Topic: Ecowitt Wittboy WS90 sensor wind speed accuracy

[Del Schier]

I have been using the Wittboy WS90 for a few weeks and I question the wind speed readings. I have it up 20' so it is not in the clear. It seems to read high on light wind and low on higher winds. I see in a older forum thread the other uses say it reads high on higher winds, the opposite of what I am seeing.
I sold my very old Davis weather station and in the process of trying to fix my Peet Bros Ultimeter so I have nothing to compare it to except that I am a pilot and I think I have a good sense of wind speed. I did put a piece of yarn on a rod right under the sensor and there is windsock up high across the street at a neighbor's house. The town airport 5 mi. away will show 12 kn gusting to 20 where the Wittboy is showing 4 mph gusting to 6 or so.
The calibration is only a multiplier factor which I see makes the light wind readings even higher. It seems the firmware could have a lookup table to calibrate over a range of wind speed. Please email me with any thoughts or experience with this product.

[Wooks61]

You could look for info here.
https://meshka.eu/Ecowitt/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start

Lots of useful information.

[Meteorology fan]

Del Schier - Ecowitt WS90 Wittboy has improved over 2 years, but the accuracy is still not as good in many situations as Fine Offset declares to us and the error often exceeds 5%. Especially at higher speeds. In the rain it can randomly overestimate and underestimate, but also in dry conditions readings are sometimes questionable. This is the fault of the use of cheap 40Khz transducers used in Wittboy. I know from colleagues in Poland that it tends to undershoot and randomly overshoot in some. I've seen it myself. Direction shows not bad, but its accuracy is not as good as Vaisala WMT700, which is from the professional segment.

Here a colleague uses Ecowitt WS68: https://www.ecowitt.net/home/index?id=182528

Here Ecowitt WS90 Wittboy on software 1.3.8:

https://www.ecowitt.net/home/index?id=13156

In the lower range the advantage is of course the ultrasound, but however, the higher the speed, we have a lot of randomness on the WS90 Wittboy. Both anemometers are amateur segment.


I think it is a good choice to buy the Ecowitt WS68 for comparative measurement next to the WS90 Wittboy, because it seems more stable. Of course, in the lower range of measured speed it slightly underestimates the wind through inertia and the aileron from the wind direction is not very sensitive.  However, in gale and thunderstorms it is more stable: https://shop.ecowitt.com/collections/sensor-array/products/ws68

You need to buy, for example, a GW1200 gateway as a second one to read from the WS68.

https://shop.ecowitt.com/collections/lan-wifi-gateway

We plan to test 3 WS90 Wittboy in the coming weeks, using 1.3.8 software on one and 1.4.7 on two masts. Right next to it we will place a Vaisale WMT700, which was purchased by a colleague who had previous internships at WMO stations. We will check what Ecowitt has improved in the software and what is still wrong with the reference sonic windmeter.

https://tiny.pl/tjmj-m4y