User:Lukaststanley/enes100/Wind Turbine

Write problem/project Goal
To create a wind turbine that generates measurable power. Also to have a LED or digital display to give a rating of the power it is supplying.

My First Task
Need to find a motor the has a balance of efficiency (least amount of friction) and power generation, which we found. Need to come up with blade designs and ways to attach them. Also need to create a mount for the motor to sit on.

Summary of actual work over first weekend
So far the plan was to find a motor with a good efficiency/power balance is right on track. Still deciding on the output display, but we have time to figure that out considering that the blades and the mount for the motor are not built yet. Also we are still testing the proof of concept.

Week1 Narrative
I have been looking around for some blade designs/material, but I am confused why they only use 3 blades. I have also been looking into ways to mount the motor.

This a neat wind turbine that doesn't use the 3 blade design. Flodesign Wind Turbine

My Second Task
I will test the deferent amounts of blades the next class (3 vs. 4 vs. 5). I was thinking that a wider fan blade might also be useful. Also a way to mount the motor to various things, using something like a c-clamp.

Summary of actual work over second weekend
After trying to fabricate our own wind turbine, it seemed better to use the premade one from a past team. The reason for this was time constraints. We wanted the framework to be done to move forward with the rest of the project.

Week2 Narrative
We took out the fan the was in the previous build and replaced it with a more efficient one. After that, we ended up rebuilding the entire structure. It was very similar to the older structure but now only contains one turbine as apposed to two.

My Third task
For the next week we will be testing the voltage and current and making it measurable. Possibly one of two ways, either with an analog setup or a digital setup.

Summary of actual work over third weekend
Tested a few codes trying to figure out how to get the information provided by the serial monitor. Also maxed out the reading using a leaf blower. Need to find a way to measure more than one volt, which is the current limitation of the arduino.

Week3 Narrative
Mainly a test week. Tested the code we compiled to read voltage through the analog port of the ardiuno. Works good, but has a limit of 1 volt. Hooked up a computer fan to the ardiuno for testing, used a leaf blower to blow the fan. This created a problem, maxed out the reading on the arduino.

My Fourth task
To turn this codes output to something that can be moved to excel and then be interpreted through a graph

Thinking we might need to put resistors in line with the signal or something to lower the output from the fan, so we can read higher signals. Another thing would be to lower the wind force to something else, instead of a leaf blower.

Summary of actual work over fourth weekend
We planned to put an LCD readout of the voltage on the turbine. What we realized is that it would be to complex for our limited knowledge of the arduino. So we switched gears, and crated a voltage regulator.

Week4 Narrative
We planned to get a LCD to display the amount of voltage the wind turbine was generating. The problem with the LCD is that it requires a significant amount of know-how. The LCD had about 18 pins in it and we barely have the grasp of getting the arduino to read an analog signal (the voltage). So we ended up using a the serial monitor to read the signal. We also found out that the arduino was limited to reading up to 1.1v. Now that we knew the limitation of the arduino, we needed to scale down the voltage to read more than the 1.1v. We created a "voltage restriction" on a bread board cutting the voltage in half. Now we can read up to 2.2 volts with the new "scaler."

Complete Team Page
Project Wind Turbine Team Page (P1_501_LPT)