Introduction: Smart Wind Turbine V1
This project is meant to simulate a smart wind turbine system. hopefully ill be able to rig this up to a actual wind turbine and windmill. Anyway... lets get to it.
Step 1: How It Works
An absolute encoder is used to find the direction that a windmill (not wind turbine) is facing, split into 8 different sections. A button is used to sense the force wind creates as it pushes on the windmill to turn the blades. After 10 seconds of continuous wind force, the position of the encoder, a value between 0 and 7, is sent via bluetooth to the receiver bluetooth module of the wind turbine.
The information sent over bluetooth is used to tell what direction the stepper motor controlling the wind turbine should be in within +/- 8 degrees. LED bars are used to see what direction the encoder is facing and what value was sent via bluetooth. The eeprom of an Atmega1284 is used to save the last position sent over by the transmitter. This is to ensure accurate positional movement after power has been disconnected and reconnected. This project is meant to increase efficiency and give autonomy to large scale wind turbines and wind farms.
Hopefully you can gain some knowledge along the way like i did:))
Step 2: Parts and Software
Parts:
-(2) Atmega1284 microcontrollers (AVR whoop:0)
-28BY-J48 Stepper Motor (mine has a driver. sorry not sure what model it is)
-Bourns EAQ0J-B24-CE0128L absolute encoder
-(2) HC-05 bluetooth module
-(2) LED bars
-(2) Resistor bus
-(8) 1k Resistors
-5V voltage regulator(sorry not sure what mine is)
-AVR ISP programmer
-Arduino UNO
-lots of jumper wire
-breadboard
Software used:
-Atmel studio 7.0
-arduino IDE
Notes:
-Im Assuming you know how to use the software, the voltage regulator, the programmer, and have basic circuit knowledge. If not, you need to look at more videos and come back sorry:)
-you can replace the resistor busses for (6) 1k resistors
-Apparently you can use a HC-06 as a receiver if you can only get you hands on one HC-05 module. i hadnt tried
Step 3: Configure BT Modules
you're gonna have to go and configure your Bluetooth modules. i followed this youtube video:
Step 4: Connect Receiver
Connect the stepper motor, the LED bar and the Bluetooth to one of the atemga1284s. This atmega will be the slave. The LED Bar will be connected to the resistor bus. Dont forget that the Rx of the Bluetooth module is connected to the Tx of the atmega1284 and vise versa.
Step 5: Connect Transmitter
connect the bluetooth module, encoder and LED bar to the other atmega1284. use this link for connecting the encoder: https://www.bourns.com/pdfs/ace.pdf
Step 6: Check Connections
Your board should be looking similar to this if you made it all on one beard board. Of course, this project is meant to have be all about wireless communication with your windmill and turbine but for simplicity sake i show you on one board.
When you turn the power on your Bluetooth modules should automatically sync to each other. If they rapidly blink you know something is wrong. If their blinking become synced you are ready to go and upload the code. If they haven't been paired correctly go back to the first step.
Step 7: Upload Code
So if youre using atmel youll need to go and download two items:
1) freeRTOS libraries for task scheduling: https://www.freertos.org/
2)download the .c files that i provide
thats it! youre all ready to go!
