Building a Breezedude with a kit - thezenox/breezedude GitHub Wiki

If you don't want to deal with building the hardware, you can buy a ready-made kit. Sellers of kits are listed here

The kit contains all components you need to set up your FANET wind station sender. You still require a compatible wind sensor and - depending on the FANET coverage of your stations location - host a FANET/OGN groundstation within rage.

Check your network coverage

The range of the FANET signal depends on your surrounding. In general, a line of sight between sender and groundstation is required. It may work beyond line of sight, but then needs to be tested.

To get a feeling if you need to set up groundstation (GS) yourself, you can check your surrounding for an existing on gliderradar.com. You can display the coverage of each OGN receiver, but beware that this is mostly generated by flying objects and not on the ground. To check your coverage on the ground take a FANET device (e.g. Skytraxx) with livetracking enabled on a not-flying-day (to avoid messages being forwarded to the GS by flying FANET devices aka. mesh-network) and check if your device shows up on the map. If this works with the small antenna of the FANET Vario, it will work with the larger breezedude antenna as well.

Finding a location

The pole and location of the wind sensor should fulfill the following requirements:

  • free flow from the main take-off/landing directions
  • as high as possible. Meterological station are set up 10m above the ground. This is unpractical for a paragliding site, but at a height of 2m the wind speed can only be 50-70% of the 10m values.
  • a somehow retractable pole: Some time a paraglider will be on top of your pole...
  • a seperate pole is recommended. If possible mount it on a seperate pole without a windsock on top. If the windsock can not reach the weather station, a shared pole is ok.
  • the default Breezedude clamp is for 48mm, so a 6m scaffolding tube made of galvanized steel would work perfectly.
  • not rotating: The direction of the sensor must be constant. The tube must be fixed against rotating.
  • lightning safe: If your location is predestined for lightning strikes, take care of proper grounding, add a lightning rod and do not mount the sensor on the very top.

More to come...