Inspeed Anemometers

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So I sent Inspeed an email to see if they could provide some info about their anemometers…

I am trying to get the author of a popular piece of weather software (www.weather-display.com) to add support for you'r anemometer products. I think it would be benificial for you guys as this software is used by quite a bit of existing weather stations, but your anemometers could provide more data than the average weather station.

anywho, I’m wondering exactly how you are determining the wind speed, I’m presuming that the anemometer is sending pulses (closing) a certain number of times per second (1 pulse per rotation?) but then how are you determining mph? I know the Davis anemometers are basically pulses per second = mph and I am guessing your’s work in a similar fashion but I would like to know 100%, Thank you for your time :slight_smile:

Got a response (at 10pm that same day? lol)

Hi Frank - interesting! yes - the Vortex head produces 1 pulse per rotation, and the cal factor for the rotor we use is 3.4 mph per pulse per sec (3.4 mph/Hz). So 10 Hz = 34 mph... We have software that monitors 2 pins on the COM port and uses a high speed process to record wind speed. I would be interested in learning more about what you would like to do. It would be great if ou sensors would be compatible with your software. Thank you for the message Lorenzo www.inspeed.com

sent him a response too… although it sounds more like an advertisement for WD than a response lol

Weather-Display is not my software, but I (and many amateurs) use it on my weather station and the author is really great about adding stuff to it and supporting his software. Weather-Display is a full weather monitor/recording software suite and has all sorts of useful output that you can send to webpages, various citizens weather programs and other neat stuff.

A lot of people (including myself) use weather stations that don’t take very instant readings from their anemometers meaning that most gusts do not get accurately recorded. What I (and presumably a few other weather-display users) would like to do is add the Inspeed anemometers to our existing weather stations (via a separate serial port) so that we get instant wind data and use our existing weather stations that can provide us wind direction, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure etc.

If you would like to see an example of some of the output of Weather-Display you can check out my Weather-Display Live page at http://weather.flecom.net/

For more information about Weather-Display check out the WD website at http://www.weather-display.com

So there you go, PPS * 3.4 = MPH, should be fairly easy to go from there. If you do decide to add support for “hard wired” anemometers it would be nice if the 3.4 value were editable so that for example if you wanted to hardwire a davis anemometer it would be PPS * 1 = MPH.

I hope you dont mind (Brian) that I took the liberty of requesting the information from InSpeed but I would really love to see the addition of a really inexpensive, simple-to-interface, instant measurement anemometer to weather display.

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very cool

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Possible upgrade for my weather watch…

windhat.jpg

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This would look good on my truck too.

windmagt.jpg

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Since they have done all the work already to read the pulses and convert them to mph, maybe they could add the option for their software to write a simple file every x seconds with the current value that WD could read?

3.4 mph/Hz, am I missing something or is that a strange number? At first I thought it might be a metric device but it’s 5.44 kph/Hz which is even stranger.

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Yes I’d be very keen to get one to improve the wind reading above those of the ws2300… if their ap only uses 1% process time as they say, it would work well in the background… perhaps they could share the values by IPC the way that nexstorm does…? or maybe provide some wind thread code to Brian? :slight_smile:

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[quote author=ricky link=topic=7000.msg46920#msg46920 date=1105144671]
Yes I’d be very keen to get one to improve the wind reading above those of the ws2300…

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What is the cost of the inspeed anemometer versus the cost of an 1 wire weather station ?
Wouldn’t it be more cost effective using the 1 wire weather station that way you get the fastest updating weather station that works with weather display already including wind direction updates and temperture .

just a thought

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i missed this thread while I was away…
I was contacted by the inspeed people, while i was away, via emai, and they seem keen for me to get wd to work with it
so, someone here actualy has one of these that hooks up to the pc?
so i just need to read the pins…
but, first, lets see if the actual byte value from the com port comes through, and then if I did a bitwise and 16 on that byte, it might then show if the pin is on or off…

but, yes, vinay is right
and someone has done this already, and it works already in WD , but I would have to allow it to work with other station types
you can at the moment use a dallas 1 wire station’s windspeed and direction with a wm918 (but you also need the dallas 1 wire adaptor, so that would negate any price difference)