All,

I'm been mulling over the idea of making a no moving parts anemometer and releasing everything to the public. I thought that this would be the best place to start discussing the idea.

My plans thus far;

The main part of this project are the micro-controller and the ultrasonic sensors.

For the micro-controller I'm going to use a Microchip PIC as I've have experience with these. I have thought about using an Arduino but this project will be as much about discovering if I can use open-source tools from start to finish as having a working system at the end. To that end I've decided to design my own PCB from scratch. I'm a electronic engineer by trade so this shouldn't cause to many headaches but if this is too difficult I will consider using an Arduino.

The ultrasonic sensors can be used to calculate wind speed and direction. The basic idea is to use a set of sensors perpendicular to each and calculate the time delay or Doppler shift to find out where the wind is coming from. I haven't decided which is the best way to do yet so I'm going to incorporate both.

The rest of it will use RS232 for communication. For power I'm hoping to incorporate a battery/solar power unit. The anemometer will have the following basic sensors; Pressure, Humidity, Temperature in shade and direct sun light.

As for the open-source tools;

Since I'm going to be using Microchips PICs there are in beta trials of there new open-source embedded IDE which is called MPlab X[1], which is based off netbeans so it aligns nicely with my needs.

For the embedded C compiler my initial thinking will be to use SDCC[2] but that depends on what PIC I select or I might be able to use GCC but I'm not sure.

For the electronic design I'm think KiCAD[3] as it I've played around with it in the past and I've quite liked it.

Finally for the physical design I plan to use Freecad[4] it may not be very full featured but I'm hopeful it will be useful.

I'm also trying to think of a project name at the moment and I'm very open to any ideas?

Please let me know what you think and if you have any pointers I would be very great full.

Regards, Chris West

[1] MPlab X: http://microchip.wikidot.com/ [2] SDCC: http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/ [3] KiCAD: http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/ [4] FreeCAD: http://free-cad.sourceforge.net/