Optical Tachometer with an Arduino
An Arduino being used to measure the speed of a 12V computer fan. An IR light emitter and photodetector are placed on either side of the fan. As the fan blades spin, they break the beam of light coming from the IR emitter from being seen by the detector. By counting how often this happens, we can figure out how fast the fan is spinning. In this picture, the LCD display says the fan is spinning at approximately 5040 RPM. This was programmed in C++.
This project was interesting because it is a very direct way to see how fast computers really are. The fan is spinning so fast that it just looks like a blur to the human eye, but even this tiny, not-so-powerful microcontroller had no problem keeping up with it and counting the rotations. Very cool.
Optical Tachometer with an Arduino
An Arduino being used to measure the speed of a 12V computer fan. An IR light emitter and photodetector are placed on either side of the fan. As the fan blades spin, they break the beam of light coming from the IR emitter from being seen by the detector. By counting how often this happens, we can figure out how fast the fan is spinning. In this picture, the LCD display says the fan is spinning at approximately 5040 RPM. This was programmed in C++.
This project was interesting because it is a very direct way to see how fast computers really are. The fan is spinning so fast that it just looks like a blur to the human eye, but even this tiny, not-so-powerful microcontroller had no problem keeping up with it and counting the rotations. Very cool.