{"id":647669,"date":"2013-03-19T10:38:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T14:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=780407"},"modified":"2013-03-19T10:38:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T14:38:29","slug":"vavuud-wind-meter-for-smartphones-contains-no-electronics-delivers-accurate-ground-wind-speed-readings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/647669","title":{"rendered":"Vavuud Wind Meter For Smartphones Contains No Electronics, Delivers Accurate Ground Wind Speed Readings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"70\" src=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/03\/vaavud-wireless_indoor.jpg?w=100&amp;h=70&amp;crop=1\" class=\"attachment-tc-carousel-river-thumb wp-post-image\" alt=\"Vaavud-wireless_indoor\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0 10px 7px 0;\" \/><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/vaavud\/a-wireless-wind-meter-containing-no-electronics\/widget\/video.html\" height=\"480\" width=\"640\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Smartphones have a lot of on-board sensors, but do they really have enough? No way, say a slew of recent hardware startups, of which Danish Vavuud is only the most recent. Vavuud is turning to Kickstarter to help build\u00a0<a  href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/vaavud\/a-wireless-wind-meter-containing-no-electronics\">a smartphone-compatible wind meter<\/a>, one that miraculously contains no electronics and yet still can communicate accurate wind speed measurements wirelessly to iPhones and Galaxy devices.<\/p>\n<p>The Vavuud wind meter provides an easy way to measure wind speed exactly where you are, with a device that&#8217;s remarkably inexpensive and deceptively simple. It plugs into the headphone jack of your device, but that&#8217;s to give it a stable base; it actually uses two magnets in the rotor, which generate a magnetic field that the smartphone can pick up and process using algorithms normally used for sound processing to translate it to wind speed data. Vavuud co-founder Thomas P. Helms says it&#8217;s been tested with iPhone 4, 4S, and 5, as well as Galaxy SII and SIII so far, and it has been calibrated in a wind tunnel at the University of Denmark to ensure accuracy.<\/p>\n<p><a  href=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/03\/vaavud-wireless_indoor.jpg\"><\/a>&#8220;To our knowledge we are the first to use the magnetometer in smartphones in this way, so we of course think the technology itself is kind of cool,&#8221; Helms explained via email. &#8220;It&#8217;s also cool because on a mechanical level it appears quite simple, but there is some relatively complex math behind it .&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s likely that Vavuud will be able to work with any modern advanced smartphone with built-in magnetic field sensors (which is pretty much all of them), so the limited existing test pool shouldn&#8217;t frighten away potential backers. The Vavuud is designed to be used by anyone who might find accurate current windspeed readings useful \u2013 a potential group of users that includes windsurfers, sailors, paragliders, model plane pilots and more.<\/p>\n<p><a  href=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/03\/vaavud-kite.jpg\"><\/a>&#8220;Surfers, sailors, paragliders etc. have needed an online anemometer for ages to be able to create and share crowd-sourced wind information,&#8221; Helms explained. &#8220;Because conditions at your favorite spots may depend on very local factors like mountains, could be affected by thermal conditions, and on and on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Vavuud is looking to ship the Wind Meter by June of this year, with pre-orders beginning at the \u00a315 level.\u00a0iOS and Android apps from Vavuud itself are expected to become available at the same time, but it&#8217;s easy to imagine how, as with <a title=\"Meet Thermodo: A Tiny External Thermometer That Lives In Your iPhone\u2019s Headphone\u00a0Jack\" href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2013\/03\/07\/meet-thermodo-a-tiny-external-thermometer-that-lives-in-your-iphones-headphone-jack\/\">the Thermodo<\/a>, the developer community might embrace another means of collecting information about the world around you and integrate Vavuud into their own apps.<\/p>\n<p>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/tctechcrunch2011.wordpress.com\/780407\/\"><\/a> <\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=A_dAb_5Jm0Q:Jm-ek1uPpB4:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=A_dAb_5Jm0Q:Jm-ek1uPpB4:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=A_dAb_5Jm0Q:Jm-ek1uPpB4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=A_dAb_5Jm0Q:Jm-ek1uPpB4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=A_dAb_5Jm0Q:Jm-ek1uPpB4:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smartphones have a lot of on-board sensors, but do they really have enough? No way, say a slew of recent hardware startups, of which Danish Vavuud is only the most recent. Vavuud is turning to Kickstarter to help build\u00a0a smartphone-compatible wind meter, one that miraculously contains no electronics and yet still can communicate accurate wind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}