Sensor for air speed

[T.J.]

Hi, I'm trying to figure out who makes a good sensor to measure outdoor wind speed that I can go through a ni daq board and interface into labview. Also is there one that could measure air speed, air direction and air density? This will be hooked up to a vehicle, so is there a way I could wire into the vehicle to get vehicle speed and air density from the ecu?

Thanks for any help.

[Henrik_Volkers]

My first thought for an answer were the usual weather station sensors, but then there was the sentence with the vehicle... what air speed range and uncertainty do you need?

Normal wind speed sensors don't like accelerations! 

Measure temperature at higher windspeeds with high accuracy also can be tricky 😉

I would look for the sensors used for yachting.

[user2lv]

You can use Air flow Anemometers.You can place them on top of the vehicle on which you want to measure the wind speed.Fix it firmly and you can have electrical terminals for counter pulses coming from the sensor.They usually operate on batteries.Hope this helps you.Good Luck.

[LV_Pro]

As previouly mentioned, the ones for maritime (sailboats, etc.) should work, they handle pretty high wind speeds. Remember though, it is what is refered to as apparent wind speed unless the vehicle measurements are made when the winds are dead calm (not a normal situation for a sailboat, no wind, no boat speed either). So if you are driving down a straight stretch at 50 Kph and the wind is from behind at 10 Kph the measured wind speed will obviously be 40 Kph. You do get more interesting when the wind is at an angle other than 0 or 180 degrees though.

[Ben]

WindMaster Pro is a model I have worked with that will give you three vectors representing wind speed in each of the UVW planes. The ones I worked with were serial but they also had an analog output option.

As far as density...

I think that was an option in one model.

Ben