GILL Winsonic 2-D Sonic Wind Sensor¶

The GILL Windsonic 2-D Sonic Wind Sensor (Anemometer) measures wind speed and direction.

Data output by the Anemometer instrument is:

Wind Speed

Wind Direction

Data is output as it is read and calculated by the instrument at a fixed period of approximately 1.0 seconds.

The model we have is Winsonic1-L.

Output Format¶

The output format we use is as follows:

<STX>Q,[ddd],sss.ss,M,nn,<ETX>cc\r\n

Where:

[…] indicates an field that may not be present; the “[” and “]” are not printed.
<STX>: start of text character: ASCII value 2
Q: unit identifier; “Q” is the default, which we use, but in theory we could set this to any letter A-Z.
ddd wind direction (degrees) in the range 000 - 359. This field is omitted if the wind speed is below 0.05 m/s.
sss.ss wind speed (m/s)
M: units of measurement; “M” indicates m/sec.
nn: status code, one of:
- 00: OK
- 01: axis 1 failed
- 02: axis 2 failed
- 04: both axes failed
- 08: NVM chucksum failed
- 09: ROM checksum failed
<ETX>: end of text character: ASCII value 3
cc: checksum: the exclusive or of the bytes between (and not including) the <STX> and <ETX>characters.

In the following examples ?? indicates the checksum. I don’t know the correct values.

Example with wind direction (wind speed ≥ 0.05 m/s):

<STX>Q,036,002.57,M,00,<ETX>??

Example without wind direction (wind speed < 0.05 m/s):

Q,,000.04,M,00,<ETX>??