Wind Meter Talks To iPhone Wirelessly With No Electronics [Kickstarter]

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I don’t really care about measuring the wind – I prepare for a bike trip using WeatherPro, which tells me how bad the wind will be, not how bad it is right now. But the Vaavud wind meter is notable for another reason: it communicates its wind-speed readings to your iPhone wirelessly, yet uses no electronics whatsoever. How? Read on…

It’s all done, as you might have guessed, using magnets. Frickin’ magnets! How do they work?

The Vaavud plugs into your jack socket, using it only as a convenient mount, and a place from where it can talk to your iPhone. Inside are two magnets, which spin as the unit spins. These spinning magnets are detected by your iPhone’s magnetometer, which you will know as the compass.

Neat, huh? And because it’s simple, it’s cheap. Or fairly cheap. Buy in is £30, or around $45, and it may or may not also work with your compass-equipped Android device.

Like I said, I can’t think of many reasons I’d need to know the wind speed right here, right now, but if I were a sniper or a golfer, I might have different needs. I wonder if the folks behind the Vaavud are planning a camouflaged version?

Source: Kickstarter

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