October 31, 2008

Project: DWS

DWS (Digital Weather Station) was a weather monitoring system designed to monitor the skiing conditions that a certain skiresort could offer in winter. I worked on this application together with my colleagues Andrei Niciu & Marius Popescu (microcontroller programmer and hardware module designer) and managed to finish most of it over the course of 3-4 months in 2005. The project won the 1st Gold Medal in the 2005 edition of Infomatrix (hardware control section). Here is a short description and some photos:
The DWS system measures, with the help of sensors, the temperature (of the air and of the snow), the pressure, the humidity, the wind speed, the wind direction, the fog density, and of course the snow layer in certain key points along the slopes. All these sensors are incorporated into compact modules and controlled by microcontrollers.
The application gathers information from all the modules, and creates, using simulation algorithms an accurate virtual 3D model of each slope. The operator can thus have a perspective view of the entire slope and can issue prompt warnings about avalanches, heavy fog, heavy winds, unskiable portions of the slope etc.
The program can also be used for live-monitoring of the slopes as it can access LAN cameras situated at various interest points in the resort.



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