure. I may try to mount it out of the weather, then run the sensor out under the sky.