Okay, so today I decided to mess around with making some temperature and humidity gauges. I’ve been wanting to monitor the conditions in my basement, where I keep some of my brewing stuff, so this seemed like a fun little project.
First, I had to gather my materials. For this, I grabbed:
- A few DHT11 sensors (I had some lying around).
- An Arduino Uno (Could have used a Nano, but the Uno was closer).
- Some jumper wires.
- A breadboard (for easy connections).
Connecting Everything Up
Wiring was pretty straightforward. I followed a basic DHT11 setup guide I found by, you know, typing into the search box. I could recall from memory:
- VCC on the DHT11 to 5V on the Arduino.
- GND on the DHT11 to GND on the Arduino.
- Data pin on the DHT11 to digital pin 2 on the Arduino.
I used the breadboard to make it all neat, but honestly, you could just directly connect the wires if you’re feeling lazy.
Getting the Code Working
Next, I hit up the computer.
I had to install the DHT sensor library and the Adafruit Unified Sensor library.
Then, I cobbled together some basic code. It was mostly copy-paste from examples, with a few tweaks. Basically, the code does the following:
- Initializes the DHT11 sensor.
- Reads the temperature and humidity.
- Prints the values to the Serial Monitor.
I uploaded the code to the Arduino and…bam! I was getting readings! It was showing the temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit, and the humidity as a percentage. Pretty cool, right?
Making It Practical
So, just seeing numbers on the Serial Monitor is neat, but not super useful. My next step is to add a small display, to show the readings without needing to hook it up to my computer. I’m thinking a little LCD screen. That’s for another day, though.
For now, I’m just happy I got the basic sensor readings working. It’s always satisfying to see your little projects come to life, even if it’s just some numbers on a screen. It’s a small win, and those small wins are what keeps me going.
