Trotec TA400 Pitot Tube Anemometer incl. Calibration Certificate, Anemometer, Wind Meter, pitot Tube, pitot Tube Anemometer, Meter for Accurate Flow Measurement of air and Gases

good product and delivered on time

Don't get me wrong, this is a neat bit of kit, though I have only given it 4 stars for a reason. It comes with a pitot tube which has a graduated scale along the side so you can see how far it has been inserted into the duct (Important for taking multiple measurements accross a duct). Likewise it has a good range of measurements - velocity, pressure, flow in the latter case, you need to input the diameter of the duct and whether it is round or square for the unit to be able to compute the flow (Flow [Q] = Duct Area [A] x Velocity [V]). It has multiple memories for storing your test points.I purchased the unit for setting up and balancing a self-installed HVAC / MVHR system in my house. In my system I use multiple Iris dampers on each leg of the duct runs to the rooms in order to regulate the air flows (The dampers have pressure tappings for attachment of a manometer). So the good news is that I can use this to read the differential pressures to calcuate flow rates for each duct leg as to do this I simply disconnect the pitot tube and attach the hoses to the upstream and downstream pressure tapings on the damper units - great! The one downside is that it does not measure the temperature of the air stream within the duct - the temperature sensor is on the unit itself which is fine for measuring ambient but not so much if you want to measure flow temperature.However, the reason for the loss of a star...The unit is bundled with software which it states is compatible with Windows. That is true, as I have managed to install it onto a PC running Windows 8.1, however dispite the apparent simplicity I cannot get the device to be recognised, it simply states "OFFLINE" all the time. The instructions provided by the manufacturer are no help in this respect, likewise the help guide within the software doesn't have any troubleshooting tips on this matter. I've tried different USB ports, updating the driver, rebooting the PC, opening and closing the CD drive etc etc! It won't talk to my PC which is annoying! The software is supposed to be compatible with 32 bit and 64 bit systems, mine being the latter.Why?The iris dampers are by design adjustable, allowing you to open and close the iris to regulate the flow, which would be read as a pressure differential on this device. The device will only give you an instantaneous reading. You can use the memories, but this would not be a live readout if trying to assess a trend. Which is where the software is supposed to come into play since this will give you a live readout AND graph of temperaure, pressure, flow and velocity (Minimum of 1 second sample rate), which means you can visually see the difference any adjustments are making in real time and have a graph to show for it, if your that way inclined.To get the software working, I have had to butcher 2 defunct Window's based netbooks to make one that works (Faulty display on one, and trashed hardrive on the other) and install the software franken-net-book - hey presto it works. The netbook is running Windows XP SP3 and is a 32-bit system, all seems to work well appart from the fact that I'm now forced to use a tiny 10" display and a netbook that didn't quite screw back together. I should not have had to have done this, especially when the software supplied is supposed to be compatible with Windows 8 / 64bit.Furthermore, I've tried running it in compatibility mode and as an administrator and it just throws a wobbly saying "Failed to write file" followed by the windows software troubleshooter running (Which is also useless)So the take away points -1. If you are after a decent digital manometer which can measure pressure (gauge and differential), velocity and flowrate then this is great.2. The unit will not measure air flow temperature (thumbs down) only ambient around the unit itself.3. If you want more PC based capability for trending and graphing, this device will do it, but there seem to be some software compatibility issues which may scupper your plans, unless you have access to an old laptop / netbook running Windows XP.

I got my Win 7 64 bit computer to work with the instrument by downloading and installing the software from the Trotec website. But you need to manually install the driver by searching for the folder called Driver in the download and installing the relevant (32 or 64 bit) driver.