Basic system diagram from the Planning
I purchased three mini fans as my wind source, their product parameters of size, voltage, and speed are, respectively:
However, none of them had visible effects on my mini sand landscape, even they sounded almost silent, and 9000rpm is the highest speed in this series of fan products.
So I tried a combination of a DC motor + an extra fan, and the test showed that if the fan is placed in a vertical position close to the sand, the sand is moving, but the speed of texture formation is far slower than I thought.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/486344895
Besides, the disadvantage is obvious: they are bound to take up more space, especially I will use wind sources from multiple directions to form a desert system that simulates nature.
A flowing desert is the core expression in my previous sketch, but it seems hard to simulate it via simple wind-driven. I think that if I continue to optimize the wind environment to realize the simulation, it may take up much more time than the project schedule. To be honest, I am a little inclined to overthrow this project idea...
<aside> 🚫 Another big problem is to find a specific sensor that can detect the shape of the desert.
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The first option I will think of is the infrared distance measuring module. Their measurement accuracy can reach 1mm. I think this value is kind of enough, even for the mini desert texture(if they can be created). But their measurement target is a single point or a single line, which means I have to build another mobile arm to make it complete a "plane scan".
Then I noticed some laser/ultrasonic distance measuring modules. Their problem is that although the accuracy is very high, the returned data is used to judge the distance of obstacles and can return the distance value of the specific small plane. And this plane area far exceeds the boundary distance where the sand texture changes. The ultrasonic distance measurement module even requires the measurement object area to be 0.5 square meters or more, which completely conflicts with the design size of my device.