For a couple years now, I have been looking at home weather stations to measure wind speed and direction along with the other usual stuff - indoor and outdoor temparature, humidity and rainfall. I went with a WMR968 Professional Weather Station from Oregon Scientific. It uses solar to power wireless transmitters to send the data from instruments to the display. It was a bear to install, taking 6-8 hours to get the anemometer high enough and away from obstructions. The directions were so bad, I thought it would never work, but it does and fairly reliably - for now.
But I wished I had waited for the anemometer from Fascinating Electronics. It’s a homemade but cleverly fashioned together with PVC pipe. The anemometer (weather vane and cup rotor) is $100. Throw in another $25 for the temparature/humidity sensor and you all but the rain guage you get in the WMR968 which goes for $250 (I wanted Davis Vantage Pro 2, but could not justify the $500+ cost). To be fair, Fascinating’s piecemeal approach isn’t for everyone. It does not come with an electronic display so you have to build or acquire your own or use a calibration chart to translate pulses from the anemometer in MPH. But that could be a fun project.
Safety networks have become more complex, and have actually become simpler and easier to deploy for plant operators. This slideshow highlights developments in plant safety with an emphasis on integrated safety networks.
As the MEMS industry spans a myriad of industries and markets, the future of MEMS in consumer electronics will enable a myriad of functionality, applications, and personalization.
The Nest is a sleek-looking digital thermostat which can actually "learn" its owners' schedule and then continue to regulate temperature to suit the user's preferences and patterns.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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