Final Project - Dew Point Monitoring System for FogCatchers
About my project
My project is a prototype of a set for researchers: a Fogcatcher and a electronic device, that together allows to know if one place is good for installing bigger fogcatchers.
The fogcatcher is a structure easy to assembly and disassembly, so it can be moved many times to many places to evaluate if those places are good for the purpose of the research.
The electronic devices, built in FabAcademy assignments, measure temperature and humidity in the point where fogcatchers (or other Water From Air Machine) will be located, then the dew point is calculated. It ll allow the designers of fogcatchers to determin the best place to put bigger fogcatchers or another device to condense water from the air. This is because with this devices we can know the avergage time that a point reaches the dew point. It also helps to determine the frequency and duration of foggy periods.
The project could be detailed dividing it in these parts. You can see each item detailed in a page:
- Prototypes of Fogcatchers (CAD)
- More Prototypes of Fogcatchers (composites, see the last experiment)
- Big Fogcatcher (computer-controlled machining, mechanical design)
- Electronic and Programming (electronics production, embedded programing, input devices, output devices, networking)
- Case box for Dew Point Monitoring System (mechanical design)
- Integrating parts (machine design)
- Looking the data in Lab View (interface and application programming)
- Testing.
The files for the final project are here
Files uploaded in the site
This is the slide:
And the video is:
The diagram that describes the parts of the project is :
Future Steps
- Place the fogcatcher in one hill close to Esan-Fab Lab, to evaluate if its a good place to install larger fogcatchers. Maybe next week.
- As an extra activity, to buildt a solar panel tree, that charges a 12 V battery, and after reduces to 5v. It can give the necessary voltage to place the Dew Point Monitoring System. I have that in process.
- I will implement a peltier experiment to try to reach the dew point even in a small volume of air, and measure what volume is obtained in such way. I already bought the components for this.
- Design and build a water volume meter to know the production of a fogcatcher or other Water form Air Machine. I build the basic experiments with water level sensor, and I design and build a ultrasonic - water level in a little acrilyc box built in the lasser cutter.
Materials
- Fabduino board.
- hello.ESP8266-12E.ftdi board
- DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor.
- Female-female prototye cables
- TTL-USB converter.
- USB with mini USB connector.
- Dot Matrix Liquid Crystal Display Controller/Driver) 16 X 2 characters.
- 15 mm MDF board 2440 X 1520
- 3mm MDF board 300 X 600
Licence
I choose Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA
So my designs could be used for non-profit. They can be remixed, tweaked, and built upon them.