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This page summarises the progress made during the GSOC-2017 and the future prospects of the project.
Anemometer is a device that can measure the wind speed using different types of techniques, one of them involves use of ultrasonic sound waves, known as Sonic Anemometer.In this type, we use Ultrasonic transducers that can transmit and receive waves.Time taken by Sound wave to travel the distance between transmitter and receiver is measured and hence speed of wave along that axis is determined, which actually is the vector sum of speed of sound and speed of wind.
Since speed of sound can be determined using temperature and some assumption for humidity, we can therefore find speed of wind.
- BeagleBone Black
- PRUDAQ
- Murata 40kHz tx and rx
A Portable 3D-Sonic Anemometer that can be used in external environments and can deliver result of research level standard at a rate of 20Hz i.e. provides speed of wind at rate of 20 readings per second.
Currently I have completed the software for 2D axis and 1D axis , where the 2D axis reads the samples for x and y axis transducers and temperature through the LM-35 using PRU and PRUDAQ.The testing for 1D was completed using Arduino which is described here.
For 2D axis the testing can be done for modules as described here. Currently the program provides result in interval of every 2s.
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Create a robust circuit and model that can be used outside for actual wind speed measurement.
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Since the project was built upon the BeagleBone Black Wireless, we can create a network such that the one Beaglebone acts as central node and collects speed measurement wirelessly from other boards.
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Find a method to create a circuit to implement the measurement of time of flight and speed of sound without using the temperature and humidity reading, the one I proposed in the beginning of this project in my proposal.
I would be actively contributing to this project until we achieve the first two future targets listed above, that might involve next two months once GSOC-2017 finishes.
If we compare the final cost of our project to commercially available , there is a huge huge difference, therefore once we complete this project at standard level, it can prove very useful to all amateurs, students and anyone interested in weather science.
Also if we analyse the requirements of this project, one can find that more than just algorithms and a single programming language, it requires knowledge of assembly language, Low level C,Python Science, Hardware, circuit formation, and signal processing.It is therefore no wonder that very few projects are present on internet that are open source, they might have created good setup for sonic anemometer but still they are far from commercial anemometers and also if we observe them they were created by highly experienced persons from electronics background, and then too the time involved ranges from one year to five years. However, the time to build them should decrease but one can anticipate minimum of 6 months to create a good and useful anemometer.