Weather station

In this tutorial we are using an ESP32 with the Bosch BME280 sensor; an environmental sensor measuring temperature, the relative humidity, and the atmospheric pressure.

This example illustrates the difference between running a Toit program once on an ESP32 and deploying the same program as a long-lived app by using an app specification file.

The code examples shown in this tutorial are also available here.

Connect the sensor

Follow the steps here to connect the BME280 sensor with your ESP32 using a Qwiic cable.

Install package

If you haven't installed the Toit CLI and the Visual Studio Code language extension for Toit yet, follow this guide before proceeding with the tutorial.

In order to get data from the sensor we make use of the BME280 driver available as a package from pkg.toit.io.

Open Visual Studio Code, and create a new file. Paste the following Toit program into the file and save the file as: weather_station.toit:

/**
Program measuring temperature, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure
  with a BME280.
*/

import gpio
import i2c
import bme280

main:
  bus := i2c.Bus
    --sda=gpio.Pin 21
    --scl=gpio.Pin 22

  device := bus.device bme280.I2C_ADDRESS_ALT

  driver := bme280.Driver device

  print "Temperature: $driver.read_temperature C"
  print "Humidity: $driver.read_humidity %"
  print "Pressure: $driver.read_pressure Pa"

Then, open a terminal window in VSCode and execute the following commands in order to install the BME280 driver package locally:

toit pkg sync
toit pkg init
toit pkg install bme280

Run Toit program

If you want to know more about what is happening in each step in the Toit program above, see here.

Running a Toit program in this way means that it will be uninstalled from the device once the program has terminated.

Deploy app

We can use the same Toit program to repeatedly measure the temperature, humidity, and pressure every 30 seconds by deploying it on the ESP32 using the following app specification file:

# filename: weather_station.yaml

# This app specification file executes the 'Weather Station' app on install
# and subsequently every 30 seconds.

name: Weather Station
entrypoint: weather_station.toit
triggers:
  on_install: true
  on_interval: 30s

Save the content of the above yaml specification into a file named weather_station.yaml located in the same directory as the weather_station.toit file from the previous step.

Deploy the Weather Station app on your ESP32 with the CLI command

toit deploy weather_station.yaml

If you haven't set your default device in the CLI, add -d device-name to the deploy command, where device-name is the name of your ESP32.

View logs

The device log will show the three measurements every 30 seconds after the program has been installed on the device.

Uninstall app

View all installed apps (or waiting to be installed) on your device from the Apps tab in the Toit console.