ElixirConf US 2018 – Did You Hear That Wind? – Frank Kumro (@frigidcode)

I’ve been fascinated with the weather, unknowingly, for years. When I first met my wife we would watch a movie during storms to pass the time. Then when a gust of wind hit the house, I would turn to her and say “Did you hear that wind?”.

Fast forward many years, we now live at a higher elevation with lots of wind. Storms would roll in and wind would hit the house. A few seconds later I would receive a message from my wife, “Did you hear that wind!”. The trolling led me to dive into the hardware space and luckily enough I would be able to use my favorite language, Elixir!

The weather station is comprised of a Raspberry Pi 3, wind speed sensor, weather proof temperature sensor, and a few other bits to make it all work. As this was my first attempt at a hardware hacking project, we can laugh (together I hope) at my mix ups and take a peak at the many components. Elixir is used with Nerves to communicate with the hardware (1 wire Dallas and MCP3008 analog to digital), persist readings to an external API (Phoenix), and display with live updates via Elm.

The talk will cover the entire stack giving a look into a project that many commented that “they wish they could do” or “I have no idea where to start”.

Audience: Beginner, Intermediate
Topics: nerves

All talks are available in the ElixirConf US 2018 Talks List or via the elixirconf2018 tag