SenseWeather: Based weather monitoring system for Kenya

Like many other developing countries of Africa, Kenya´s rain-fed agriculture is the backbone of the economy. As such, the Country´s economy and weather are so intertwined that a good season means healthy economy and famine, and death otherwise. The status of weather forecasting in Kenya is rather wanting partly because the data used is collected from very sparse network of professional weather stations. Procuring and maintaining these stations is a costly affair for the Country still struggling to meet basic needs for her population. Developments in sensor technology have resulted in affordable and sustainable weatherboards that can operate as mini-weather stations. Though not as good as professional weather stations, these boards can be used to complement the networks of weather stations, hence improving the accuracy of weather forecasts produced by the Kenya Meteorological Department. We present SenseWeather, a weather monitoring system that we developed using Agriculture Boards from Libelium. In this paper, we describe the design, sensor calibration and deployment of SenseWeather.