I’m Eleonora, an italian 15 years old girl who has attended the first year of artistic high school.
I love design, in fact I draw the logo of our project and the business card that we have distributed during the Coolest Project.
I also play violin, and maybe next time I will create Teenweather soundtrack.
It’s since 2015 that I know the exciting world of Coderdojo, when Andrea told me about is direct experience.

The project take place from an odd situation: with other guys I was studying in a small room in library. The temperature was high and there wasn’t enough air recirculation.
“What are we breathing? It’s air or something else? There is a way to check …” I thought.
With my friend Andrea we talk about it with some mentors at Coderdojo and with Martina and Cristian the trip began.

So, we were looking for a cheap and smart solution to check the air quality, we decided to use the Arduino platform.
First of all we looked for sensors, and I would never have imagined that there are so many devices that can be used with Arduino.
We found devices for measuring temperature, humidity, pressure, UV intensity, PM10, PM2.5 and CO2 concentration, wind speed, rain and rain gauge.
Which one to use?
We decided to built four stations. Each station is equipped with two or three sensor, so we used all the devices mentioned above.

On Internet there are several similar project and normally the information collected are stored via wi-fi connection somewhere on the web. This means that a public or private wi-fi network is available, but it isn’t alway so.

Thus we decided to use GSM network to connect the stations. Install a GSM card on each station would have been quite expensive, so we solved the matter with a Mobile APP.
I have to say that I gave several advise to obtain an UI as friendly as possible.

Clearly we use bluetooth to connect the weather station with the phone and then the 4G network to upload data on the web.
On this way it is also possible to inquiry the weather station and know all the data collect on real time.
All the data, on the web site, are available for free, and can be used to monitorize the environment or, why not, for weather forecasts.

This amazing experience had some some challenges moments.
The first was how does sensor work.
My artistic soul isn’t so electronic oriented.
It’s easy say that the anemometer measures wind speed or the rain gauge the quantity of rain, but how do they work, and how to convert electrical signal in numbers?
Also the APP gave me some trouble, but with the help of our mentors, all the challenges had been won.

About my experience in Dublin … it was simply amazing.
Dublin is really a lovely city, during the free time a took a nice tour of the city.
When I arrived to the RDS I was a little bit worried and excited for the activities of the day like the opening ceremony, the Openet speech or the meeting with judge.
But after entering the arena, I saw many other guys, someone probably worried like me, but all happy to be a part of Coolest Project 2018.
I enjoyed being a flag-bearer, I loved to be part of TeenWeather team.
I also watched the other projects and I have to say that there were a lot of nice and original projects. How many creativity !!!

At the end of all I think that this is an exciting experience that everyone have to try.
Share my opinions and ideas, tail the project to so different people require a quite effort but is so … engaging.
Come and try this amazing experience, you will not regret.