Finally, a wind instrument that will work with a Mac!

[BOAT]

I wouldn't be too fast to jump on what will "work" on a or not, what-ever you get you might need some of your own testing to proper located the sensor. If you look at the frame shape on this wind sensor top:

You'll notice that the wind speed cups are over a foot in front of the mast. After a season of testing in different configurations, this is the geometry that worked best on the Macgregor 26M. Spilled air from the front sail, intermittently interfered with the wind speed in previous placements. Also tested various wind vanes and gimbals in the direction sensor electronics. Its easy to make a wind vane that works on land, the hardest thing to do is make one that works on a boat traveling down wind, when the relative wind is less than a knot. It's supper critical to know when your going to jibe, so the direction indicator needs to work in super light air. Personally I don't think swinging solar panels and batteries wound pass these conditions, but I've never tested them.

Chris.

The solar powered wireless units were never under consideration for me.

Wireless for sure I would NEVER consider for a wind instrument that I was going to use with my auto pilot - the wireless drops out too much be it blue tooth or wifi and also there is too much of a lag time between the actual wind conditions and whats indicated because of the refresh rate lag of radio instruments.

Whatever I decided on it HAD to have a wire to be fast enough and accurate enough to control the pilot.

As for solar power - it's a great idea but it is a lot of weight aloft to be swinging wildly back and forth as we all know our boats can lean 30 degrees one way and 30 the other real fast on a tack - that's a 60 degree angle of change on a 40 foot mast so at the top it's traveling what, ? ten feet or more at a speed of what?? 20 to 30 MPH??? That swing alone will generate wind speed that's not there - another reason some wind instruments don't recover quickly after a tack. Adding a half pound of solar panels to the mass of the direction indicator is not really a great idea.

The ultrasonic sensors are really good for these reasons - no moving parts - no mass effect when swinging wildly port to starboard. And if you trailer no need to remove the instrument to drive the freeway.

Alas, there is no system out there with ultrasonic for a rotating mast that does not cost more than a used hobie cat so I think a traditional wind vane with a wire is going to be the best route for me.

[MikeFloutier]

Having just about finished installing a Raymarine st2000 autopilot below deck and getting it working in track mode with my Garmin GPSMAP 500 my thoughts are starting to focus on the wind issue. This means getting a wind sensor that will link to the AP so I can sail to a constant wind angle; something I'd like as I'm planning some semi-bluewater trips, e.g. Isles of Scilly.

As my entire spend on the AP project has been just over £200 I'm keen to keep the cost down and have been looking at the Nasa Clipper (over here) Wind mast-head sensor. This costs £99, can be calibrated by shorting a couple of wires and outputs the NMEA 0183 sentence MWV. Unfortunately the st2000 is only interested in VWR. Any ideas as to what I could do?

Also, and I've probably missed something here, but why does it matter that the mast rotates? I can understand racers needing an exact apparent wind to combine with other data to produce the tactically important true wind but why should it matter to us? Surely all we want are the shifts in order to maintain the wind angle.

[BOAT]

Nasa Clipper is over 300 bucks for the display and the sensor - thing is - you really don't need the display.

If you have a chartplotter the plotter can display any data from your sensor.

If your sensor is mounted on top of the mast and the mast rotates your sensor will give the wrong data - the sensor will add another 30 degrees to the angle that is not there - you can't use a wind sensor on the MAC 26M that is not set up for a rotating mast - it will not work so don't waste your money on one that is not for a rotating mast unless your NOT going to mount it on the mast.

I did get a wind sensor for a rotating mast from Pegasus but I did not bother with getting a display, I really only needed the sensor for talking to my auto pilot and chart plotter. I still might buy a Pegusus display at a later time, but for now I am doing without a dedicated display. That would save you a lot of money too.

If your going to use the wind sensor to operate the pilot I strongly suggest you use an instrument that is mounted either on the top of the mast or out in the front of the boat on the bow pulpit at least 6 feet high in the air out in front of the head sail. If you want to use a sensor to sail downwind you MUST use a sensor mounted on top of the mast or at the BACK of the boat off the mast crutch.

I studied a lot of set ups and the ones that work the best are the ones on the top of the mast on a fixed mast that does not rotate. Some MAC people have actually pinned their rotating mast so it does not rotate when they use the wind sensor. That's the MOST accurate set up.

Next best is on top of the mast with a rotation reading device in the mast all hard wired together.

After that the best set up depends on the direction of the wind your sailing:

An ultrasonic sensor on the bow pulpit works best for beating, and ultrasonic OR wind cup sensor on the mast crutch works best for running.

A WIRELESS sensor with a rotation sensor on top of the mast is one of the worst set ups because it's too slow -

So there you have it - running an AP off the wind requires accuracy or the pilot will drop out constantly - here are your choices in order of best accuracy:


THESE ARE ALL HARDWIRED!

1: Standard Mast Top Set Up with the mast PINNED so it can't rotate. The most accurate. (Pinning the mast creates a HUGE loss of performance - expect to lose a full knot of speed on some points of sail).

2: Rotating Sensor Mast Top Set Up. (Almost as accurate as a fixed mast sensor and more than accurate enough to drive the AP on every point of sail)

3: TWO ULTRASONIC SENSORS - one on the front and one on the back and a switch to force the AP to use one for Downwind and the other for beating. (Accurate, expensive, and hard to wire)

4: ONE ULTRASONIC SENSOR - one on the rear up high - very popular for a lot of MAC sailors this is a good setup for pac cruisers and long journeys. Does not work for beating on the AP.

5: ONE ULTRASONIC SENSOR - one on the front mounted high - (looks really stupid but it does work quite well for beating on the AP).

Anything beyond the above will not be able to run the AP - the AP will drop out if there are wild fluctuations or conflicting or slow data coming in from the sensor - The AP is designed to ignore the wind data FIRST when there is a conflict, so if the wind moves wrong and the AP does not sense the boat turned it will drop out or turn into the wind because it's reacting to what it thinks is a broken sensor. Wireless sensors are not accurate enough to run an AP.

It's a safety feature of the AP.

[kadet]

The AP is designed to ignore the wind data FIRST when there is a conflict, so if the wind moves wrong and the AP does not sense the boat turned it will drop out or turn into the wind because it's reacting to what it thinks is a broken sensor. Wireless sensors are not accurate enough to run an AP.

BOAT BOAT BOAT when are we going to send you to electronics school

A wireless wind sensor is no different to it's wired counterpart, the transmission of the data to the network is the only difference, in fact wireless transmission is faster than wired as radio waves travel at the speed of light whereas electrons flow in a wire at about 1/100 the speed of light . Most non ultrasonic sensors sense wind speed via a voltage regulator and a Hall-Effect circuit. The wind direction has two Hall-Effect circuits mounted at 90 degrees with respect to each other. These Hall-Effect devices sense the rotating magnets in the wind vane. The wind direction sensors produce two signals 90 deg out of phase, and the wind speed sensor is single phase and sees the magnet in the cup speed mechanism. This setup is the same in either wired or wireless. A good example of this is the Garmin Gwind which can come in either wireless or wired versions with exactly the same wind sensor.

Also your AP can use wind trim to set various response times and sensitivity to wind shifts, it does not ignore the wind data it normally just sets an alarm state when a shift of more than 15 degrees or so is detected and goes into standby mode.

[grady]

BOAT BOAT BOAT when are we going to send you to electronics school

Whoever opens the Go Fund Me Account I will donate the first ¥1000.

[BOAT]

Yes, very true Electricity moves at the speed of light, but processors do not. I was not trying to say radio was slower than wires. The nmea sentence is sent directly to the plotter instead of getting digitized into a radio signal and decoded by a receiver but that is not the main reason I say wireless devices are slower: The wireless models are slower because the people that have them tell me they are slower – the speed of radio waves are not the issue – it’s the processing time of the device that is reading the radio waves and the conversion.

Good example is my chartplotter wireless – changes I make on my chartplotter, OR on my IPAD are very fast but not instantaneous – there is an almost imperceptible lag between the changes that occur on the chartplotter screen, and then the IPAD screen. Both the IPAD and the plotter have very fast processors.

Now, I also have an Android tablet – and the lag time between the charplotter screen and the Android screen is almost a FULL SECOND! Same goes when I control the plotter with the Android - I wait 900 milliseconds for the change to happen on the plotter - same operation using the IPAD only takes about 100 milliseconds.

The RAYMARINE receiver for my wireless remote for the AP is also a slow processor – but it’s fine for what it has to do (react to my discreet input of pushing buttons) Reacting to an ever changing Analog type input – digitizing it into discreet data, and sending it to a code reader is another issue altogether and the processing time bogs if the processor is not fast, but the number one complaint I got on wireless sensors was: Wireless sensors lose signal, drop, and tend to require a lot of re-booting up and re-initiating time – it works real well, but wires work even better.

They told me the signals would drop out A LOT – because of the distance up the mast and other things or interference. I went around the horn many times on the wireless stuff and after a whole year of asking people who had them I realized wireless was not reliable enough for the AP.

Your right about setting the AP to wind shifts and it works great on a big boat with 2000 pounds of ballast under your ass – a slight delay to react to gusts abeam will slowly heel a boat over before it finally turns up wind, but if you do that on the MAC (set your delay) your boat will be at 45 degrees before it even starts to turn into the wind. You can ask mastreb about that one. That's not really a big deal to me because that's how I sail most of the time anyway - on a solid line - one heading - and I can tell you I do spend a LOT of time at 45 degrees doing that. Using the wind sensor on the AP will make the boat turn into the wind and help prevent a lot of that heeling, but only if the delay is off. There is a difference too on tiller pilots and wheel pilots.

Going into standby mode was the main complaint people gave me about tiller drivenAP’s. it’s called DROPPING OUT. Folks complained that the AP would drop out at the WORST times – like in heavy weather, or in a gust – or when there was too much pressure on the rudders because of a following sea, even when heeling too much. This issue does not happen with the wheel pilot.

That is why I set up my pilot with a longer tiller arm, I really wanted to avoid the issues others told me about in regards to over working the tiller pilot and making it “drop out”. And mastreb who has a WHEEL PILOT told me he tried and failed many times to get the wind to drive the pilot on a run from the rear mast crutch- he said even the wheel pilot dropped out so much he stopped using the pilot until he added a sensor to the pulpit.

All I know is that I put all the advice I got into my setup and the AP has never dropped over 1/4 knot of speed, ever. (I don't know any pilot that can hold a course at less than 1/4 knot).

Anything related to electronics I have no clue on - on that subject you are 100% right - I think I am too old to go back to school for my EE now - I think it's a hopeless cause.

[K9Kampers]

All I read was...

Yes, very true Electricity moves at the speed of light... / ... I think it's a hopeless cause.

...did I miss anything important in between?

[kadet]

You know that was tongue in cheek don't you BOAT

And electricity does not move at the speed of light it moves about 100 times slower the same speed as light the speed of light is measured in a vacuum when in a medium like copper wire all this strange physics wave propagation velocity algorithms kick in that hurt my head. Your wired sensor does not send a true waveform like radio but voltage changes to represent wind shift and speed this is then interpreted by the head unit, NMEA 2000 or NMEA 0183 circuit etc..

I have not looked into wireless update lag (I have no wireless yet) but I would highly suspect this would be more due to queuing, polling, nice values and packet sizing and nothing to do with how the signal is delivered.

[kurz]

BOAT, by the way, can you display the pegasus wind iformation just on the ev-100 display (without plotter)?

I mean, does the ev-100 has some graphics to show the wind information? I mean I do not really need 2 inch letters to show me the heading...

[sailboatmike]

Nice tip on the Clipper NASA wind instruments, I wonder how they manage to sell them for less than 1/2 the price Raymarine charge for theirs???

I cant even buy a new sensor unit for the price of a whole new clipper instrument

Ohh I know Raymarine just love to empty your pockets for old technology that has paid for itself a millions of times over

[BOAT]

Yeah, the RayMarine legacy stuff is too expensive, but it’s also bullet proof – typical US Military Contractor stuff. I am pretty sure you do not need a chartplotter for the AP to steer by the wind.

The lag time on the wireless is not actually the main reason people pushed me away from it because most wind sensors only update once every ½ second anyways, but the main issue was the drop outs. Wireless means no power – no power means batteries.

Solar batteries are great until you use the device all night, then in the AM just before the sun comes up the device drops out – like they said – always at the worst times (in the dark when you’re tired) – and if it drops out too long it needs to re-initialize – that takes a long time and usually you must push buttons from the cockpit to confirm the signal. Even worse on Bluetooth.

K9Kampers got the gist of the message right.

[kurz]

thanks. I know that the ev-100 can steer by wind information without a chartplotter.
My question was if you can use the raymarine p70 dipslay (that comes with the ev-100) to show the wind direction in a graphical stile. So there was no need to mount the pegasus display an you have the wind information on the AP display. If it would work like that...

[BOAT]

thanks. I know that the ev-100 can steer by wind information without a chartplotter.
My question was if you can use the raymarine p70 dipslay (that comes with the ev-100) to show the wind direction in a graphical stile. So there was no need to mount the pegasus display an you have the wind information on the AP display. If it would work like that...

Sorry kurz buddy, I did not read all of your message, you want to do without the meter AND the chartplotter as a display - yes you can do that.

It's all automatic - the AP head will automatically put a yellow picture of a wind vane on the course compass when it detects any wind data in the nmea sentences. It looks like this:



Sorry I did not read you message right.

[sailboatmike]

But the Raymarine stuff breaks all the time, I know my ST50 wind unit has had 2 wind senders on it before the PO gave up, probably from frustration and empty pockets, lost of the Raymarine stuff is now made in Asia, just like every other brand

[u12fly]

But the Raymarine stuff breaks all the time, I know my ST50 wind unit has had 2 wind senders on it before the PO gave up, probably from frustration and empty pockets, lost of the Raymarine stuff is now made in Asia, just like every other brand

Except for the Pegasus AeroNautic Wind Sailor & Wind Sensor systems. They are built here in America.