Home weather station recommendations

[RobD]

I'm starting a new topic because the other ones about home weather stations haven't been updated in about 8 years

We're moving this week & I promised myself a home weather station when we get settled. There are two available on Costco.com (La Crosse Weather Station with Remote Sensor Model C84343 $40; and La Crosse 5-in-1 Professional Wireless Weather Station Model C83100 $95) but the reviews on there are meh. Based on other threads on here, I'm looking at the wxforum.net threads at: http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=1136fcb0c3c387479c44f379ac559d19&board=71.0 but I'm wondering what y'all have/like.

I'd like for it to be under $250, and it has to be fairly easy to mount. Thank you!

[Eric]

I don't know much as its not my cup of tea, but the name I see come up the most in relation to home weather stations is Davis.  Davis has a varied array of devices at various price points. 

[RobD]

Thanks Eric. I just took a look at the Vantage Vue by Davis; and the Ambient Weather WS-2902.

[WXHD]

The guys in my neighborhood use a Davis as well. This is the site that I count on and as you can see there is a lot of information available. I

[dwagner88]

I'm starting a new topic because the other ones about home weather stations haven't been updated in about 8 years

We're moving this week & I promised myself a home weather station when we get settled. There are two available on Costco.com (La Crosse Weather Station with Remote Sensor Model C84343 $40; and La Crosse 5-in-1 Professional Wireless Weather Station Model C83100 $95) but the reviews on there are meh. Based on other threads on here, I'm looking at the wxforum.net threads at: http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=1136fcb0c3c387479c44f379ac559d19&board=71.0 but I'm wondering what y'all have/like.

I'd like for it to be under $250, and it has to be fairly easy to mount. Thank you!

I have the Costco one. It's fine for rain and low temperatures, but not much else. It claims to be fan aspirated, but it still reads 15 degrees too high on a sunny afternoon. And since the temperature sensor is in the same unit as the rain gauge, you can't move it to a shady area or your rainfall readings will be too low. I've never been able to get the app to work either. Also my record high wind gust is 26 mph. It's totally bogus because that storm pulled my flag out of its mounting in my brick. Knocked over a bunch of trees too. I have it on the roof of my patio and it still doesn't read wind very well.

[RobD]

Thanks for that! Won't waste my money on those then.

[bugalou]

I would advise staying away from wireless weather stations if they use the 2.4 GHz band (which most do in the consumer space) unless you live in the boonies.  With so much wifi everywhere now that can use 2.4 ghz you are going to find yourself constantly resetting and missing data on your devices.  Unfortunately wired solutions are very expensive as it gets into ultra precise scientific equipment the NWS would be using in their stations.

One of my projects for the summer is going to build an Arduino based wireless weather station that uses a LORA based radio to transmit data.  There are plenty of plans people have submitted over at instructables.com so I am just going to grab a couple I like and go with that.  Once I do it I will post results and difficultly levels.  If I knew anyone with any kind of business skills I'd start making these commercially as the parts are cheap and LORA is the perfect way transmit this low bandwidth, non latency sensitive data.  I really think people in the enthusiast market would buy them up.

[jwr2914]

I had a Davis Vantage Pro2 for the last six years that was running good up until the last few weeks. The temperature sensor started to go out. I called Davis and we troubleshooted and it ended up being that the seal around the main solar sensor failed and got the "mainframe" board corroded. The Davis rep literally told me just to replace the unit because the issue could of spread to other components and would be costly (he probably was right to some extent). I got this unit at a great price with the fan aspirated attachment. Yes, it most definitely was a pricey investment. Davis gives great readings and is the standard for most weather enthusiasts. With that being said, in order to upload Davis readings you have to buy extra equipment. Davis is far behind in technology in that regard point blank. I opted to part it out and made a good chunk of change doing so on ebay.

I opted to go with a Ambient Weather WS-2000 weather station with a few extra sensors I wanted to add. The upload capabilities out of the box are like night and day. It gives accurate readings so far and I am very impressed. I like that you can add extra sensors, although most are useless to me. I got the Sonic wind sensor and rain sensor (the wind sensor is on backorder though at this time). I think I will get some good use out of this system. The WS-5000 model already has the sonic sensor but I also wanted the option of a traditional wind cup sensor array as well. I like that you can pair both at the same time for improved readings. The same can be said about the larger rain sensor. You cannot go wrong with a good Ambient Weather System. The Ecowitt systems are essentially the same as Ambient, but are a little cheaper. Ambient locks their sensors to work with their units only via a firmware update and I believe Ecowitt does not.

I would avoid Acurite, Oregon Scientific, and La Crosse units all together. Just my opinion.

[JayCee]

I had a Davis Vantage Pro2 for the last six years that was running good up until the last few weeks. The temperature sensor started to go out. I called Davis and we troubleshooted and it ended up being that the seal around the main solar sensor failed and got the "mainframe" board corroded. The Davis rep literally told me just to replace the unit because the issue could of spread to other components and would be costly (he probably was right to some extent). I got this unit at a great price with the fan aspirated attachment. Yes, it most definitely was a pricey investment. Davis gives great readings and is the standard for most weather enthusiasts. With that being said, in order to upload Davis readings you have to buy extra equipment. Davis is far behind in technology in that regard point blank. I opted to part it out and made a good chunk of change doing so on ebay.

I opted to go with a Ambient Weather WS-2000 weather station with a few extra sensors I wanted to add. The upload capabilities out of the box are like night and day. It gives accurate readings so far and I am very impressed. I like that you can add extra sensors, although most are useless to me. I got the Sonic wind sensor and rain sensor (the wind sensor is on backorder though at this time). I think I will get some good use out of this system. The WS-5000 model already has the sonic sensor but I also wanted the option of a traditional wind cup sensor array as well. I like that you can pair both at the same time for improved readings. The same can be said about the larger rain sensor. You cannot go wrong with a good Ambient Weather System. The Ecowitt systems are essentially the same as Ambient, but are a little cheaper. Ambient locks their sensors to work with their units only via a firmware update and I believe Ecowitt does not.

I would avoid Acurite, Oregon Scientific, and La Crosse units all together. Just my opinion.

I had a Vantage Pro 2 that worked well for about 7 years.  When it died due to a similar issue you described, I also chose the Ambient weather option.  It's much more affordable, and has worked well so far.  Definitely a good, less pricy, option to the Davis line. 

[jwr2914]

I had a Vantage Pro 2 that worked well for about 7 years.  When it died due to a similar issue you described, I also chose the Ambient weather option.  It's much more affordable, and has worked well so far.  Definitely a good, less pricy, option to the Davis line.

I am really excited for the sonic wind sensor array from them to come back in stock. It is on backorder but I was able to place an order for it. It seems like between having the traditional and the sonic sensor working together, you can get more accurate readings.

[RobD]

One of my projects for the summer is going to build an Arduino based wireless weather station that uses a LORA based radio to transmit data.  There are plenty of plans people have submitted over at instructables.com so I am just going to grab a couple I like and go with that.  Once I do it I will post results and difficultly levels. 

Bugalou: did you ever end up building one?

[Jeremy]

Has anyone tried the tempest weather station?