Homemade Easter Egg Anemometer - in any wind generator installation, it's critical to be able to measure wind speed. That gives you a baseline against which to measure your machine's performance, and anemometers respond much more quickly to changes in wind speed than do wind generators. Commercial anemometers __ Contact OtherPower.com
How I Built a Wind Generator in My Backyard for $150. Part 1 - I've been spending a great deal of time working on ways to generate my own electricity. it isn't a necessity for me yet, but someday being electrically self-sufficient could really come in handy. My interest started a __ Designed by Kevin Harris, Oklahoma Lately
How I Built a Wind Generator in My Backyard for $150. Part 2. - Tools Required Surprisingly, building a simple wind generator only requires very basic hand tools, and if you are desperate you won't necessarily need all of them. I used Jigsaw (or a hacksaw and a lot of determination) Drill (2) Drill Bits __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I Built a Wind Generator in My Backyard for $150. Part 3 - The next obstacle is building a hub to attach the blades to. There are many types of ways that this can be done. I have used circular sawblades and scrap steel disks. I recommend the sawblade approach, as they are readily __ Designed by Hub Blade Assembly
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 1 - Several years ago I bought some remote property in Arizona. I am an astronomer and wanted a place to practice my hobby far away from the sky-wrecking light pollution found near cities of any real size. I found a great piece of property. __ Designed by Mike Davis
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 2 - I managed to score one of the good 30 volt Ametek motors off of Ebay. for only $26. They don't go that cheap these days. People are catching on to the fact that they make great wind generators. Other brands will work, so don't fret about the price __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 3 - Next I needed a mounting for the turbine. Keeping it simple, I opted to just strap the motor to a piece of 2 X 4 wood. The correct length of the wood was computed by the highly scientific method of picking the best looking piece of scrap 2 X 4 off __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 4 - I never got a chance to properly test the unit before heading to Arizona. One windy day though, I did take the head outside and hold it high up in the air above my head into the wind just to see if the blades would spin it as well as I had hoped. __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 5 - in operation, the wind turbine is connected to the controller. Lines then run from the controller to the battery. All loads are taken directly from the battery. if the battery voltage drops below 11.9 volts, the controller switches the turbine __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 6 - The first order of business was setting up and bracing the tower. After arriving at my property and unloading my van, I drove to the nearest Home Depot (about 60 miles one way) and bought the 10 foot long piece of 1 1/4 inch conduit I needed for __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 7 - This photo shows the controller, battery and associated electronics all wired up. I have a 120V inverter connected to the battery and a multimeter to keep track of the battery voltage and wind turbine output voltage. Also my electric shaver and __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 8 - This web site has become very popular. Thank you all for your interest and encouragement. I am getting tons of email questions from people about all sorts wind power related (and not so related) issues. Many are the same few questions asked over __ Designed by Radio LocMan
How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine. Part 9 - UPDATE 05/17/07 Here is a photo of me setting up the wind turbine on my remote property during our May 2007 trip to Arizona. I had left most of the equipment on-site in Arizona. I only brought the turbine head and charge controller back home with __ Designed by Radio LocMan
Low-Cost Anemometer Fights Dust - 08/30/01 EDN Design Ideas: As higher levels of power dissipation underscore the need for cooling, andfans are finding their way into small electronic enclosures. The dust that fans pull into these enclosures can, however, cause major problems for high-reliabi Design by Jim Christensen, Maxim Integrated Products, Sunnyvale, CA
Micro wind power with a Savonius rotor. Part 1. - This wind turbine cost nothing virtually nothing to make and can produce enough power for small applications There are many situations where you might need a small amount of electricity, for instance running gate openers, safety __ Designed by Lance Turner
Micro wind power with a Savonius rotor. Part 2. - Generating the power The generator I used was actually a large permanent magnet DC motor from an old vertical computer tape drive. These are very robust, well built motors about the size of a large car starter motor. They are simple __ Designed by Lance Turner
Self-Heated Transistor Digitizes Airflow - 13-Mar--96 EDN Design Ideas: A sensitive and reliable way to measure airflow is to exploit the predictable relationship between airspeed and the heat dissipated by a sensor exposed to the flow while being held at a constant temperature differential above ambient. The power required to maintain the elevated sensor temperature is proportional to the square root of the airspeed (King's law). The popular hot-wire anemometer uses this principle, but suffers from the disadvantage of using a relatively fragile airflow sensor, a thin metallic filament Design by Stephen Woodward, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Transistor & FVCs Make Linear Anemometer - 09/26/96 EDN Design Ideas: The basic operation of this front-end sensor is identical to that of the earlier circuit. Q1 is the self-heated airflow sensor; Q2 senses ambient temperature. Zero-adjust resistor R2 sets the zero-airflow quiescen Design by W Stephen Woodward, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Wind Direction & AirFlow Measurement - The LTC2990 is used to monitor system temperatures, voltages and currents. Through the i2C serial interface, the device can be configured to measure many combinations of internal temperature, remote temperature, remote voltage, remote current and internal VCC. The internal 10ppm/°C reference minimizes the number of supporting __ Linear Technology/Analog Devices App Note, Mar 16th 2011
Wind gauge - On this page, I will introduce the wind gauge using PIC . There are various methods of measuring the speed of a wind. With this equipment, a hemispherical window cup is rotated and the method of measuring wind velocity at that number of rotations is used. The measured number of rotations is sent to a personal computer with a USB interface, and wind velocity is displayed on a screen. __ Designed by Seiichi Inoue
Wind speed logger - This wind logger project was designed to help a friend who wants to log wind speed for one year. it uses an inexpensive cup anemometer from Biral (see photo, left) available here in the UK. The anemometer contains a reed switch with rotating magnets which produce two switch closures per revolution of the cup assembly. __ Designed by Hans Summers
Wind speed logger Mk2 - Following quick on the heels of the Mk1 Windlogger project, I had built this new version which incorporates a host more features. The new version includes datalogging to an SD-card with Date/Time stamp as well as an onboard temperature sensor and light intensity sensor. External analogue inputs allow for logging wind direction too if your anemometer supports it. __ Designed by Hans Summers
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