ParaMETEO (formerly ParaTNC) firmware for weather station

// Please look into 'doc' directory for more documentation and user manuals // WARNING: This readme could be sligtly outdated due to my lack of time :)

INTRODUCTION

ParaMETEO (and formerly ParaTNC) are two APRS weather station controllers. Both of them has common set of available features: AFSK 1200bd DSP modem, weather station controller, APRS radio network digipeater, RS232 interface to communication to/from host PC using KISS protocol (a.k.a. KISS modem).

ParaTNC was first platform, with roots coming as far as 2012. Currently, this platform is no longer supported and has been deprecated. It was using STM32F100 micro, which has too many limitations, to support all new features.

ParaMETEO is full outdoor and easy to install, complete APRS device which can be supplied with power either from mains and PV system. The most important software feature, which was also the main reason to abandon ParaTNC/STM32F100 target, is moving from bare-metal-NoRTOS software to FreeRTOS. Starting from FA00 version, the ParaMETEO firmware is an embedded application runing on top of FreeRTOS kernel.

Current feature set:

• Two directional KISS TNC (no init strings required).
• WIDE1-1 digipeater, with an option to limit digipeating only to SSIDs 7, 8 and 9.
• Weather station with support for various meteo sensors. Full list of supported devices in point section below.
• Extensive telemetry with an information about the count of receved, transmitted and digipeated frames plus status of weather sensors.
• Support for VE.Direct serial protocol used in Victron PV charging controllers. The data about currents and voltages in the PV system are transmitted using APRS telemetry.
• Support for UMB Binary porotocol as a mater.
• Support for Modbus RTU
• integrated MPPT charger for 12V AGM battery enclosed in the same case.
• integrated GSM module and support for APRS-IS communication (can run RX-igate)
• support for MAX31865 amplifier for 2, 3 or 4-wire PT100/PT1000 temperature sensor
• 7.5V dc converter to supply HT radio installed in the case for APRS radio network

LICENSING

ParaTNC software and hardware are licensed under terms included to the source code in 'LICENSE' file

SUPPORTED METEO SENSORS

• Wind sensors:
  • Davis 6410 or any another analogue anemometer with resisntance as a direction output and impulses as a windspeed
  • Lufft V200A/Ventus or any other UMB compatible device.
  • Any Modbus-RTU sensor
• Pressure Sensors:
  • MS5611
  • Bosh BMP280
  • Any UMB protocol compatible device
  • Any Modbus-RTU sensor
• Temperature sensors:
  • Dallas One wire DS18B20
  • Two, three or four wire PT100/PT1000
  • Any UMB protocol compatible device
  • Any Modbus-RTU sensor
• Humidity Sensors:
  • DHT22
  • Bosh BMP280
  • Any Modbus-RTU sensor (F&F MB-AHT1 is recommended)

TELEMETRY

TBD

CONFIGURATION

Harcoded values from station_config.h are then used as defaults. Normally firmware loads config from separate sections in flash memory. Configuration is stored twice in two section, to enable easy and safe configuration change from host pc. Each section has a programming counter and CRC value. Software calculates checksum and use last good configuration.

		-> Defaults (only ParaTNC): 0x0801E000
		-> First section: 0x0801E800
		-> Second section: 0x0801F000

The KISS modem runs on default speed of 9600 bps. Telemetry is enabled by default and it will trasmit channels values each 10 minutes and full channel descriptions each 70 minutes.

TOOLCHAIN

To build the ParaTNC software 'GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain' is required. This set contains gcc-arm-none-eabi compiler, gdb debugger, linker, HEX generator and set of libraries. ParaTNC is/was developed in Xubuntu 16.04LTS, 20.04LTS, 22.04 and 24.04LTS using toolchain in version 2018-q2. Please take note that You have to use 64-bit version of the operation system as the 32-bit variant of the toolchain is not avaliable.

This firmware is developed using Eclipse IDE for Embedded C/C++ Developers in Version: 2023-03 (4.27.0)

Exact GCC version is 7.3.1 and it present itself with a string like this below gcc version 7.3.1 20180622 (release) [ARM/embedded-7-branch revision 261907] (GNU Tools for Arm Embedded Processors 7-2018-q2-update)

Self conatined TAR.BZ2 archive with all required tools can be found here: https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-software/developer-tools/gnu-toolchain/gnu-rm/downloads in 'What's new in 7-2018-q2-update' section pulled down from the list located in the middle of this site. Alternatively You can use this link: http://pogoda.cc/d/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2018-q2-update-linux.tar.bz2

After download the content of this archive has to be uncompressed into: /usr/local/bin/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2018-q2-update/ so the structure should looks like this

mateusz@mateusz-ThinkCentre-M720q:/usr/local/bin/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2018-q2-update$ ls -la
total 24
drwxrwxr-x 6 mateusz mateusz 4096 paź 10 08:35 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root    root    4096 paź 10 18:06 ..
drwxr-xr-x 6 mateusz mateusz 4096 cze 22  2018 arm-none-eabi
drwxr-xr-x 2 mateusz mateusz 4096 cze 22  2018 bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 mateusz mateusz 4096 cze 22  2018 lib
drwxr-xr-x 4 mateusz mateusz 4096 cze 22  2018 share
mateusz@mateusz-ThinkCentre-M720q:/usr/local/bin/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2018-q2-update$ 

Both a makefile and an Eclipse project are configured to look for toolchain in this directory. In some cases to perform a debugging in Elipse You will have to install libncurses5 library which is required to start GDB. To check if this is a case try to start the debugger manually by issuing such command in the prompt

'/usr/local/bin/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2018-q2-update/bin/arm-none-eabi-gdb --version'

If such result will be printed in the console, libncurses5 must be installed, prefferably using system package manager like aptitude in Debian/Ubuntu

'libraries: libncurses.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory'

To start debugging session in Eclipse you must create new 'GDB OpenOCD Debugging' configuration and set paths to OpenOCD and GDB in 'Debugger' tab. OpenOCD usually sits in '/usr/bin/openocd', the path to GDB is shown in the paragraph before. Remember to set 'Config Options:' to tell the OpenOCD what JTAG adapter/debugger is used in Your setup. If You're using ST-Link/V2 paste '-f interface/stlink-v2.cfg -f target/stm32f1x_stlink.cfg'

DOWNLOADING THE SOURCE CODE AND COMPILING IT

When everything is installed the reporistory can be cloned to local harddrive by using a command 'git clone https://github.com/sp8ebc/ParaTNC'

The example config file is named 'station_config_example.h' and should be edited and then renamed to 'station_config.h'. When everything is configured it is a time to go to 'Debug' directory and invoke command 'make' there. The source should be automatically compiled and new hex file 'ParaTNC.hex' should appear in the same directory. Please do not use Release configuration!! It is screwed and produces an application which doesn't works exactly as it should because of optimalization configuration.

Finished building target: ParaTNC.elf

Invoking: Cross ARM GNU Create Flash Image
arm-none-eabi-objcopy -O ihex "ParaTNC.elf"  "ParaTNC.hex"
Finished building: ParaTNC.hex

Invoking: Cross ARM GNU Print Size
arm-none-eabi-size --format=berkeley "ParaTNC.elf"
   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
  50542	    576	   5544	  56662	   dd56	ParaTNC.elf
Finished building: ParaTNC.siz


22:29:38 Build Finished (took 13s.231ms)

LOADING THE HEX FILE USING THE SERIAL BOOTLOADER

If You don't have a JTAG programmer/debugger, or You just not want to or can't use it for any reason, You can choose Internal Serial Bootloader provided by STMicroelectronics. It's code is stored in a mask ROM within microcontroler and can be used anytime, and in case of ParaTNC it cannot be disabled or locked.

To use serial bootloader You need:

• RJ45 to DB9 Cisco style RS232 cable
• FlashLoader Demonstrator software provided by STMicroelectronics for free

The required software can be downloaded from this link: https://www.st.com/en/development-tools/flasher-stm32.html It is advised to read the user manual for this tool before proceding further. To jump to the bootloader You shall disconnect power to ParaMETEO, then use something to short the jumper located by the JTAG connector and with jumper shorted, reconnect the power supply. If procedure success You shall NOT se LEDs blinking for a short while. After the power supply is connected and micro stays in bootloader, you can disconnect the jumper and start the FlashLoader software to download the HEX file to micro. After process is done you should do a power reset without jumper shorter.

LOADING THE HEX FILE INTO ParaTNC or ParaMETEO TARGET USING STLINK/V2

'git clone git://github.com/texane/stlink.git'
'cd stlink.git'
'make'
'cd build/Relase'
'sudo cp st-* /usr/bin'

mateusz@mateusz-ThinkCentre-M720q:~/Documents/___STM32/ParaTNC/STM32L476_ParaMETEO$ st-flash erase
st-flash 1.7.0-120-gbeffed4
/usr/local/stlink/chips: No such file or directory
2023-11-17T07:43:18 INFO common.c: L47x/L48x: 96 KiB SRAM, 1024 KiB flash in at least 2 KiB pages.
Mass erasing

and then programming itself

mateusz@mateusz-ThinkCentre-M720q:~/Documents/___STM32/ParaTNC/STM32L476_ParaMETEO$ st-flash --format ihex write ParaTNC.hex
st-flash 1.7.0-120-gbeffed4
/usr/local/stlink/chips: No such file or directory
2023-11-17T07:44:47 INFO common.c: L47x/L48x: 96 KiB SRAM, 1024 KiB flash in at least 2 KiB pages.
2023-11-17T07:44:47 INFO common.c: Attempting to write 111504 (0x1b390) bytes to stm32 address: 134217728 (0x8000000)

2023-11-17T07:44:48 INFO common.c: Finished erasing 55 pages of 2048 (0x800) bytes
2023-11-17T07:44:48