Im having trouble figuring out what sensors i could use that are accurate and can read in a large range.
Here are some questions i have:
what are some sensors for CLOUD BASE MEASUREMENT?
what sensors are good for large area TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS?
what sensors can measure the DIAMETER of HAIL?
what can control this data
what can send this data to a web client?
This is a lot of questions and im not sure if all of them can be answered, but any help is much appreciated!
(Im also unsure of what topic this is supposed to go to but its probably going to be a discussion.)
P.S. im using an arduino UNO R3.
A Part of what you want to do can be done with a camera and some decent software. Beyond that I cannot even guess as your specification are vary ambiguous. This an be as smaller ten a nanometer to the size of the universe. Maybe the best starting point is a simple small weather station that measures temperature, when that is working add something else like humidity, etc. Also you need to determine how you are going to power it.
"The bottom of a cloud." Use words you understand to avoid confusion. How often do you get hail that needs to be measured? When was the last time you heard a weather report for hail size, and was the information useful?
Get a radio scanner and tune-in to the closest airport for constant atmospheric conditions, including Visual Flight Rules conditions (vmc).
The cheapest, most accurate, weather station you can have is a piece of paper outside a window. If it is wet, it is raining. If it is dry, it is not raining. If it is missing, it is windy.
Use a scale to weigh the particle. Use the density of ice to calculate the volume from the weight, then assuming it is spherical, calculate the diameter from the volume.
Large area to me is a good 10 ft/meter diameter area.
And what i meant from cloud base is how tall the cloud is (e.g. METARS stations carry sensors which measure how high the base is). I want to use a ToF sensor that stops when the signal is at the top of the cloud.
Sound recognition would probably be inaccurate even with AI. And IR lasers are illegal especially in military airspace (to explain it better: if you point one up there, you'll get charged with something which i dont know what) so i wont do that.
To be honest i might do some cameras (like thermal cameras to measure hail). And some cameras will be for observing the environment. IF POSSIBLE, i will add ir emitters to light up the area (backyard i mean) and a night vision camera which will use those emissions to see.
Would that not be "cloud height?" "Base" conveys "bottom."
IR and night vision are not the same. Night vision does not detect IR. IR is emissions from the object. Night vision amplifies existing low level light that your eyes also use when adjusted for twenty minutes (moon reflection, city lights, et c.). Night vision will not work in zero-light conditions.