A mixed bag here… I have built up a home-brew 'weather station' – Humidity sensor, static Pressure, temperature, wind speed and direction sensors. All sensors apart from the Wind Vane work well – The airspeed sensor consists of 3 hemisphere cups spinning, with a slotted opto sensor and some software. Calibration was done against a commercial anemometer and seems OK.
However, the wind vane suffers from too much agility. It uses a 5K ohm POT at the position sensor – the pot can rotate fully, and has a 1degree dead band and the crossover point – the pot is form a spares kit for an F1-CZ bombing computer….courtesy Dasault..
I remade the windvan, using an RC brushless motor outrunner with magnets and fitted a stationery aluminium core as an eddy current damper – works a treat.. see the video at the end on the post
The POT…
The Wind speed sensor slotted disc and opto detector.
I used a very neat processor for the project – an ESP32-S3, very Arduino like, running at near 200MHz though, with built in WiFi. All done under the stock Arduino IDE. This allowed the sensors to be fitted on the pole outside, together with a waterproof box housing the ESP32, a 3A/H 12V gell cell and a small solar panel and charger – the data is collected via WiFi network and displayed and a small Tablet PC.
The PC side of the software is all implemented using the excellent free Node Red programming environment – all using tag widgets and 'wires' to connect functions. These function are 'node' that implement all sort of functions – delay, maths, hysteresis, boolean, etc, anything and everything needed to graphically 'write' software –
You can create graphic display pages, buttons, switches, text, etc – anything needed to create even very complex PLC type controls, home automation, alarm systems, and machine control – not CNC, but PLC type control. Amazing Stuff!
The video link – Eddy Current Wind Vane damper
Edit – added the ESP32 photo
Edited By Joseph Noci 1 on 01/07/2023 23:22:55