Monitoring a Wind Turbine with a Raspberry Pi

Date: 2013.05.23 | Category: javascript, nodejs

As a weekend project I wanted to receive an email if my wind turbine wasn’t generating power when it should. I didn’t want to spend loads of money on fancy new equipment so I hacked it together mostly with equipment I had lying about.

Requirements

– Wind Turbine or Solar Panel (obviously)
– Bridge rectifier (converts the AC from the turbine to DC)
– Some sort of voltage regulator (10-24v –> 12v) (or to 5v and skip below)
– Car cigarette lighter mobile phone charger (£5)
– Raspberry Pi (£35)
– Delta Sigma ADC (£25)
– USB Cable (£1)
– 1 Hour free
– Met Office API Key (free — UK Only)

Steps

– Wire up the turbine and bridge rectifier
– Pop the bridge rectifier into the voltage regulator
– Put the regulated voltage through the car voltage adapter, this will give you 5v out
– Wire the 5v from the turbine into channel 0 on the Delta Sigma
– Pop the ADC into the Pi, follow this guide for setting up the software.

How it works

– The Pi asks the Met Office what the current wind speed is.
– If the wind speed is above a threshold then the Pi checks the turbine
– If the turbine isn’t generating 5v then email me.

Next Steps

– Use Machine Learning to find a better balance on announcements
– Rate limit announcements.
– Measure integer of turbine output instead of boolean state.
– Wire the Owl energy monitor up to the AC output of the grid tie inverter.
– Store value of state in something like Graphite or using Nagios for announcements

The conection to the server was unsuccessful

Date: 2013.05.21 | Category: cordova

The application Error

The conection to the server was unsuccessful (file://android_asset/www/index.html)

Was caused by a script being inaccessible during the page load..

For me changing:

<script src="http://oldplace:8080/target/target-script-min.js"></script>

To

<script src="http://newplace:8080/target/target-script-min.js"></script>

Fixed it

Collaborative drawing with Etherdraw

Date: 2013.05.03 | Category: Uncategorized

Today Etherdraw hit Version 2, major noticeable difference is that edits are now saved and visible on reload.

Collaborative drawings are now way faster, more reliable and it should be easier for future development.

It’s really cool how much my projects are now being maintained by other people and I’m really grateful for their efforts and time. At the same time I’m glad I chose open source

Enjoy!

Have a play – remember to invite / join someone else and draw collaboratively, it’s a bit boring by yourself

Developers visit the git repo.

Blender for 3D Printing

Date: 2013.04.29 | Category: blender

DVD Training: Blender for 3D Printing – YouTube.

Improving Blender Renders with Photography Techniques

Date: 2013.04.28 | Category: blender

Improving Blender Renders with Photography Techniques – Part 01 – YouTube.