Gina

They've arrived Now where's my microscope?? I have some SOIC-8 breakout boards somewhere. Now all I have to do is find them I saw them a little while ago but they aren't where I thought. I bought them when I was doing things with 1-wire SMD chips. Before that I glued the little chips on their backs onto stripboard and used very fine tinned copper wire to connect the legs to the holes in the stripboard. That was was hellish fiddly job!! The breakout boards were much easier - tin the board pads , lay the chip in position, tack a couple of legs on then apply soldering iron to the other legs.

Rotary sensor chips now out for delivery and due to arrive today I thought the package wasn't coming last night!

Ordered some 50mm ones which seems about right. Should be here Saturday or Monday.

Actually I think that bolt is too long - makes the casing about 2" high! Have to see what else I can find Wants to be nearer half the length.

For the wind vane axle I have a stainless steel M5 bolt 74mm long with 22mm threaded and the rest smooth. Allen key head. Vane beam is 14.5mm thick and could be attached to the bolt(axle) with two nuts. The ball bearings and aluminium disk could be held by tubes/spacers/standoffs (whichever you want to call them). In fact only one nut is required to hold the parts together - clamped by one nut on the end of the bolt.

Aha - that's why the motors are much smoother in operation then and could make a big difference

Does it use more than 16x microstepping?

FedEx are still quoting derlivery as today but no longer saying by 6pm. Watching on the CCTV

The aluminium discs arrived this afternoon but are only 1.3mm thick though one between two magnets seems to work.

FedEx are supposed to be delivering my rotary position sensor chips today by 6pm They've got half an hour

Quite!

Lots of new and better devices available since then

No sign of the aluminium discs yet - any post would usually have been delivered by now. I'm also waiting for the man who's supposed to be repairing my Rayburn - phoned to say he was coming at 10am and it's now well past 12. I suspect he's been called out on an emergency but he hasn't phoned since 8:30. I hate hanging around for people to arrive when I could be taking a walk up the hill in the sunshine!! Why can't these people say if they can't make it???? Tried calling him but only got the answering service - left a message FWIW!

I would be most interested to see what you did in your weather station Neil

If I use damping I shall want two ball bearings to ensure the disc stays clear of the magnets. One bearing would allow too much waggle. Should be fine with the little 5mm bore bearings.

Here's a design for the casing to include a 4" aluminium damping disc. Still fits on my Titan print bed as shown by the square frame

Reading the article, that looks like what I did with my earlier wind vane but I used Python.

Ah yes. Previous wind vanes without damping flapped about quite a lot and the later version with damping was much better. Maybe I will add damping. I'll see how things look. The 4" aluminium discs should arrive today. This is how I envisage the casing without damping. This is upside down - as it would be printed. The bottom piece will fit inside the outer casing. The flange is to take the anemometer base. I haven't shown the mounting pillars for the bottom plate or holes for mounting the anemometer and bottom plate. I think I'll design another version to take a magnet damping disk (and magnets).

Hmm... Even more reason to stay with what I've got

I'm not sure I shall bother with damping after all as I could apply smoothing in the Arduino sketch or in further data processing in the base station software. There are several techniques I could use. I can always see how it goes and redesign and reprint if needed. That's the advantage of 3D printing I was going to use two ball bearings on the axle but I'm not sure it's necessary with a balanced system. I'm only using one on the anemometer and that's fine. I'm thinking 5x10x5mm for the bearing. Or maybe 6x17x6mm. The smaller bearing has lower friction.

New design printed fine, glued onto arm and tidied up. Looks nice Not that anybody will be able to tell at 6m above the ground

Bit tricky to print. May be better as just a hemisphere.

Nosepiece designed and now printing.