Rotation Sensors - Improving My Design

p

Hi All,

Some of you remember me posting many moons ago about rotation switches and airflow sensors. Well I managed to build something okay, however we're now working on version 2 of our project and trying to improve the electronics and reliability of it.

I've put up a brief description of it here:
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~blowaway/kevin/sensors.htm

I'm hoping that some of you people with real engineering skillsmight have suggestions on how to improve it, either with pre-built componants, or general advice.

Any thoughts you have would be really welcome.

Thanks very much!

Capt'n Midnight

Maybe instead of using fans to sense airflow you could use a hot wire anemometer, not really suitable for batteries but no moving parts.

Or you could use one of those anemometers with the hemi-sphere cups on the end as the rotate at 1/3 speed of wind.

Have you thought of using level sensors on the controls to detect which way it leans or having several airflow sensors to detect which way a person is blowing ?

You could use the sensor wheels from inside a mouse - infrared very small and light - no moving electrical contacts like in the motor - if you could figure out a way to differnetiate between each of 6 USB mice

Redshift

A Mass Airflow Sensor may be what your looking for here I don't think they are hard to procure and there is tons of info on the net about them.
Looks like an interesting project

p

Hey,

Looks good. I'll check those out. Thanks.