Wind Power and WeatherPiArduino in the Caribbean

Wind Power arrives again!  Down here in the Caribbean for sun, fun and Project Curacao upgrades.  Yesterday, we finished installing the WeatherPiArduino board into the Project Curacao Box and added the WeatherRack sensors to the WeatherPower Rack.  I tested the sensors by setting it out by the ocean and after fixing some wiring problems, all checked out, including the somewhat reluctant rain bucket.

This morning, October 6, 2014,  bright and early, I strapped on the climbing belt and safety equipment, climbed the tower and hoisted up the WeatherPower Rack up the tower to about the 10 meter point.  The 10 meter point is important because the wind is better up there and it is above the vast majority of the ocean

spray, which dramatically reduces corrosion problem.  You can see the corrosion on generator shaft from the old wind turbine below.  This turbine sat for 6 months under cover but 10 meters lower.  The corrosion is from the sea spray.

As you can see in this posting, the previous wind turbine only last two weeks before a storm destroyed it.   The new WeatherPower Rack has a new stiffening strut and most importantly, a cable over the top of the turbine that allows it to rotate, but not jump out of the pipe.

It is looking good at this point!

The wind direction, wind speed, gust speed and (hopefully!) the rain bucket is being read by the BatteryWatchDog Arduino using the WeatherPiArduino board.  I am also picking up voltage from the Wind Turbine so the wiring seems to be intact after the installation.  It was difficult hoisting it up the tower while not destroying anything.  We used a second guide rope to the side of the tower to keep it from bumping the tower in the wind.  I put wire ties on the turbine to keep it from turning and then cut the ties up at the top when it was installed.  It started running right away in the steady Curacao winds.

We also have installed the Dead Man switch on the Arduino using a new SwitchDoc Labs product, the Dual Watchdog timer.  I looked for such a product extensively and couldn’t find one that would work for the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi.  So SwitchDoc Labs designed on and have turned it into a product.   The Dual WatchDog product is now released.  A picture from the factory of the completed board is shown below.  The new units are being delivered next week.

The prototype has now been installed and is working perfectly in Project Curacao.   Note that we only populated one WatchDog Timer on this board as it was for a single Arduino.   The board waits ~220 seconds and reboots if the Dual Watchdog isn’t “petted” (i.e. reset) by the BatteryWatch Arduino within the 220 seconds.  In the Arduino code, we are resetting the Dual WatchDog about every 10 seconds as that was a good place in the main loop to place the reset code.  More about the Dual WatchDog board later on in the month.

Here is the RasPiConnect control panel for WeatherArduino.  It will be integrated into the Project Curacao RasPiConnect control panels next week.