How to Build an Arduino Wind Speed Meter Anemometer #CitizenScience
Now that the weather has become so erratic, it’s interesting to monitor things like wind speed. I know I was hyper aware of the strong wind and hail the other night beating down on my loft’s roof. Julian Horsey also has an interest in the topic since his family lives near the shore. Whether going out for a sail or just worrying about potential storms, it’s nice to have a wind station to know what is going on. Julian decided to build his own and posted a tutorial on Geeky Gadgets.
He had purchased one anemometer, but realized it would not be robust enough to handle the severe conditions at the shore, so he instead opted for the Adafruit one pictured. Here’s his description:
The Adafruit anemometer is capable of measuring wind speeds up to 70 m/s or 156 mph which should be adequate for our location, and if the speeds ever get that high will probably blow our house down before the anemometer breaks.
He decided to hook it up to an Arduino Uno already on hand, with data going to an LCD screen. Arduino coding ended up being easy as there was already some listed on Hackerscape’s site, and he soon discovered that his family thought it was fun waiting for the highest wind speed to occur. So, he decided to jump into the code again to output the highest wind speed at the last reset of the Arduino. Good for him for finding a way to get the whole family interested!
The unit is posted on a fence away from any buildings in order to get a clear reading. In the future, Julian hopes to switch his project to a Raspberry Pi so he can get the data to the web. For now, it keeps family and friends happy as they make guesses on wind forecasts. It’s a great example of monitoring an aspect of the environment, and I’m sure Julian will have fun comparing his readings to those of weather stations near his home. If you don’t want to leave the data to the weather reporters in your area, then maybe you should build your own station as well. Here’s our Anemometer ready for your wind experiments. Having worked with sensors in outdoor conditions, I will add that this unit has a weatherproof connector. So, have fun learning about Mother Nature using your own handcrafted station.
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