Have you ever thought about how an electronic wind vane converts a direction into a unique signal? This seems to be a very complex problem. In fact, some of them are very complex. [Martin] in yoctopuce. Com company has an excellent book about measuring wind direction with only a simple and easy to print disk and some phototransistors.
Commercial wind vanes usually use complex multi track disks with magnets and reed switches, conductive traces and brushes, or other methods to obtain fine resolution. Unfortunately, some of them are easily worn out or more complex than needed.
Martin’s solution is unique because they apply previous research results to a simple and durable 3D printing wind vane. It seems that it can cope with any impact of global warming. The simplicity of the encoder means that it can be used in a large number of applications where low resolution position sensing is enough – this is a great hacker definition!
Adding more tracks or even more disks can achieve higher resolution, but a resolution of 12 degrees seems very suitable for this purpose. If you want to 3D print your own weather station, this simple wind vane design will be welcomed. Thank you [Adrian] for your good advice!