Anyone have an ultrasonic anemometer?

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politics123

Active Member
So, I was about to purchase my 1 wire hobby board (see: post about real-time electrical usage monitoring) and was looking at how to monitor water and gas usage, and I came across a bunch of places selling commercial ultrasonic wind speed/direction sensors.

Intriguing... does anyone have experience with them? They appear to be much more reliable then cup + vane sensors.

Do they exist in the "affordable" price range? (I don't need a $3k one for an airport!)


http://www.gill.co.uk/products/anemometer/wind_ob2.htm
 
Vaisala makes an ultrasonic one, a Finland company with US offices. National Weather Service, Military and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) use them and they are reliable. The original ultrasonic wind sensor was made by a company called Handar in San Francisco Bay area then Vaisala bought Handar and improve the sensor to a newer version today. They make one for commercial use and one for National Weather Service which has heavy duty built in heater and onsite firmware upgrade can be made by customer but very expensive.

The Gill is UK company. I have tested one of them in a test chamber for extreme cold temperature and it failed

I'm NOT a salesman for either company but I have tested and use them for my agency.
 
The Weatherhawk also uses this technology. No moving parts for all weather measurements including rainfall. $5K is beyond the typical hobby market.
 
I'd looked into the ultrasonics as well, with the Windsonic by Gil being the least expensive. But if I remember correctly that was still in the $2000.00 range with a display unit.

What temperature did the Gil unit fail at by the way, Tuantu. Did it "recover" after warming or did it "stay dead".

From a maintainance perspective the untrasonics would be nice, but from a cost vs. functionality viewpoint I'll probably got with something like a consumer level Vantage Pro station in the $800 range.
 
The Gil sensor went dead and never recover when in extreme cold temp. The Gil sensor is very nice looking.
 
Very interesting... I'll explore this in more detail, but note that this only measures velocity, not direction... well, at least as published :D
 
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