Vaavud: precise wind meter for your smartphone

A Danish group of entrepreneurs has developed a wind meter for iOS or Android smartphones. The Vaavud wind meter is made of high-performing plastics and has no electronic parts.

Andreas, Maria, and Thomas have built a reliable wind measurement system for iPhones, iPads, and smartphones running on Android. The Vaavud shows you the exact wind speed when you rig up your windsurf gear or launch your kite.

The device has a wind range of 1 m/s up to 25 m/s and has been tested and calibrated in a professional wind tunnel at the Technical University of Denmark.

The plug-in device is easy-to-use and uses the smartphone's headphone jack. As the wind picks up the two cups, the Vaavud starts to spin, and then data is transmitted to the smartphone.

"The secret is two small magnets in the rotor. The magnetic field sensor in the phone can detect when they rotate, and by using algorithms normally used for sound processing, the rotations can be converted to wind speed".

"Complicated engineering, made user-friendly and simple. In fact, nobody has utilized the smartphone magnetometer in this way before", Andreas, Maria, and Thomas explain.

Windsurfers and kitesurfers may upload their readings to the Vaavud website and share all wind speed data with the entire world. Also, take a look at the best professional anemometers in the world.

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