[SOLVED] Motor-based wind sensor, polarity effect on supply rail?

[zsolt1]

Do you also want to measure wind speed ? in m/s

 

[d123]

Hi,

No, just trigger events at three levels - I should transfer wind speed table I saw to realistic voltages before asking to be spoon fed - not fair on you guys. Was keeping head down and not replying as don't want to be annoying with time consuming questions. Will try your last post schematic out, thank you, first wanted to finish provisional schematic for circuit (minus the anemometer) as want to have small sense of completion before deal with things like that. All replies have given lots of food for thought to be getting on with.
That church is beautiful inside...

 

[D.A.(Tony)Stewart]

Sunny, I think a solar motor turns backwards when the sync pulses from the sun are "blacker than black".

Good guess. Mine was it was a cheap Chinese motor common "brand" name like ACME or like a fat pancake motor.

 

[d123]

That's the luxury version compared to the one I have, your imatge has thicker than a hair leads and more than two strands of copper!

 

[Audioguru]

I think a solar motor that is not a luxury version is a cheap low speed low power motor for a school kids project that might fly apart if the wind spins it fast. Also its brushes and bearings are not designed to spin fast or continuously.
Now for the first time we are told that the wind speed is not measured, instead it is detected in only three ranges that might be slow, medium and fast. A comparator was shown with a reference voltage much too high for a comparator IC. But the voltage from the motor was clamped by diodes at a voltage much too low to be useful.

 

[zsolt1]

Hi,

No, just trigger events at three levels - I should transfer wind speed table I saw to realistic voltages before asking to be spoon fed - not fair on you guys. Was keeping head down and not replying as don't want to be annoying with time consuming questions. Will try your last post schematic out, thank you, first wanted to finish provisional schematic for circuit (minus the anemometer) as want to have small sense of completion before deal with things like that. All replies have given lots of food for thought to be getting on with.
That church is beautiful inside...

oh , what you need to do seams simple , you don't need no frequency to voltage conversion if you use the dc motor .
That dc motor will supply voltage from the start , polarity always same because of ping-pong cups . You can directly put there opamp comparators . Eventually ad before a 100uF capacitor for filtering (and still use 3 reed rellays with shunt rezistors set for each level ...)

Anyway how i would approach if i where you :
First i would build the hardware part of anemometer , ping-pong cups motor housing , support to fix everything . (its fun when you see it spinning )
After that i would do some measurements , i would set up the anemometer (without the electronics yet ) with some fan , or computer cooler . Then i would measure with voltmeter the output of generator . Eventually i would try to borrow an anemometer to know what wind speed i produce with my fan .
In my first experiments i used computer cooler with variable source , i borrowed an anemometer from a sports guy who had a cronometer with anemometer in it (gadget's ...).
If you manage to measure voltage@wind speed you will see that is not a linear dependence all the way . That doesn't matter since you don't want measurement . All you need is to connect instead of the voltmeter 3 trigger circuits , each set to trigger at x1,x2, x3 volts.

- - - Updated - - -

Hi,

No, just trigger events at three levels - I should transfer wind speed table I saw to realistic voltages before asking to be spoon fed - not fair on you guys. Was keeping head down and not replying as don't want to be annoying with time consuming questions. Will try your last post schematic out, thank you, first wanted to finish provisional schematic for circuit (minus the anemometer) as want to have small sense of completion before deal with things like that. All replies have given lots of food for thought to be getting on with.
That church is beautiful inside...

oh , what you need to do seams simple , you don't need no frequency to voltage conversion if you use the dc motor .
That dc motor will supply voltage from the start , polarity always same because of ping-pong cups . You can directly put there opamp comparators . Eventually ad before a 100uF capacitor for filtering (and still use 3 reed rellays with shunt rezistors set for each level ...)

Anyway how i would approach if i where you :
First i would build the hardware part of anemometer , ping-pong cups motor housing , support to fix everything . (its fun when you see it spinning )
After that i would do some measurements , i would set up the anemometer (without the electronics yet ) with some fan , or computer cooler . Then i would measure with voltmeter the output of generator . Eventually i would try to borrow an anemometer to know what wind speed i produce with my fan .
In my first experiments i used computer cooler with variable source , i borrowed an anemometer from a sports guy who had a cronometer with anemometer in it (gadget's ...).
If you manage to measure voltage@wind speed you will see that is not a linear dependence all the way . That doesn't matter since you don't want measurement . All you need is to connect instead of the voltmeter 3 trigger circuits , each set to trigger at x1,x2, x3 volts.
Ps : if you refer to the simple f to v circuit , if you don't use a magneto electric voltmeter V (which is obvious since you plan to use electronics ), and you use a digital voltmeter or opamp circuit , you have to put in parallel with the adjustable resistor a 100uF capacitor

Why?
transforming an f(t) in dc signal is done by integration (integral of f(t) dt). Analog magnetoelectric voltmeter does integral mechanically by it's needle (quite amazing , a needle integrating ! It's so because of inertia the needle can't move so fast as the frequency pulses come and go ) . The capacitor does same integral of f(t) or so called filtering