Building An Unconventional Home Anemometer

Using an Arduino Pro Mini Microcontroller

- Gamal Labib

Weather stations may be custom-built to measure ambient conditions and phenomena such as temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, rainfall, solar radiation, and UV index, along with wind speed and direction. Many inspiring reviews cover offthe-shelf sensors that may achieve such diverse measurements. They include selection criteria and comparative analysis of those sensors, to help readers integrate them into their own weather stations.

As an enthusiast of DIY, microcontroller-based projects, I researched the Arduino forum for ideas on building weather stations.

I landed on a set of technical difficulties that mainly focus on moving parts of such projects specifically concerned with wind speed and direction. The outcome of my research was the project described here-to build an anemometer (Figure 1) with building blocks that are inexpensive and handy, with durability in mind.

for In this project, I am building an anemometer my home, using unconventional components. For wind speed measurement, I am implementing two alternate constructsone based on a water flow sensor, and the other using a drone's coreless motor run as a generator-both of which would react to open airflow. Rotating each construct freely by the wind or at will using a stepper motor determines wind direction, sensed by an encoder switch.

I am exploiting ball bearings in a novel way to build my own slip ring. By doing this, I successfully accomplished two things at one time: smooth rotation of the wind direction mast and achieving electrical connectivity between the outer stationary ring (wired to an MCU) and the inner rotating ring (wired to the water flow sensor on top of a weather station's mast).

In this article, I describe how I used sensors and actuators out of their conventional scope of application, to solve some of the problematic areas surrounding DIY anemometers, and to demonstrate how simple craftsman effort can help realize the final product.