Pole Mount Anemometer by Inspeed

I have an older Anemometer which I wanted to replace. It works the same as this one...via wire...however it splices into a needle gauge instead of an electronic display such as this one here. I checked out the reviews for this prior to my purchase and a lot of them were stating that it was "shotty" and the bike meter was way to small. There was also mention that there was a countdown timer at the bottom of the display that you could not get rid of. Well...I placed my order anyways (figured if nothing else this can attach to my current gauge) and it arrived today. Here's my review right out of the box...er bag in this case:First...the anemometer is of quality build and the wire is already connected to it which I liked. I don't mind splicing wires...doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to do that. The bike meter was what I was more concerned about due to the reviews however...I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. There were reviews which had the same feeling. Despite some negative reviews, the bike meter is actually large enough to do the job. You can see the numbers just fine. Maybe if you're across the room then no...but for more realistic views it works. AND...that timer at the bottom of the display under the MPH readout...yes it can be changed. I couldn't get the info to go away all together however if you press the padded button under the display itself repeatedly you can cycle through various info readouts...and one of them is "Average". Seeing how this meter will be connected to an anemometer, the "Average" readout is fitting as it'd tell you the average wind speeds the unit is reading. Lastly, the bike meter's size means you can mount it pretty much anywhere which is nice. Mine will be going next to my full weather station display. I opted to get this for a more true wind readout as my complete weather station is wireless thus...there's up to a 30 second delay in info updates from the instruments which...needless to say with wind you can miss a lot in 30 seconds. So...this guy will provide me a more true reading.I've yet to install it on the roof but preliminary tests has me giving this 5 stars for now. Once I install it I'll update this if need be. For now...I'm happy with this purchase and I'd recommend giving this a try if you need a simple way to see how windy it is. Cheers :-)***And for the Amazon folks who review these: This is an honest-to-goodness review. I have tested this product out even though it has not yet been installed on the roof. This review follows every guideline Amazon has. There is no reason for this to not be posted. Please do not revoke this review again.

Easy install, came up right away, looks like it should be quite durable. Seems to be quite accurate with wind gusts up to 55 mph (so far) agreeing with NWS weather data for our location. I just leave it in the "max" mode-- I can get a good idea of what the wind is doing now, by watching the current indication for a minute or so, and how high the gusts have been since I last hit reset, from the "max" indication.

Having read the reviews I think many people buy this item expecting something with a lavish display unit that will look good on a shelf in your living room. The Vortex II is not one of those devices and if you are looking for such a device you will be sorely disappointed. The picture shows pretty much what you get. This is a sensor, in the electronic engineering sense of that word, not a slick consumer grade product and it ships only with a basic bicycle tachometer as it's display unit. This is not to say that you have to be an engineer to make this thing work. If you are satisfied with the rather simple display unit and don't mind laying some cable and splicing a couple of wires this device is a perfectly satisfactory product that pretty much anybody can install and calibrate in an hour or so. From my point of view the target audience for this product are engineers or electronics hobbyists who want to build their own weather station using a micro-controller or a single-board computer. I bought this thing because I wanted a wireless anemometer to use at the shooting range but I could not find one that worked the way I wanted it to. I hooked my Vortex II up to a Raspberry PI that streams the current wind readings to a web page that I can access from my iPhone over WIFI. Now I can just plant this thing, down range, off to the side where it isn't in the way and adjust my rifle scope for the most current windage from the bench-rest table all day long using the iPhone. The CatEye tachometer came in handy while testing my software but I rather wish they'd included the full bicycle tachometer kit with the speed sensor and attachments so I could have re-purposed the tachometer by attaching it to my bike once I was done coding. I awarded only four stars because there is now a new version of this Anemometer that is fully digital and costs $89.00 with is only $15 more than this one. Annoyingly enough this new sensor is not available on Amazon so I only found out about it on the Inspeed website after I bought this unit. This older version of the Vortex II, has a mechanical reed switch which you have to 'de-bounce' and it only gives you one plus per rotation. Being digital the new Vortex II '8-pulse' presumably does not suffer from bounce since it is digital and has higher resolution which gives you greater accuracy at lower speeds. Also I'm not sure how this thing will stand up to the winter weather and arctic storms we get here in the N-Atlantic but I'll worry about that when I get it into my head to buy another one and mount it on the roof of my house.