Making OurWeather outdoor ready

I backed the original OurWeather project on Kickstarter back when it first surfaced. However, the components have been sitting idle in a cabinet waiting for my older child to become old enough to enjoy and understand assembling the weather station. Today was the day...

Building was fun and all went quite smoothly apart from a dead micro USB cable.

Making OurWeather ready to be actually placed outdoor is where the challenge starts. I have got weatherproof IP67 outdoor enclosures, cable glands and vent plugs left over from a previous project. However, there are a few challenges:

• I can't feed the RJ45 plugs from anemometer/wind vane and rain bucket through the cable glands. Besides:
  
  • The cables are not round but "flat" which doesn't give a good seal inside the cable gland
  • I don't have the proper tools or the nerve to cut off the RJ45 plugs, feed the cable through the glands and "somehow" reconnect/reattach them inside the enclosure.
• Same goes for the Grove humi & temp sensor (cable is round, though).
• Similar story for the MicroUSB connection to power the system.
  
  • While I can feed a regular power cord (110/220V) through a cable gland and keep the 5V USB power supply inside the enclosure I'd rather not as that's a bit clunky.
  • I can use a very long, and round, USB cable and hope I find a power outlet close enough to the weather station. I'd then plug the USB power supply directly into the wall socket. USB cables max out at 5m though and there's still the problem of feeding the MicroUSB plug through a cable gland.
  • Ideally I could feed 5V DC from outside and solder a regular DC terminal block to the WeatherPlus board.

I'm not an electrical engineer and I'm sure I overlooked a few options. On the other hand I assume lots of OurWeather users have placed their stations outside successfully.

How did you set it up?

I did notice that the SLD shop mentions a "Weatherproofing Extender Kit" but it's not yet available.