Gina

Yes. Perfect explanation and better than mine! 👍

The red section is the same as the black section but turned 90°, so a sensor situated 90° round from the first on the same ridge will do the same as the red section but using the black section. This "ruse" saves a section and makes for a more compact design. Having the 4 sensors spaced round the circle at positions N, W, S, E makes it more difficult to work out but again makes for a more compact design than having sensors in a line and spaced far enough apart to include the whole width rather than the width of the emitter casing.

Circuit diagram and component values.

I think I have this worked out now. An interrupted beam produces a low level output and a logic 0. S1 on the inner ring along the N line. S2 also on the inner ring along the W line. S3 on the middle ring along the S line. S4 on the outer ring along the E line.

I'm afraid I can't help - very rarely have floaters even though I'm getting on a bit!! I have other problems...

Been checking out the Gray code wheel and positions of the optical sensors and I'm not sure I've got it right so I'm checking in more detail.

Oh yes, used those a lot. I agree that they are more accurate.

For the temperature, humidity and pressure sensor unit I have tidied up the display and added dew point for both inside and outside the observatory. With temperature only accurate to 1°C, humidity to 3% and pressure to 1 hPa there is no point in displaying fractions.

Change of design again. The sensor part wanted to go a bit higher so I've combined it with the vane arm. I think this make for a smoother design.

Plate to position the opto sensors.

Amazing!! 👍

Design modifications. I might raise the wind vane and sensor to give more clearance with the anemometer.

Design pretty much finished though I may be able to do a bit of tweaking to slim it down a bit. This is how it will look. And this shows the insides. Wiring and optical sensors not shown.

I think I may make a change and put the single half circle on the inside and the 4 on the outside.

I have a design and about to print it.

Now to the dimensions. The sensors have a 3.5mm gap and 4.5mm wide side parts (containing IR LED and photo-transistor). This means the width of the PLA wants to be 2mm and at least 6mm between. This gives 1.5mm allowance for tolerances. That gives me a start for altering the CAD from reed switches to optical.

I think I have a workable idea. First though, the principle. This is a Gray coded disc. It has the principle that only one sensor changes at a time so there are no alignment problems. The code can be converted to binary to give the angle. The black is MSB and blue is LSB. Next to note that the black and red tracks are the same but rotated by 90° so we can use one track and put the 2nd sensor at 90° to the first and get the same effect. That means 3 tracks are enough saving space. Using the slot type sensors means something different from a disc - we go into three dimensions- like this (taken from an earlier design) :- To avoid making the "disc" bigger to make space for sensors side by side, they can be arranged like this :- This is just the general idea and will be altered in size for the present wind direction sensor. These are very old diagrams produced in SketchUp some years ago.

Just tested a slot type optical sensor and surprisingly a 2mm thick piece of white PLA stops the light fine. Thought I might at least have to use a coloured filament.

I agree. You can see the difference but is the one with NII actually better? I think not. And this confirms what I found with the whole Cygnus loop - the amount of NII is negligible and the bi-colour image is good.

I remember from earlier experiments that the reflective sensors were very sensitive to daylight and would need serious shielding to provide sufficient darkness. Will see what the transmission sensors are like. I would expect that the ON condition would be a lot better than the reflective type so we could tolerate more OFF current.

I'll do some experimenting.

If I were to go optical, the Gray coded discs would have to be on the outside with the optical sensors inside since the rotating part is the outer one. The discs would actually be rings with the notches on the inside and I'm thinking aluminium filed to shape by hand. 3D filament is not sufficiently opaque to IR. The optical sensors could probably be set in a 3D printed structure. These would be the notch type with emitter one side and photo-transistor on the other. These are better than the reflective type though reflective would be easier to use.

Having pretty much sorted out the ESP32 for the outside and observatory sensors, I'm now looking at the wind sensors. I have the magnet distance somewhere near right but the amount of overlap between adjacent reed switches varies a lot, probably due to varying read switch sensitivity. Can't say I'm very happy with the magnet and reed switches but I seem to be stumped for a viable optical system.

How do I do either of those?

Added a 5 minute period and compared pressure. Taking 0.1hPa difference to trigger Rising or Falling but don't know if 5m is long enough. Maybe an hour would be better. I would like an up arrow and a down arrow symbol or character rather than words - any ideas anyone? Please?