Published January 7, 2024 © MIT

Wind Turbine Predictive Maintenance and Remote Monitoring

Collecting information from remote devices like wind turbines is a challenge so we are enabling the monitoring of Wind Turbine.

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Wind Turbine Predictive Maintenance and Remote Monitoring

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Microchip AVR IoT Mini Cellular Board

DFRobot 6 DOF Sensor - MPU6050

Li-Ion Battery 1000mAh

Custom PCB

Jumper wires (generic)

Motor Encoder

DC motor (generic)

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

STMicroelectronics STM32CubeMonitor

Eclipse IoT Mosquitto

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Soldering iron (generic)

Solder Wire, Lead Free

Solder Flux, Soldering

Story

Background

Wind Turbines are normally located in non-urban locations, which make monitoring and collecting information from these wind turbines a challenge. We are enabling the monitoring of Wind Turbine Environmental state remotely. Not only monitoring but also the system will be able to use the measured data do detect permeant failures.

Project Overview

This project introduce a System that is capable of Monitoring the state of wind Turbine and collect different operating condition like Temperature and Speed of the Turbine. It's also used to detect if the vibration level of the Wind turbine exceeds the safe values.

MQTT Protocol

MQTT Logo

MQTT (originally an initialism of MQ Telemetry Transport[a]) is a lightweight, publish-subscribe, machine to machine network protocol for message queue/message queuing service. It is designed for connections with remote locations that have devices with resource constraints or limited network bandwidth, such as in the Internet of Things (IoT). [wikipedia]

Project Architecture

The Project consists mainly from three parts illustrated in the following image :

System Block Diagram

End-Node (MQTT Client - Publisher) : The Main part of the system, which is responsible for reading the Operating information and send it using MQTT Protocol. (More information in another section)
MQTT Broker : Used to collect all the information send by the End-Node (Publisher) and send it to the GUI (Subscriber). We used mosquitto Message Broker.
GUI (MQTT Client - Subscriber) : A GUI built with STM32CubeMonitor to read the new information from the MQTT Broker and display it.

End-Node (AVR-IoT Cellular Mini)

End-Node is consider the main part of the System, where all the data acquisition and the processing takes place. The core of End-Node is the AVR-IoT Cellular Mini Board. The following image shows the schematic of the End-Node:

Schematic of the End-Node

As shown in the image, the AVR-IoT Cellular Board is connected to MPU6050 to detect Vibration of level, and to the Motor Encoder to measure the Turbine Speed.

The End-Node will send the following data to the Backend :

Vibration Status : This will show if there is currently vibration level that exceeds the safe threshold.
Temperature : The Current temperature value for the system
Turbine Speed : The Speed of the Turbine in RPM
Temperature Failure : This will show if the Temperature value exceeds the safe limit for multiple time which indicate permeant fault in the system
Vibration Failure : This will show if there is unsafe vibration for multiple time which indicate permeant fault in the system

Vibration Detection

The End-Node can detect vibration using MPU6050. This vibration detection takes two steps:

CalculateBaseline: This step takes only during system startup and used to measure the reference (baseline) for Accelerometer and Gyroscope values. This happened by reading the sensor values for multiple time and take the average of these values.

Using the baseline approach will help in case if the MPU6050 sensor position changed.

Calculate the Difference compared to Baseline: The Software will periodically read the values for the Accelerometer and Gyroscope and calculate the difference between the current values and the baselines. If the difference exceeds a specific value this means that the Turbine is no vibrating.

Connection to Backend

The End-Node is periodically sending the data using Cellular connectivity using MQTT Protocol. The data is sent to the MQTT Broker (mosquitto), and can be read by any Subscriber client.

GUI

The project implements GUI to visualize the data received from the End-Node. The STM32CubeMonitor was used to design this GUI.

GUI in case of Temperature failure

GUI in case of Vibration Failure

Code

#include "UserApp.h"
#include <TimerEvent.h>

TimerEvent VibrationTaskTimer;
TimerEvent DataSendTaskTimer;

void setup() 
{
  UserApp_Init();

  VibrationTaskTimer.set(VIBRATION_PROCESSING_TASK_PERIODICITY, UserApp_Vibration_Processing_Task);
  DataSendTaskTimer.set(DATA_SEND_TASK_PERIODICITY, UserApp_Data_Send_Task);
}

void loop() 
{
  VibrationTaskTimer.update();
  DataSendTaskTimer.update();
}

class MPU6050
{
    public:
        MPU6050();
        ~MPU6050();

        void begin(uint8_t i2c_address, TwoWire *i2c_bus);
        void Read_Gyro (SensorData_t* gyro);
        void Read_Accel(SensorData_t* accel);
        void Read_Temperature(int16_t* temperature);
        void MPU60x0_Set_GyroRange(MPU60x0_GyroRange_T range);
        void MPU60x0_Set_AccelRange(MPU60x0_AccelRange_T range);


    

    private:
        uint8_t ReadReg (uint8_t MemAddress);
        void WriteReg(uint8_t MemAddress, uint8_t data);


        TwoWire *I2C_Bus;
        uint8_t I2C_Address;

};

Credits

Mohamed Ali Bedair

4 projects • 3 followers

Engineer/Maker

Wind Turbine Predictive Maintenance and Remote Monitoring

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Background

Project Overview

MQTT Protocol

Project Architecture

End-Node (AVR-IoT Cellular Mini)

Vibration Detection

Connection to Backend

GUI

Schematics

System Block Digram

End-Node Schematic

STM32CubeMonitor

Code

Main Arduino File

MPU6050 Driver

Full project code

Credits

Mohamed Ali Bedair

Comments

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Wind Turbine Predictive Maintenance and Remote Monitoring

Wind Turbine Predictive Maintenance and Remote Monitoring

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Background

Project Overview

MQTT Protocol

Project Architecture

End-Node (AVR-IoT Cellular Mini)

Vibration Detection

Connection to Backend

GUI

Schematics

System Block Digram

End-Node Schematic

STM32CubeMonitor

Code

Main Arduino File

MPU6050 Driver

Full project code

Credits

Mohamed Ali Bedair

Comments

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