Help to understand what's wrong on mounting an ESP01 on a wind turbine blade

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello, I know the title is too generic, but it is really hard to find a correct name for this topic.

So, I have a board with Arduino MEGA, an ESP-01, a HX711 and a strain gauge powered by a 9V@2Ah battery and mounted on a turbine blade.
The wind turbine has three blades and its height from the ground is about 8 meters.
At the base, I have another Arduino MEGA with the ESP-01.
The boards communicate by using a Wi-Fi router.
The board on the blade sends the readings from the strain gauge to the board on the ground.

The boards work pretty well when I test them in my laboratory.

Every time I mount the board on the blade and I connect the battery, the system starts to work, but after few seconds or when the blades start to spin, the board stops working.

I checked everything and the connections are robust and stable, the battery connector is OK and all the wires are correctly soldered.
When this happens, if I unmount the board from the blade, I wait for few minutes and then I start it again in my laboratory, then the system works again fine.

I'm getting crazy!

I was thinking about the mechanical vibrations generated by the blades on the Arduino board, but I found no reference online about this aspect. Moreover, I also thought about the electrical noise generated by the wind turbine, but again, I found nothing about this topic online.

Can you please give me some suggestions?

3

Also, show us good images of the actual wiring and construction.

4

Does something stop working, or does the centrifugal force overload the strain gauge?

5

Can you add a blinking LED that you can see from the ground and determine if the Arduino is still alive (and kicking)?

And perhaps another powered directly from the Arduino 5V pin (with a resistor, of course), to see if the Arduino is still powered...

Can the problem be caused by metal interference from the blade?

6

I will first apologize for saying this. :zipper_mouth_face:

Flashing LED to ward off aircraft. :sunglasses:

7

Why would you include it?

Is not possible to use a ESP-01 on a rotating object?
Or was it a joke?

8

the board on the blade has a very easy wiring since it is just the Arduino, the strain gauge and the ESP-01. Unfortunately, I do not have the schematics with me right now, I can provide it later as soon as I get back in my laboratory.

9

Something stop working.
Even if the strain gauge is overloaded, I would get some kind of measurement or an error while I get nothing, so it is the board that crashes or stop working somehow.

10

Does Arduino board use some kind of component that doesn't work very well when the board rotates at high speed?

11

Does the board work if mounted next to the operating turbine? That could eliminate the possibility of electrical noise interference

12

Need some pictures , could just be a connection issue - it would be interesting to see the setup .
I would want everything soldered and tightly secured

14

Where on the blade, root or tip? What WiFi band? I'm not sure WiFi is specified to operate with significant Doppler from a moving device, that might be the problem.

15

Sorry, I didn't get it. It was really a good suggestion, I added it to the title of the topic, thank you!

16

very near to the root of the blade, very close to the rotor.

I'm using 2.4 GHz at the moment.

Isn't the doppler effect from Wi-Fi used for localization? Do you think if it is at higher frequencies it can give this problem?

17

Er, no.

I was just wondering if the carrier sync system might not cope with a Doppler shift but if you're mounting the device at the root the velocity should be very low and Doppler shift minimal. Might be some other propagation issue as WiFi antennas can be unexpectedly directional which might cause fast fading.

19

Identical to problems encountered with mobile operation of other than FM radios. Your device uses some form of amplitude modulation and that is also what is happening when the turbine blade rotates.

20

Tomorrow I will perform other tests.
If it will turn out that it is a Wi-Fi problem, is there any way to solve it?
Should I use a specific antenna or should I use another wifi module and not the esp?

21

Remember, WIFI is a two-way communication. Perhaps the problem is in your unit not being able to receive, so it won't transmit.