Chacmool is the name of my new weather project. This is to keep me off the streets since I'm not doing an Open University degree anymore. The idea (long term) is to make automated weather observations and use "artificial intelligence" to try and predict the weather.
This project will live in the garden shed, run on solar power and be controlled using a Raspberry Pi computer.
I've already done a lot of the fun stuff, i.e., buying various parts off Ebay and Aliexpress but I intend to keep some sort of log of my progress from here on in.
Why is it called Chacmool?
I saw a chacmool statue in Merida, Mexico a few years ago and thought it was sort of cool. And according to Wikipedia, "Aztec chacmools bore water imagery and were associated with Tlaloc, the rain god." That's all the excuse I need.
Why an AI weather station?
I've read "Make Your Own Neural Network" by Tariq Rashid and it was an excellent book - I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to know how things like 'deep learning' (or whatever it's called this year) work. That got me idly wondering what I could use a neural network for, other than reading hand-written digits (the classic 'hello world' application of AI). On the hardware side, I'd already got some bits from an abandoned shed-based project to use a Raspberry Pi for "off-site backup". That gave me the idea then that I could build a shed-bound neural network and feed it with sheddy weather data - and see what happens...