Weather Systems - I'm thinking of a new side hobby.

[TRI0N]

What do you all recommend for a good little home weather system that I can tie into eisy via PG3x?

I would like something that has the most data and features. $200-$300 range...


TRI0N

[hart2hart]

What do you all recommend for a good little home weather system that I can tie into eisy via PG3x?

I would like something that has the most data and features. $200-$300 range...


TRI0N

WeatherFlow is great. I’ve had one for a few years.

[bpwwer]

There are a number of different home/personal weather stations that are supported by PG3(x).  I would suspect that no one has used all them to be able to truly compare them all.

Davis stations have been top rated for a long time. I've never used one and the price may be outside your limits

Ambient has a lot of sensors and data and the price is going to vary a lot depending on what you want. I'm not thrilled with their API.

Acurite makes decent low cost systems but they aren't really open with the data so I believe the node server for them is based on reverse engineering the data.

WeatherFlow (I have 3) seem to be well made.  The API and data are well supported.  They've had some issues with their haptic rain sensor.

EcoWitt I don't really know much about. I believe they may use the same or similar hardware as Ambient.

Netatmo I don't know enough about them to comment.

[TRI0N]

6 minutes ago, hart2hart said:

WeatherFlow is great. I’ve had one for a few years.

Do they make something other than hand held portable weather stations? I'm looking for something to mount on my property.

Ah I see they make the Tempest unit... 

TRI0N

Edited February 24, 2023 by TRI0N

[TRI0N]

4 minutes ago, bpwwer said:

There are a number of different home/personal weather stations that are supported by PG3(x).  I would suspect that no one has used all them to be able to truly compare them all.

Davis stations have been top rated for a long time. I've never used one and the price may be outside your limits

Ambient has a lot of sensors and data and the price is going to vary a lot depending on what you want. I'm not thrilled with their API.

Acurite makes decent low cost systems but they aren't really open with the data so I believe the node server for them is based on reverse engineering the data.

WeatherFlow (I have 3) seem to be well made.  The API and data are well supported.  They've had some issues with their haptic rain sensor.

EcoWitt I don't really know much about. I believe they may use the same or similar hardware as Ambient.

Netatmo I don't know enough about them to comment.

Well with all the information so far, the WeatherFlow Tempest is looking good. I'm not sure if that rain sensor problem has been sorted out with them but that's a pretty important feature to have working. I'll see if anyone has this model below to chime in on any information they can contribute before investing it.

Tempest Weather System with Built-in Wind Meter, Rain Gauge, and Accurate Weather Forecasts, Wireless, App and Alexa Enabled (amazon.com)


Cheers,

TRI0N

[hart2hart]

If you’re only getting rain, I compared to an old fashioned rain cup and it was accurate. The issue for me was isolating the unit so it doesn’t vibrate in heavy wind as it will falsely reflect wind introduced vibrations as rain. My unit is from early after release so newer hardware may have corrected it to some degree. They did make firmware changes but I still clearly see it. Measured precipitation on a dry windy day.

[bpwwer]

Getting accurate rain results from a haptic sensor is hard.  It does have some advantages over a rain cup, but there are so many local environmental variables that the results will vary.

I've seen very little to none of the vibration induced false rain at my house but at my cabin I have it installed on the same post as the fence gate door and see some every time the door slams close.

WeatherFlow now does processing of rain results on their servers to try and detect false readings and improve the accuracy, but that does mean that if you just want to the raw local readings from the station, you might get different results than than what's available via the cloud based servers.  (I believe the same holds true for lightning data).

I started working with WeatherFlow during their initial kickstarter offering and what I really like about them is how they designed the system from the beginning to make it easy to get at the local data from the station.  Most other systems want to you to either use their apps/website or get the data only from their servers so you're local weather data becomes dependent on the Internet.

[mango]

Interesting topic. FWIW I'm not a fan of Acurite, they killed their smart hub product line and it made the equipment paperweights (which I had quite a few units).

Edited February 24, 2023 by mango

[Ross]

I've had a Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus since 2013.  It's > $300; however, it's very well made and has lasted.

@bpwwer wrote a nice node server for PG3 - there's 2 actually: one for Weatherlink IP and the other for Weatherlink Live.  Now, my sprinklers immediately disable once it rains (it's more complicated than that as I also take into account forecasts).  I'm happy to answer any questions about it.  Davis Instruments also came out with a countertop console just today.

Ross

[Bumbershoot]

2 hours ago, TRI0N said:

Well with all the information so far, the WeatherFlow Tempest is looking good.

FWIW, dealing with WeatherFlow has been a very good experience.  I had an early Tempest fail, and they shipped me a new unit quickly, free of charge (return shipping for the defective unit was included).  They can also run diagnostics on these units remotely, as the hub is connected to the Internet.  FWIW, the haptic rain sensor doesn't capture snow at all.

[upstatemike]

3 hours ago, Ross said:

I've had a Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus since 2013.  It's > $300; however, it's very well made and has lasted.

@bpwwer wrote a nice node server for PG3 - there's 2 actually: one for Weatherlink IP and the other for Weatherlink Live.  Now, my sprinklers immediately disable once it rains (it's more complicated than that as I also take into account forecasts).  I'm happy to answer any questions about it.  Davis Instruments also came out with a countertop console just today.

Ross

Davis makes great stuff but it has always bugged me that they don't offer a lightning sensor. I wonder if there is some reason why they don't? I don't need any fancy details about number of strikes or direction. I just want to know if there is lightning in the area before going out in the boat or heading out on a long hike in the woods.

[DennisC]

I also use a Weatherflow Tempest (previous Sky & Air user) at two locations. Mine are mounted on steel poles filled with sand and I have experienced false rain because of vibration.

You can not say enough nice things about there product support.

In addition, Bob has created a wonderful node server for it.

[TRI0N]

Davis had my eye, but I was looking for it to have all 6 in 1 (lightning). WeatherFlow Tempest has it and my mount location is not some place that will move by vibration being mounted to the back northwest corner of the house roof edge (eave) and high enough just to breach the top of the roof ridge so it doesn't create a lot of frictional surface but enough to capture wind radius.

So far Tempest is looking real good. Thanks for the input and if any others have more to share on their own setups.


TRI0N

[auger66]

I bought a Tempest for my condo building almost a year ago. I was thinking with no moving parts it would be super reliable. After the fourth failure, I gave up on this location. Some were complete failures, some were baro sensor failures, and some were baro, then complete.

Before the first failure happened at the condo, I bought another Tempest for a rural airport location. I've had three of the same type of failures at that location. So seven failures in less than a year. But the fourth Tempest at the airport is still working after four months, which is a record for me. 

I like the Tempests when they are working and as was mentioned, WeatherFlow support replaced them right away. The hardware failures are ridiculous, though. I don't know what changed in the past year or so, but that seems to be when people started having failures.

The WeatherFlow node server is great. I did notice one small issue. The node server reports actual baro pressure instead of altitude corrected pressure. No problem for me but pressure corrected to sea level would be better.

Edit:  Lol. I just looked at the remaining Tempest location. The baro sensor failed six hours ago. By failure, I mean it reports over five inches too low. This is how the failures usually start. So make that eight Tempest failures in less than a year. 🙄

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by auger66

[mango]

9 hours ago, auger66 said:

...So make that eight Tempest failures in less than a year. 🙄

Oh my....

[upstatemike]

If the Tempest failures are that bad maybe consider Davis plus a separate TALOS Remote Ready-to-Install Lightning Detector.

[dbwarner5]

Have had a Tempest for 2 years now. Initial Hub didnt work, but they were great in sending me another one ASAP. Have it mounted on PVC attached to a roof vent. No problems at all. I also have a rain cup and occasionally compare the haptic rain to the cup. Most of the times, they are pretty close. 

I went with tempest because of its features plus "clean look" vs the spinning things etc. 

Integrates well with ISY. Have an Alexa routine which is able to read me the current conditions. No vibration issues.

Love it. 

Edited February 25, 2023 by dbwarner5

[TRI0N]

14 hours ago, auger66 said:

I bought a Tempest for my condo building almost a year ago. I was thinking with no moving parts it would be super reliable. After the fourth failure, I gave up on this location. Some were complete failures, some were baro sensor failures, and some were baro, then complete.

Before the first failure happened at the condo, I bought another Tempest for a rural airport location. I've had three of the same type of failures at that location. So seven failures in less than a year. But the fourth Tempest at the airport is still working after four months, which is a record for me. 

I like the Tempests when they are working and as was mentioned, WeatherFlow support replaced them right away. The hardware failures are ridiculous, though. I don't know what changed in the past year or so, but that seems to be when people started having failures.

The WeatherFlow node server is great. I did notice one small issue. The node server reports actual baro pressure instead of altitude corrected pressure. No problem for me but pressure corrected to sea level would be better.

Edit:  Lol. I just looked at the remaining Tempest location. The baro sensor failed six hours ago. By failure, I mean it reports over five inches too low. This is how the failures usually start. So make that eight Tempest failures in less than a year. 🙄

Curious on how cold is it in your area. I'm looking at dipping into the 30's F at night max during the winter and can get 110 in the summer in my location.  So I wonder if regional climate is playing a part in the failures.


TRI0N

[bpwwer]

@auger66have you had any conversations with WeatherFlow about the failures?   Based on my interaction and spending quite a bit of time on their forums initially, they seem to want to get the root cause of issues like that that.

I will say that it seemed like the rate of sensor failures seemed high to me but I don't have anything to really compare it to so I don't know if that's common for the actual sensor devices they use or if they have better diagnostics to detect failures or if it's something with their design.

I had a field test Tempest that I used for about 2 years before a couple of the sensors failed.   I also have a sky/air setup that was purchased from their kickstarter campaign that is still working fine, so that's something like 5 years.

Prior to getting the WeatherFlow stations, I had a Acurite (well more than one). I had  a couple of them because they had problems with one of their sensors that seemed to be very inaccurate (If I recall, it was the humidity sensor). I installed one of these at our cabin up in the California foothills where we mostly just used it for outside temperature.  I just pulled it down a week ago and replaced it with a WeatherFlow Sky/Air system.  At this point, the Acurite had a broken wind cup, the rain cup was packed full of pine needles and leaves and it as covered in dirt.  It also had dead batteries.  

I still do have an Acurite unit mounted here at the house, but I haven't tried to get any readings from it in over 2 years so I don't know if it is working or not.

[tazman]

22 hours ago, TRI0N said:

Well with all the information so far, the WeatherFlow Tempest is looking good. I'm not sure if that rain sensor problem has been sorted out with them but that's a pretty important feature to have working. I'll see if anyone has this model below to chime in on any information they can contribute before investing it.

Tempest Weather System with Built-in Wind Meter, Rain Gauge, and Accurate Weather Forecasts, Wireless, App and Alexa Enabled (amazon.com)
Cheers,

TRI0N

I purchased that unit 3/22 and had the unit replaced a couple of months ago for a battery failure but other then that it has been good for me.

[auger66]

5 hours ago, TRI0N said:

Curious on how cold is it in your area. I'm looking at dipping into the 30's F at night max during the winter and can get 110 in the summer in my location.  So I wonder if regional climate is playing a part in the failures.


TRI0N

The condo is in Fort Lauderdale so the climate is mild. 40° F is as cold as it gets, and that's rare. Usually around 87-90° for the highs in the summer, sometimes 95°. It's never hit 100° here. I'll comment on the second location in another post.

The station was elevated and sometimes received fairly strong sea breezes. 15-20 knots wasn't unusual; occasionally higher. The extra elevation mount above the building and location on the roof was to minimize architectural wind effects, which are significant for tall buildings. The mount was Sched 80 pvc sleeved with steel EMC for added rigidity. The pole brackets were attached with Tapcons. There's another bracket at the bottom you can't see. The idea was for it to be hurricane proof, or at least, resistant. I never got to try that out.

Once I finally decided to give up on the station I pulled on the pole extremely hard. The Tapcons didn't budge. It was a shame to undo all that work. I didn't have convenient access to the roof so I had to have my act together before I went up. It was embarrassing asking for roof access to replace station after station. The management company didn't mind, but it was still embarrassing.

[auger66]

7 hours ago, bpwwer said:

@auger66have you had any conversations with WeatherFlow about the failures?   Based on my interaction and spending quite a bit of time on their forums initially, they seem to want to get the root cause of issues like that that.

I will say that it seemed like the rate of sensor failures seemed high to me but I don't have anything to really compare it to so I don't know if that's common for the actual sensor devices they use or if they have better diagnostics to detect failures or if it's something with their design.

I had a field test Tempest that I used for about 2 years before a couple of the sensors failed.   I also have a sky/air setup that was purchased from their kickstarter campaign that is still working fine, so that's something like 5 years.

Prior to getting the WeatherFlow stations, I had a Acurite (well more than one). I had  a couple of them because they had problems with one of their sensors that seemed to be very inaccurate (If I recall, it was the humidity sensor). I installed one of these at our cabin up in the California foothills where we mostly just used it for outside temperature.  I just pulled it down a week ago and replaced it with a WeatherFlow Sky/Air system.  At this point, the Acurite had a broken wind cup, the rain cup was packed full of pine needles and leaves and it as covered in dirt.  It also had dead batteries.  

I still do have an Acurite unit mounted here at the house, but I haven't tried to get any readings from it in over 2 years so I don't know if it is working or not.

Only via email. After the first two failures, they said that was really unusual. They don't comment on reliability now. I was going to give up on the third one at each location, but tech support talked me into another try. They said they had made some recent hardware changes that should improve reliability. The last two failures were with the new hardware. Both baro sensor failures.

Just to reiterate, I had some sudden complete failures, and some baro then complete failures. After those experiences, I replaced the stations right away when the baro pressure dropped. I didn't wait to see what happened next. It's possible the baro sensor was all that was going to fail those times.

WeatherFlow tech support is great. As others have said, they will send you a replacement right away and pay for shipping both ways. They have a station replacement function in the app that makes it really easy to swap stations and carry on without setting everything up again. I can do it in my sleep. It's similar to the IoX Insteon "replace device" function, except even easier.

So this station is in NW Georgia. The weather isn't as mild as Fort Liquordale but far from extreme. This station is in a shallow valley and receives much less wind but more rain and temperature variation.

I think the reason you don't hear much about Tempest failures is one; I believe the big problem started around a year ago; and two, people love the company and want to support them. I really like the units when they work. Frequent complaints are the wind readings are way low, and the rain accumulation isn't accurate at all. I thought the winds were spot on, except possibly wind with rain. I think rain was in the ball park, but I didn't track it. Many people thought the rain accumulation was accurate; many didn't.

If your station registers heavy rain on a clear day, a bird is probably sitting on it. If you look closely, you can see a bird deterrent attached. I haven't had any vibration-induced rain readings at either location.

Here's the public link to the station in the picture with its apocalyptic barometric pressure. If you click on any parameter, it with show you the history. I also really like how WeatherFlow presents its forecast data. Click on the cloud icon in the upper right corner to see the forecast.

From what I've read over the past few months, Davis seems to be the best. AcuRite has a pretty bad reputation. None will last for many years without maintenance or replacement. I believe WeatherFlow is the only company without a fee for internet access to the station. If you do put up a Tempest, make sure you can get to it easily.

Edit: Oh, and this mount is chain link fence top rail. Ten feet long pounded 3.5 feet into the ground with a fence post driver and filled with sand. Tech support remotely reset the unit twice today with no effect. I've personally never had a reset fix a problem but some have.

Edited February 26, 2023 by auger66

[mango]

 

these pics are great. The last one is #9 fairway 😬

[asbril]

11 hours ago, auger66 said:

Only via email. After the first two failures, they said that was really unusual. They don't comment on reliability now. I was going to give up on the third one at each location, but tech support talked me into another try. They said they had made some recent hardware changes that should improve reliability. The last two failures were with the new hardware. Both baro sensor failures.

Just to reiterate, I had some sudden complete failures, and some baro then complete failures. After those experiences, I replaced the stations right away when the baro pressure dropped. I didn't wait to see what happened next. It's possible the baro sensor was all that was going to fail those times.

WeatherFlow tech support is great. As others have said, they will send you a replacement right away and pay for shipping both ways. They have a station replacement function in the app that makes it really easy to swap stations and carry on without setting everything up again. I can do it in my sleep. It's similar to the IoX Insteon "replace device" function, except even easier.

So this station is in NW Georgia. The weather isn't as mild as Fort Liquordale but far from extreme. This station is in a shallow valley and receives much less wind but more rain and temperature variation.

I think the reason you don't hear much about Tempest failures is one; I believe the big problem started around a year ago; and two, people love the company and want to support them. I really like the units when they work. Frequent complaints are the wind readings are way low, and the rain accumulation isn't accurate at all. I thought the winds were spot on, except possibly wind with rain. I think rain was in the ball park, but I didn't track it. Many people thought the rain accumulation was accurate; many didn't.

If your station registers heavy rain on a clear day, a bird is probably sitting on it. If you look closely, you can see a bird deterrent attached. I haven't had any vibration-induced rain readings at either location.

Here's the public link to the station in the picture with its apocalyptic barometric pressure. If you click on any parameter, it with show you the history. I also really like how WeatherFlow presents its forecast data. Click on the cloud icon in the upper right corner to see the forecast.

From what I've read over the past few months, Davis seems to be the best. AcuRite has a pretty bad reputation. None will last for many years without maintenance or replacement. I believe WeatherFlow is the only company without a fee for internet access to the station. If you do put up a Tempest, make sure you can get to it easily.

Edit: Oh, and this mount is chain link fence top rail. Ten feet long pounded 3.5 feet into the ground with a fence post driver and filled with sand. Tech support remotely reset the unit twice today with no effect. I've personally never had a reset fix a problem but some have.

 

Beautiful  

Edited February 26, 2023 by asbril

[Bumbershoot]

23 hours ago, TRI0N said:

Curious on how cold is it in your area. I'm looking at dipping into the 30's F at night max during the winter and can get 110 in the summer in my location.  So I wonder if regional climate is playing a part in the failures.


TRI0N

In the last year, the temperature has varied over 100°F (-6°F to 103°F).  My Tempest soldiered on through it all.