The team is working under a software sub team and hardware sub team. The software team is tasked with creating the code based back bone of the project while the hardware sub team works on the actuators and sensors.

Accomplished:

• Prepared code for reading all the planned weather sensors (temperature, wind direction and wind speed). After calibration, the conversion factors will be implemented and then the sensor component will be complete besides soldering.
• Finalized the email format so that it is easy to implement with the bash scripting
• Prepared test code for the alarm system of the actuator. It theoretically should pulse a timer that will allow the alarm to have varying rates depending on the emergency.
• Still need to determine if a PWM signal can be generated so that a servo can be used for actuation, otherwise an array of LEDs will be used to indicate the direction the windmill should face
• Improved the bash script which retrieves and sorts emails from the Orbcomm
• Implemented process to run the script at set intervals
• Implemented conditional statements in the script to send various tasks to the actuator via email
• Created excel file which will automatically update with data from text files as new emails from the Orbcomm arrive
• Created housing for the wind speed sensor, and designed and built the cups and shaft for the same
• Designed shaft for wind direction sensor

Challenges:

The challenges faced mostly involved the design of an algorithm that will sample all the sensor inputs and will choose an appropriate actuation based those inputs and the remote user’s email. Learning and implementing bash scripting had a steep learning curve. This meant slow progress at the outset but after more experience with the process, the team is making better progress.

Next Step:

• Build the appropriate parts for the wind direction meter that utilizes gray code to divide the direction of the wind into 3 bits
• Calibrate wind direction meter, temperature and wind speed
• Build the housing for the actuator
• Solder any circuitry