It seems like I am a little bit late for the IoT: In the Cloud challenge. Nevertheless since I received a Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 board from element14 and that my project is now almost I finished I will present it anyway.
Introduction and Idea
For us humans there exists the real ambient temperature and the apparent temperature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_temperature ). For low temperatures the the apparent temperature depends mostly on the real temperature and the wind speed and is called wind chill factor. So I am going the build an environmental sensor which implements a temperature sensor and a wind speed sensor, shows their values and calculates the wind chill factor. A future version colud also be equipped with a humidity sensor to calculate the heat index.
Construction
The sensor will be based on the Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 board. A DS18B20 will measure the temperature. And for the wind speed measurements I will build a cup anemometer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemometer#Cup_anemometers ) and connect it to a DC motor which generates a DC voltage proportional to the wind speed. The Arduino will measure this voltage with its analog input. To get accurate measurements I will mount the sensor on top of my roof.
The Arduino will be powered by a Li Ion battery and I will try to use some part of the energy of the anemometer to recharge the battery. So hopefully the sensor will be completely self powered.
Cloud connection
The sensor will be part of my home WIFI network. The Arduino will be connected to the Arduino IOT Cloud and use Google docs and spreedsheats to generate nice charts.
Project Plan
- setup Arduino and temperature sensor and connect it to Arduino IOT Cloud and Google docs The Windchillator - Arduino IoT Cloud and visualization
- optimize power consumption of Arduino to enable long battery operation The Windchillator - Reducing the sleep current of the Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 to 800 uA
- build anemometer and connect it to the Arduino
- try to harvest energy of the anemometer