anemometer on soldernerd

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 30: Downsized Hardware

Sun, 05 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post of this series I’ve looked at different transducers and finally decided on a entirely waterproof 14mm model. The much lower signal level from those kind of transducers makes it necessary to reduce the distance between the transducers in order to still receive a reasonable signal amplitude. So I took my previous lasercut design and reduced it in size so that the distance between the transducers is only 120mm. I went to the local FabLab and and lasered two copies of the downsized design.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 28: New hardware tested

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I last time proudly presented the new RevB board and got a lot of feedback from people who want one, too. As mentioned I have all the components here to ship up to 10 kits but I was reluctant to send anything until I had the chance to do some hardware testing. Not much had changed since the last revision but I don’t like taking chances on things like this.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 27: Ready to take pre-orders

Sat, 03 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Good news: the boards from dirtypcbs.com have arrived and look great. I also got all the components for the 11 boards. Why 11? I ordered about 10 (they call it a protopack) and was lucky enough to get 11. Thats dirtypcbs.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 26: Rev B Board ordered

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I recently ordered my first PCB at dirtypcbs.com and the result was promising. So there was nothing stopping me from finalizing the Rev B of my standalone Ultrasonic Anemometer and ordering a protopack. I’ve placed the order a few days ago and expect the boards to arrive here in 2 to 3 weeks. This should be good news for all those of you who have been asking for kits and want to contribute to the further developement of this project. I’ll build up one or two boards as soon as they get here and do some testing. If everything works as planned I can order some more components and ship some kits soon after that.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 25: I2C Interfacing and more

Thu, 11 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a long six weeks since my last post but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t done anything since. Among other things, I wrote some code to get the I2C interface working and hooked the anemometer up to an Arduino Uno with an LCD display attached. Apart from demonstrating the I2C interface this also nice for testing. For the first time I can see what this thing is measuring in real time without hooking it up to a PC over USB.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 24: New Microcontroller and Software Controlled Gain

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been almost three weeks since my last post and some further progress has been made. I’ve upgraded the microcontroller and can now control the gain of the second amplifier stage in software. But let’s look at the changes in some more detail.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 23: First successful measurements

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post I was happy to report that I managed to get the USB interface to work. This interface has since proved to be extremely valuable in software development and testing. While the device is taking measurements you can look at the results (or intermediate results) at your PC in real time. You can even log large amounts of data to a .csv file and inspect the results in Excel.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 22: USB up and running

Sat, 28 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I showed you the nice new hardware of the new standalone ultrasonic anemometer. But at that time I had hardly any software written for it so I couldn’t do much with its 32 bit microcontroller. So the last two or three weeks I spend lots of time writing code that I’d like to share with you today.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 21: Standalone Anemometer Hardware

Sat, 14 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I went through the design of my new standalone anemometer. Now it’s time to build this thing and see if it works as planned.

After I fried a couple of chips on my driver circuit testing board due to a wrong chip in the power supply I was a bit more careful this time and built up the board step by step.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 20: Standalone Anemometer Design

Wed, 11 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I outlined my reasons to ‘go digital’ by adding a powerful on-board microcontroller and designing a standalone wind meter.

In the weeks that followed that decision I tried to find a suitable microcontroller and to design a prototype. Today I’ll show you the result of that work.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 19: Testing the Analog Circuit

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post I went through the design of the analog part of the ultrasonic anemometer. Today we will see how the circuit designed last time performs in practice.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 18: Analog Signal Processing

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I’ve sucessfully tested the new driver ciruit for my ultrasonic anemometer. It performed even better than I expected and I will be happy to use it pretty much as it is.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 16: Testing the new driver circuit

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I’ve presented my new design for the ultrasonic anemometer driver circuit. So now it’s time to see how it performs. If you’re new to this project you might want to check out the overview page or at least my last post.

Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 15: A new attempt

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been about one and a half years since I started out with my ultrasonic anemometer project. Like others before me I had to notice that this a much more demanding project than it appears to be at first. After countless hours of development and testing I have built this Arduino shield. It worked but the reliability of the measurements was never what I had aimed for. The problem was mainly how to figure out the absolute phase of the received signal. So the measurements were always precise - but sometimes off by a full wavelength. Then I was more or less inactive for most of 2015, mainly due to personal reasons. So the project was kind of stuck but i kept (and keep) getting a lot of encouraging feedback from you folks. I came up with new circuit ideas and decided to pretty much start with an entirely new design and to re-think each and every design choice I had made back then.

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 14: Wind Tunnel Testing

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted the last update on the anemometer project. The reason for this is that I’m struggling with the aerodynamical design.

By the way: Click here for an overview over the ultrasonic anemometer project: /projects/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer/

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 13: Arduino library finally ready

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since the last post of this series. As so often, the task turned out to be more demanding than I first thought. And then I was also entirely new to assembly language, got distracted by my Inductance Meter Project (/posts/arduino-based-inductance-meter/) and went on a skiing holiday. But finally, the promised library is ready.

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 12: Working on an Arduino library

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This is just a very brief update on what I’ve been working on the last few days. By now, this blog has caught up with where the project currently stands so the blog posts won’t be quite as frequent as they used to be. When I just started this series I had already worked on this my wind meter project for two months so I had plenty of material I only had to post.

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 11: Testing the new hardware

Sun, 30 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today I’ll go through each part of my new Arduino shield to see if it performs as expected.

If you’re new to my Arduino-based ultrasonic wind meter project, you might want to click here for an overview: /projects/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer/

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 10: Arduino Shield Ready

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A world’s first: Ultrasonic Anemometer Shield for Arduino Uno

I’m happy to announce that my new Arduino wind meter shield is ready. I had posted the design as well as a photo or two of the naked board in my last post but now I’ve placed and soldered all the numerous components and it’s ready to go.

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 9: A new hardware

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

My first wind meter prototype is kind of working. The software will need improvement to make this wind meter into something really useful. But both hardware and software are basically functional and can be built up upon.

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 8: More Software

Sat, 22 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post I talked about how to get the Arduino to output bursts of 40kHz pulses. Today I’ll go through the rest of the software so by the end of this post we’ll have a very rudimentary but working sketch for our ultrasonic wind meter.

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 7: Basic software

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today I’ll tell you how I got started with my software. If you’re new to my blog you might want to click here for an overview over my arduino-based wind meter project: /projects/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer/

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 6: Mechanical design

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve read through my previous posts of this series you know that here is an Arduino and two home-made PCBs together with 4 transducers waiting to work together as an ultrasonic wind meter. If you haven’t you may click here for an overview of posts on my anemometer project: /projects/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer//posts/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer-part-6-mechanical-design/

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 5: Testing the digital board

Mon, 17 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In the last post I went through the analog board and showed what I had to do to get it working properly. Today I’ll do the same whith the digital board. Click here for an overview over this series of posts on the anemometer project: /projects/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer/

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 4: Testing the analog board

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will go through the testing of the analog circuit and what I had to do to make it work properly. Click here for an overview over this series of posts on the anemometer project: /projects/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer/

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 3: Analog Circuit

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today I’ll go through the details of the analog cirquit. Click here for an overview over this series of posts on the anemometer project: /projects/arduino-ultrasonic-anemometer/

The analog board ready to be connected

This is what I would consider the heart of this wind meter. This is where the received signal is amplified and processed so the overall accuracy and reliability of the entire project really depends on it. The functionality of this board can be summarized as follows:

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 2: Digital Circuit

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m keeping my word and continue to document this project that I’ve been working on over the last two or so months. In this post I will talk about the digital part of the circuit.

Arduino Ultrasonic Anemometer Part 1: Getting started

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first of a series of posts to follow. I will describe my attempts to build an ultrasonic wind meter (anemometer) based on an Arduino Uno. By the time of writing, I have a working prototype but it will take me a while to catch up in this blog. So this is just the first post - more will follow soon.