{"id":25,"date":"2009-04-22T08:19:19","date_gmt":"2009-04-22T13:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/?p=25"},"modified":"2009-04-22T08:21:41","modified_gmt":"2009-04-22T13:21:41","slug":"a-lego-anemometer-for-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/a-lego-anemometer-for-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"A LEGO Anemometer for fun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Where has the time gone?<\/p>\n<p>I spent about 3 months collecting components and researching sensor designs for my weather station project. Sadly, after I collected what I needed, RL struck and they now sit in a box. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>Just before the holidays, I found a portable weather station on clearance at Big Lots. I couldn&#8217;t pass it up for $20. It&#8217;s pretty much a toy, but it has been fun to play with! I thought I might hack it for the sensor parts and short cut my project, but I decided it would be better to use for calibrating my actual project. It just isn&#8217;t heavy duty enough for long term use.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of weeks ago, I built a little anemometer using my LEGO Mindstorms NXT and some extra parts. I borrowed the initial design from a <a href=\"http:\/\/mindstorms.lego.com\/nxtlog\/ProjectList.aspx?MemberId=a5a27f87-5842-4f6e-a320-3c10cf6358b8&#038;UserName=LBOY349\" class=\"extlink\">project<\/a> on NXTLog. The original design had poor resolution because the light sensor only measured rotations in 180 degree increments. By using the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philohome.com\/sensors\/legorot.htm\" class=\"extlink\">RCX Rotation Sensor<\/a> and a 1:5 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gear_ratio\" class=\"extlink\">gear ratio<\/a>, my final resolution was 4.5 degrees. My simple gearing mates a 40 tooth driving gear with an 8 tooth gear. I originally attempted a complex gear train with a ratio of 1:15, but there was just too much friction and I couldn&#8217;t get it to spin below 6-7 MPH. <\/p>\n<p>It came out pretty nice. I calibrated it using my toy anemometer and a box fan. I determined there are 32 increments per MPH. I left the light sensor on since it is completely passive and doesn&#8217;t interfere with the mechanism. This one isn&#8217;t suitable for the long term project, but it was a fun diversion.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/inanimatereason.com\/images\/mains.jpg?w=474\" alt=\"Main pic\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/inanimatereason.com\/images\/sides.jpg?w=474\" alt=\"Anemometer side view\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/inanimatereason.com\/images\/closeup2s.jpg?w=474\" alt=\"Closeup of moving parts\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/inanimatereason.com\/images\/displays.jpg?w=474\" alt=\"NXT Display while running\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where has the time gone? I spent about 3 months collecting components and researching sensor designs for my weather station project. Sadly, after I collected what I needed, RL struck and they now sit in a box. \ud83d\ude41 Just before the holidays, I found a portable weather station on clearance at Big Lots. I couldn&#8217;t &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/a-lego-anemometer-for-fun\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A LEGO Anemometer for fun<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1yjzF-p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inanimatereason.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}