Hello everyone,
I want to add a sensor that measures the wind speed to my quadrotor. I need also a temperature sensor with high accuracy (0.1 degree). Does anyone know anything about a company that sells these senors?
Thank you.
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I am building the RaptorSense, a digital instrument that measures the airspeed, altitude and temperature. It is primarily developed for fixed wings. Airspeed measurements with a quadrotor could be problematic. Directing the sensor into the wind can be an issue and the forward speed is usually low. All airspeed sensors become erratic at low speeds. The usability range of my sensor starts from 5m/s (~20km/h) and goes up to 200m/s (~700km/h) although not tested yet :)
I am curious, what are you planning to build?
About RaptorSense:
RaptorSense weights ~0.8 gram and the dimensions are 4 x 6 x 28 mm for the classic version. The total weight of the version with the integrated Pitot tube is ~1.9 gram and the sensor part measures 6 x 6 x 30 mm. The image below is taken on top of a 5mm grid and the servo connector is added as reference.
3D Robotics sells a little pito prob kit here. I don't think the arducopter software supports it but you can pretty easily pull the library in from the arduplane code.
The barometer on the ardupilot measures its temperature extremely accurately. I've noted however than the baro tends to warm up a bit in flight so the reading is not so much the air temperature as the autopilot temperature. I've used this on other projects with great success. You'll just have to code up the driver and add mavlink packets as necessary to get that information to the ground.
Just to make certain you're aware of this, but there really isn't a good way to measure wind speed on a multi-rotor. Pito static probe systems are very directionally dependent. It works on airplanes because they fly 'pointy end forward' most of the time, so you can align the pito-static probe with the nose of the aircraft. Such a system on a multi-rotor will only work when you're flying straight forwards. You really need a nice multi-hole probe system for a multi rotor, but I don't think any are commercially available yet.
Depending on your technical proficiency, another option for you is to write up some sort of Kalman filter which can estimate wind velocity as you're flying. But that's a whole different can of worms.