3d printing has really changed my brain. Now, even if something else is faster, 3d printing is such a hammer in my tool box that it just feels too easy to always go that route. Everything is a nail to 3d printing. In this case, it even looks like he probably made it faster than designing then printing would have taken him, yet I still found myself thinking "oou, I could 3d print that!"
Great weekend project Chris. I build something similar to your design a few years ago but I used reed switch and magnet for my sensor. I’m now working with my grandkids on different projects, they love your videos. Take care & we will see you next weekend.
Very nice wind speed sensor that must be the fastest pen in the universe and thank you for explaining the code it's always nice to have code explained for people like me that find it hard to understand code I would have thought cutting the balls in half was the hardest part?
I know, I've just realized. I am kicking myself. I spent so long on this video, and such a basic mistake! But this is the problem with a weekly schedule -- everything is done so quickly . . .
Oh Chris, these videos are absolutely brilliant. I can't wait to start fiddling about with my Pi (holidays pending..) So much inspiration radiating from your good work here. *seven thumbs up*
Wow - I was just searching for 'anemometer, raspberry pi' in google and you posted this 7 hrs ago! 😎 My project is AI controlled drones so wind speed along the circuit is a handy feature!
👍🙂 to further the anemometer build, the addition of direction indication, use of an array of reflectance sensor against a disc with BCD encoding for the direction... thanks for the great information. Much easier than a synchro transmitter. Hmmmmm....
Am i the only one who couldn't care less about the content of the video, but nevertheless finds himself watching due to how relaxing Christopher's presentation skills are?
I'm really enjoying these building projects and learning how to make use of something i've been curious about for a long time but could never realy get myself to a point where i could start. Thanks for teaching us!
Thanks for the wonderful Pi Day video. Keep up the around the house Pi projects. Very practical and yet very educational application of Pi technology. Cheers and stay well!
Looking forward to your next update on the greenhouse controller, it reminded me that someone on Radio 4 (GQT) said they did a thesis on watering plants because his dad always said that it's better to leave your watering hose inside the greenhouse to heat the water inside.. apparently the warm water promotes plant growth to the point where it equates to adding 6-8 weeks to the growing season 😁 sorry, I don't know why I remember these things or why I find them interesting..
Great video. I like it when something useful is created from odds and ends. I would like to see this project running on a Pico. Low power and could be battery operated. Great idea. Something to build with this kids.
Very instructional. I need to get up to speed on Pi and Python. Doing mostly Arduino for the past years. Automation in plant growing has always been an interest. Looking forward to more.
Hi Chris, That's a nice practical application of things that can be done with the Pi, particularly the use of the phone cable. I'm not sure what ideas you have for the greenhouse, or how far you want to go with it, but I have a couple of ideas that you may be interested in. One application I have been thinking about for our allotment greenhouse is to make a system whereby you can use a temperature sensor to open and close a window with a motor to regulate the temperature in the greenhouse, ideal for us tomato growers! Another idea I have would be to use a moisture sensor in the soil to control an automatic watering system. Both these ideas would need a certain amount of hardware and obviously code for them to run efficiently and be reliable, however if this was achieved it would be a great system to have in place for those times when I can't visit the allotment! Cheers for the video!
Thanks for this. Your second idea -- moisture sensor and a watering system -- are what I will be doing first. Before that I'll be posting a video on running a Pi on batteries (that can power the Pi and also the servo valve). Stay tuned!
This is an excellent project. One "good practice" coding tip is to calculate pi and save the number for subsequent use, rather than use a constant. The formula is, pi = 4.0*arctan(1.0). The advantage of this method is that the value is given to the same numerical accuracy as is available on the computer. Moreover, this is also "good practice" in the sense that it never does harm to be consistent in coding, but may sometimes do some good. Obviously, this is not important in the present application; however, it is needed for high-precision calculations.
Great video, unique and interesting. Plus I have some of these ir sensors i salvaged from old printers that use them for distance measuring. Now I understand them more. Thank you :D Not gonna lie during your schematic animation of the turbine spinning, it really bothered me that it was spinning backwards lmao.
Excellent class about putting to practical use geometric and physics concepts altogether with electronics and programming! This is so much needed for kids nowadays, they need to be inspired to get interested in learning the important stuff, double thumbs up!
This project is awesome and it just might find it's way on my roof soon. I would be very interested in a video that would explain how to put the collected weather data on a webpage (Pi hosted or otherwise). Perhaps the addition of a webcam to record sky condition and cloud coverage would be interesting as well.
I plan a further video in which I show how to get Python code to write data to a Google Sheet (spreadsheet0, which can then be embedded (data and/or graph) on a web page -- and accessed from anywhere.
Thanks for the video. Just started with pi pico and micropyphon. My first project is going to be a weather station. I am planning on powering it from a super capacitor charged via a solar panel. I think the pico is a better option because of it very low power sleep mode. I will be using Hall effect transistors for wind speed pulsing as LEDs are power hungry. My best regards Chris
You may find useful my Pico Weather Station video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3q807OdvtH0.html Python and MicroPython are not quite the same! :)
Excellent stuff. Thanks for sharing. You may want to build a Nodered dashboard. It is preinstalled on the pi and easypeasy to configure. Also some weather services such as the DWD offer nodes where you can compare and finetune your DIY measurements. Keep on the excellent work. Highly appreciated.
Excellent! I really appreciate practical examples using the raspberry pi. Would you consider adding a rain gauge? I am looking forward to your next installment of upgrading an old pc as well.
@@ExplainingComputers ok, then I have to specify. It's the first video of you I've ever watched where any code was shown and therefore of course explained 😉
Good Stuff Sir. I can use this idea to calculate wind speeds from my 500W Wind turbine under construction. Employing the same sensor Idea on the Blade hub . Originally I was going to use a HALL sensor. Tachometer .
You can calibrate an anemometer by having someone drive you in a car while you hold your DIY device out the window. Compare speedo readings with anem. readings at several speeds: 5, 10, 15, 20...etc. Take readings both against and with the wind and use average. Using this method, you can develop calibration factors.
Love the craftiness of this. Need to hit the hobby shop and pick up some of that plastic! Does the RPi have some equivalent to an Arduino Interrupt Service Routine? I'm sure you'll never get fast enough wind to spin too fast for the Pi (without exploding the anemometer), but it might be a way to simplify the code counting the pulses. 👍
Very interesting. It’s a very windy day here in Catalunya so I might need something more heavy duty than ping pong balls. By the way, at 3:38 you say 'in theory when the wind blows it will spin round'. Perhaps not in that direction, though - it seems that Andy Anemometer is a bit of a rebel.
A great build! Would be interesting to add some "weather vane" to record wind direction and to graph a wind rose. By the way isn't Pi an overkill for this project?
Yes, I intend to add wind direction at some point. As noted as the start of the video, this is a Raspberry Pi project -- a lot of people have them lying around -- so I used a Pi. Other, less powerful hardware (such as a Pi Pico!) could be used.
If you can find an old mouse that used a ball you could take the optical interrupter sensor and a while with gaps to do the same thing in a smaller package.. Yo could time ti to an IRQ and use the time between pulses to give you the wind speed. I would move away from the pi to an esp-32 and use that as your sensor platform and send the data to the pi over wifi Maybe even use a solar panel to power it. A better axel and bearing would also really help.
Amazing project. If you need a 3d printed system design with bearing and all kinds of cool stuff all the community including myself is ready to help. Also just FYI in python3, unlike python2 the result or the division of a float by an integer is a float so you don't have to cast in the code.
You maybe could use your data u generate with the weather station to properly water your plants in advance, measure the acid levels of your soil, regulate your humidity and UV exposure by window opening mechanisms of your greenhouse.
Im curious how your anemometer data will compare to the met office readings. Hope you revisit this with a tear down after its been deployed for some time.
Christopher, I like your presentation today. It was a great demonstration. I have a question about reading the sensor: The Linux kernel that you're running on the Raspberry Pi is not a Real-Time OS. When reading the GPIO pins connected to the Anemometer, the OS may introduce some jitter into the captured data. Do you think this would significantly impact the quality of the wind speed data? Also,, will you be able to calibrate your home-built anemometer (or the algorithm) with any kind of external reference? Thanks, -P
Thanks for this. The timing from the OS clock will be accurate enough, and not the most significant aspect of inaccuracy here! :) Calibration against an external reference would certainly be possible (by changing the anemometer factor to that the results on the Pi match a more accurate device).
Excellent project but the wobble in the biro is disturbing... your cutout hole should be fractionally smaller, with a cylindrical matching groove ground in the biro - you could do this easily by chucking the biro in an electric drill and rounding a section with a small file..
Great video as always I would place the white rotation dot, vertical instead, so dust would not influance the output of the IR sender/reciver Thanks for sharing your experience :-)
A rain gauge would be quite easy to make using the same optical sensor. My weather station's one is a little see-saw with a thimble-sized cup one end and a counterbalance weight the other. As the cup fills with rain it tips that end down and empties itself, so flips back. You just need to count the tips over a fixed time and convert to mm rain / hour.
This is a great video and I have made my own wind speed sensor from your inspiring video, however I am struggling to do the gusts side of things and having the counter reset at midnight or a pre determined time each day or after every 3, 6, 12 or 24 hours lets say. Are you able to do a video on this?
Very interesting. I always wanted to make a smart home based on a Linux connected device. All the bits are available and cheap, just have to put them together...
Tidy, nice build sir, guessing some people will 3D print the case so you could use fidget spinner bearings to reduce friction.. would you calibrate and derive the "A factor" using the met office wind speed.. theres also a newish app called 'Windy' that you could use..
