Is it normal for a humidity meter to be this innacurate?

[Red Squirrel]

I have a digital thermometer/hygrometer I keep in my office. My humidifier's valve started leaking so I turned it off during the week till I can get to the hardware store tomorrow to get a new one and been adding water manually. Been keeping an eye on the humidity to know when to add more.

One meter is showing 20% or even lower. The analog one I brought up from my server room is showing 40%. I tested it with my breath and the needle did move a bit so I know it's not stuck. Is the digital one more accurate? Seems like a pretty big jump.

Thinking of also getting a couple of these:

http://www.canakit.com/humidity-and-temperature-sensor-sht15-breakout-sen-08257.html

There is an Arduino library already made which would make it easy to add to my environmental monitoring system. Probably would add one in the server room, general basement area and probably upstairs. Mostly just for fun, I like playing with these type of gadgets.

 

[postmortemIA]

same for me. digital is near 20% (which is its lowest % that it registers), and analog is near 40%. Which one do I trust? digital because it is very dry in here, as central air heating is pumping dry air.

 

[Red Squirrel]

yeah my digital goes as low as 15 then it just says "low" I had it register that way and the other one was still around 40! Mind you it was downstairs then, but I doubt the humidity is all that different in winter. Actually I should bring both down and see what happens.

 

[tynopik]

same for me. digital is near 20% (which is its lowest % that it registers), and analog is near 40%. Which one do I trust?

neither

consumer models are garbage

 

[BladeVenom]

Analogs ones never seem right. The digital ones I have at least appear close.

 

[Mixolydian]

Amateur. You need to spend at least $500 on a hygrometer.