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Jeff Wilson         jwilson@vtc.edu Dave Carlson   dcarlson@vtc.edu

Interface:

Descriptions:

In this version we used the same fan control page for the left frame, and only changed the remote monitoring and data section. For this section we added an updating graph of voltage levels taken from the soundcard input.

To make this updating graph, we needed to write a few programs. We needed a program that read the sound card voltage level and print out the max value for a .1 second sample of readings. This program was called from a program that organized the data in a text file with a 60 reading memory, this program runs continously to keep it up to date. Another program also running continously in the background makes a graph of the data every 5 seconds. We then used the same code that the webcam uses to refresh the image on the right fram of the interface page. These programs can be found on our computer page.

After verifying that the webcam worked properly in Version #4, we needed to flip the position of the buttons and arrows so that the webcam image would be correctly oriented to show the fans how we wanted. Since the webcam will be positioned behind the fans and pointing past them at the turbine, it makes sense that the buttons are at the bottom of the screen and the arrows point up. An image of the layout and orientation can be found in the mechanical section of our project page.

Also in this version we implemented a place holder for the voltage plot we will have. There is also spaces for data readings based on voltage levels from the turbine generator. These are in a frame on the right of the page, and the fan control is in a frame on the left of the page.

After meeting with Mr. Johnson and Mr. St. Denis, we realized that the newly added feedback control aspect of our interface was unnecissary for our project. eam Rhinoe is already working on a feedback control demonstraton system fothier senior project. We decided that the control aspect of our project should be scrapped. We removed the newly added html frame, and in this version also implemented our webcam. It is showplaced in the middle of the a of the arrows, and when the rest of the system is completed, the webcam wil show the reactions of the turbine to changing wind conditions.

After making the switch to the direction based condition interface, we realized that we needed to make the interface to control both the "condition" and "response" HC08's simultaniously. To do this, we needed to run two perl scripts at the same time on the same webpage. This involved adding frames to the page to split it up. We also implemented the contols fr the "response" HC08 that will handle the reactions and conditions for the turbine. Soon we will need to add yet another frame to display updating data recieved from the turbine and displayed to the user.

We completely re-designed our interface to support a more graphical approach where the user can choose between seven preset wind directions, and have the fans turn on and off based on the direction chosen. This concept removed the difficulty of dealing with thousands of possibilities, and also made things a little easier for the user.

With this interface concept, the user selects a button cooresponding to the desired average wind direction and (depending on what button was chosen) up to three fans may turn on. The fan nearest to the direction would turn on full, and the surrounding fans on either side would turn on 50%, giving an average wind direction that was close to the desired choice. Also implemented in this concept is wind direction arrows surrounding what would eventually be an updating webcam of our turbine's reactions. The arrows change color to let the user know what direction the wind is currently coming from.

The first interface concept we came up with allowed each fan to be controlled separatly with three choices per fan: On, Off, and 50% duty cycle. This meant that each combination of fans needed it's own unique condition variable. For seven fans with three options per fan, there would be 3^7 = 2187 different possible combinations. We quickly realized that this approach would not be feasable. It was never tested to turn on fans on or off remotely, and was almost immediately abanndoned.

Some good points about this concept were that all fan outputs were individually customizable and wind conditions could have thousands of combinations. We decided that we would come up with a different, more graphical approach to tackle this problem.