RaspberryPi zero w gps/atmospheric conditions logger

For the Raspberry Pi, there's already the Sense Hat which seems to do what you'd like: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/sense-hat/

As for individual sensors, the Bosch Sensortec BME280 is one that I've wanted to try - temperature, humidity and barometric pressure in one. Unfortunately, all the eBay sellers keep sending me the BMP280 which doesn't have humidity.

Otherwise you can mix and match. I did use a Si7021/HTU21D (both are practically equivalent) as well, but that's a temperature and humidity sensor. I tend to prefer the values from this sensor, but one of mine succumbed to water ingress and died (sadly). That being said, there are many options on the market

Featured on this site was the Sensirion Environmental Sensor Shield for Arduino - not quite what you're after as it does humidity, temperature, CO2 and VOC, but I suspect the ICs on the shield can be used in much the same way.

- Gough

Thank you Gough, my only problem with the sense hat is that I'm going to use the pi zero w for this project and am trying to keep it as small as possible and have no real need for the leds. I had also looked at the Bosch bme280 and that is probably what I will go with as it has everything I am needing. Do you have any experience with the gps modules that are out there? Thank you for your speedy reply also.

I can't say I have many experiences with present-day GPS modules, but that being said, the last one I used was a Mediatek based one - this one in specific: https://www.pololu.com/product/2138

I chose this one as it's a lot more sensitive than most modules at the time and the number of tracking channels should mean uncompromised tracking ability (e.g. SIRFStarIII was previously well recognized as a benchmark of quality, but their chipsets tended to take longer to lock and were less sensitive). Modules like these generally work standalone - so anything with an acceptable UART connection can run the module, by default at 4800bps, but can be configured to higher rates especially for the "up to 10Hz" position output.

However, the downside is that highly sensitive GPS receivers sometimes have false position locks - I've had instances where the location reported for a few samples was over 2km from my actual location. The other issue is that compared to the A-GPS receivers in mobile phones, it doesn't have the assistance of internet-downloaded almanac data, thus spends longer to get its initial lock. Mobile phones also tend to offer multi-constellation capable receivers (using GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou and various SBAS/EGNOS/WAAS/QZSS/INRSS localized D-GPS) which tend to give more accurate results and more consistent locking even in difficult urban canyon environments - most modules can't do everything a mobile receiver can.

There are definitely more modern modules which might be more compact, use less power, etc. But I chose this module back in 2012 for making my own GPS logger to take on a holiday, and it was definitely a good choice back then .

- Gough

Thank you once again Gough, what I am making is for hiking in the woods so would definitely need the accuracy and I hate cell phones so don't really want to go that route. Anyways, once again thank you for your insight into these sensors.

Thank you once again Gough, what I am making is for hiking in the woods so would definitely need the accuracy and I hate cell phones so don't really want to go that route. Anyways, once again thank you for your insight into these sensors.