I did ponder this setup for many hours but with the 1 wire to pc interface
that is not included in the weather station kit you're looking at ~ £100
delivered.

At present I have build a cup anemometer that I plan to test this weekend. I
built this using some bearings, steel tube, aluminium rod, a Drain outlet
cap (New), threaded rod, bicycle computer and 2 of My daughters ball pool
balls. Cost so far £17 this was for the drain cover, the rod, bearings and
cycle computer.

I will collect and log the data with homevision that I already have, next is
to start building the direction equipment I found I had 4 opto sensors
(Omron E3Z-D81) this gives 16 different positions using a disk with clever
black and white markings, I have some spare bearings from the 8 I brought
and have made a working prototype of the data collection and of the vane
part just need to put them together hopefully this weekend, I'll post back
details + pictures when I have it all up and together..

Admittedly the luxury of having homevision makes this a lot easer but It
could have been done with a 4 bit logic counters and the direction direct to
the other 4 bits and passed into a parallel port or parallel to serial
converter to log with some simple software. Total cost sub £30, less if you
can 'find' the bits and pieces around you, for instance after purchase I
found lots of small free-rolling bearings in old VCR's (the older the
better) If I get a chance I'll add in some ideas for non homevision data
collection methods to my weather site (that doesn't exist on the WWW yet).


Many thanks,

Stuart.



Please consider the environmental impact before printing this e-mail.

-----Original Message-----
From: notify@... [mailto:notify@...] On Behalf
Of Miles
Sent: 19 October 2006 18:15
To: Stuart Billinghurst
Subject: Re: Wind availability testing - have just ordered a wind resource
testing system

Hello Stuart & all.

You can get handheld electronic annenometers from around £30 up. I
have one that cost £45 from ebay (Skywatch Xplorer4) there are several
manufacturers with similar products.

If you want to monitor a site for some time you need to look at
perhaps an Automatic Weather Statation (AWS). I bought (in the UK) an
AAG 1-wire device for around £85, you can get them from
www.audon.co.uk, you can add other 1-wire devices & sensors later,
look at www.hobbyboards.com, the software is free Windows based &
Linux (oww) is available, I think there are people using Mac's too.

There are also complete AWS', try Oregon scientific, LaCrosse & Davis
Instruments, Kestel etc. The UK weather shop sell almost all of them
I belive; there are several other UK suppliers. Most come with data
output & you can buy a wide range of software to log, analyse & post
to the web.

My data is at
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ILANCASH24


Which also has info on selcting an AWS & software etc.

Cheers.

Miles



--- In Beyond_cheap_fuel@..., "Stuart Billinghurst"
<stuart@b...> wrote:
>
> I plan to do some trials up on the moors in the car with my wind
instrument
> and a hand held wind speed device and work out pulse per min per mph
etc etc
>
>
> IF you can see any major flaws in my plan please tell me be fore I
find them
> the hard way..
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Beyond_cheap_fuel@...
> [mailto:Beyond_cheap_fuel@...] On Behalf Of James Fidell
> Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 9:37 AM
> To: Beyond_cheap_fuel@...
> Subject: Re: [Beyond_cheap_fuel] Wind availability testing - have just
> ordered a wind resource testing system.
>
> Stuart Billinghurst wrote:
>
> > This still seams very expensive for what is a very simple device
(the wind
> > speed part anyhow) as all you have to do is count rotations for a
given
> time
> > span say 60 seconds and log that result.. Looks like I will have
to build
> > something, I'll let people know how I get on.
>
> I guess a fair bit of the cost is the software, which isn't particularly
> useful from my point of view as I don't use Windows.
>
> I guess it should be relatively trivial to build something that would
> spin in the wind and generate a pulse for each rotation. How would you
> calibrate it though?
>
> James
>
>
>
>
> Latest Community energy project, the Boyndie Wind Farm share offer,
Check
> out www.boyndie.coop, for a chance to own part of a wind farm.
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>