Hello! I am very new to arduino and all of this stuff. I am working on a wind turbine that uses an arduino for its control system and, to control some motors, I am using an anemometer and windcatcher to know the wind's speed and direction: Weather Meters WS4215
My problem is that I do not know how to connect those two elements together. The weather meter has a RJ11 jack but I don't know how to transmit the information from it to the arduino. I know how the weather meter works, but that's where it ends. How do you do it?
From my understanding the station has 3 purposes on 2 devices.
1 device in the initial figure is a rain level meter, (Pluviometer).
The other has 2 functions, indicating the wind direction and speed.
Right?
The RJ11 jack is used to connect to the switches in the wind sensors. From the data sheet the center 2 connection are to a reed switch that senses the wind speed. The number of pulses per second indicates the wind speed (1 pps = 2.4km/h).
The outer 2 connectors are an analog voltage that indicates direction. There is a table indicating the resistors which are used as part of a voltage divider to indicate the direction. The text claims there is a table of voltages for a 10K resistor and 5V source, but it is missing from the data sheet that I see.
I am aware of how it works and getting to know the voltages that correspond to each of the directions should be easy through testing. My issue is how to physically connect them. How to I make the signals reach the arduino?
For the speed you would use a digital input pin and determine the number of pulses per second and multiply by 2.4 km/h.
For the direction use an analog input and do a look up of voltage vs direction. You will have to record the voltage for different directions to build the look up table.
Get an RJ11 jack and connect to the pins you are using on the Arduino. Get an old land line phone cable and plug it into the jack on the mast and the one on the Arduino.
The images of the shield show RJ45 RJ11 sockets which suggests that you run some long RJ45 RJ11 leads between the mast and the shield. Studying the shield schematic should show where each signal goes. However, there appears to be a Sparkfun library available via their website that does a lot if the work for you.
EDIT: No idea where I got RJ45 from - the documentation for the shield and weather sensors says RJ11!
@oldcurmudgeon I'm not sure what I was thinking when I typed my previous message. No idea where I got RJ45 from. I just checked and the weather shield says RJ11 as does the documentation for the anemometer etc!
