Best Home Weather Station

[MPotter_WX]

Going along with another recent post, I wanted to open this one to cover a broader selection. I’m starting to look at purchasing a home weather station myself and wanted to see if anybody had input. I have seen reviews on the 6250 Vantage Vue, the Tempest weather system, and the Ambient Weather WS-5000/WS-2000. Looking to see who has what and whether these are accurate for rainfall/wind. Any other suggestions would be helpful!

[ChescoWx]

I think the most accurate is the Vantage Pro2 with the fan aspirated shield - I also have a Vantage Vue / Ambient and the Tempest....but VP2 is in my opinion the best although I just got the Tempest and need to evaluate that one a little more - hope this helps!

[MPotter_WX]

3 minutes ago, ChescoWx said:

I think the most accurate is the Vantage Pro2 with the fan aspirated shield - I also have a Vantage Vue / Ambient and the Tempest....but VP2 is in my opinion the best although I just got the Tempest and need to evaluate that one a little more - hope this helps!

Oh wow, it’s definitely a pricy item from what I just saw. Doesn’t surprise me though that the higher tag price would yield better results. Is it worth the extra money? 

[Animal]

I have an older model Davis vantage pro 2.  No fan. Got it in 2015. Slightly more expensive. Reason I bought it was due to the constant fluffing of the model. Currently it’s in storage, ready to get pulled out again.

eyeing up the tempest due to some of the cool features for a 2nd.
my official rain gauge is stratus 

[Animal]

2 hours ago, MPotter_WX said:

Oh wow, it’s definitely a pricy item from what I just saw. Doesn’t surprise me though that the higher tag price would yield better results. Is it worth the extra money? 

Look around on the internet.

bought mine from scientific sales in nj

$659 with weather link. This cost included $20 shipping plus $43.12 tax.

weatherlink is a nice feature.

as far as the cost goes..I don’t think so at my current location. Previously i lived in highland lakes nj on the ridge line. temp profiles were critical imop with snows in the fall to early spring. So I ponied up the money.

To each there own though.

[MPotter_WX]

1 hour ago, Animal said:

Look around on the internet.

bought mine from scientific sales in nj

$659 with weather link. This cost included $20 shipping plus $43.12 tax.

weatherlink is a nice feature.

as far as the cost goes..I don’t think so at my current location. Previously i lived in highland lakes nj on the ridge line. temp profiles were critical imop with snows in the fall to early spring. So I ponied up the money.

To each there own though.

Thanks for the input!

[ChescoWx]

I think the biggest difference is accuracy in the summer months.....with a fan aspirated shield you don't see the inflated warm readings that so many get siting their stations in the sun....without it you might almost record as many 90+ days as the PHL heat island records.....

[Stormfly]

Back in the days, pre-internet, no ham shack was complete without a Heathkit station!  Holy grail was the ID-4001 system and (of course) the ID-5001 system that came later.  Capable of good numbers and true realtime readings.  Rainwise was another option.  None were particularly cost conscious of course.

Unless you have a grant or specific reason to spend upwards of $50k for a truly professional station that is designed to last for decades, there are plenty of choices for the consumer/prosumer out there.

I recently connected a WeatherFlow Tempest unit and still am evaluating it.  For the money (approx. $300 USD) and no recurring fees, it seems like a solid unit.  Many will be happy with its compact form factor (HOA/WAF friendly!) too.  It's not without quirks, of course, but from what I'm seeing so far it seems like a safe bet if spending over $700-$1000 for a fully featured station like the Davis 6163 is out of your budget.

Wind accuracy not only depends on anemometer design itself but location.  Most home sites aren't very friendly for accurate wind measurements using standard rule of 10 meters AGL for anemometer and three times height for ANY obstruction.  With ultrasonic anemometers we like to see 1km from any tree line or tall buildings, etc.  A lot of the home stations also have a slower reporting rate without memory/buffer meaning that the wind reading captured happens to be whatever is happening at that time of reporting.  Optimally, the system is reading continually in between reports and shows min/avg/gust/max values.  Ultrasonic instruments can sample much faster, some programmed as high as 100Hz!  So if the post time (in the example of a remote site that's autonomous) is every 60 seconds, there will be 6000 data points!  10-30Hz is more typical with these setups and where precision is needed heaters and other mitigations are required to maintain repeatability for ultrasonic anemometers as well as sonic thermography. 

[Hurricane Agnes]

 

On 12/19/2020 at 12:40 PM, MPotter_WX said:

Going along with another recent post, I wanted to open this one to cover a broader selection. I’m starting to look at purchasing a home weather station myself and wanted to see if anybody had input. I have seen reviews on the 6250 Vantage Vue, the Tempest weather system, and the Ambient Weather WS-5000/WS-2000. Looking to see who has what and whether these are accurate for rainfall/wind. Any other suggestions would be helpful!

I have an older Ambient WS-1001 that I am about to retire (I've had it for almost 6 years and it is slowly dying).  I bought an Ambient WS-2000 the past year as a replacement and have the 2 side-by-side. 

The main impetus was the ease of getting the data online and since I can't put anything up on my roof, I figured to just go with an all-in-one setup (so my wind readings are more for a "subjective" reading of direction than for speed accuracy).  I did mount the two stations up on masts attached to my privacy fence's 4" wide posts so that the 1001 is about 6.5 ft up and the 2000 is about 7.5 ft up.  I also bought a Stratus rain gauge that I mounted on a fence post across from them - about  3.5 ft away and about 6.5ft up, so I can get a rainfall comparison (manual vs tipping bucket).  So far for rainfall, the readings have been pretty close, +/- a couple tenths (usually the Stratus has been more on the tenths "less" compared to the Ambients, when not getting matching amounts, which I believe is within the margin of error).

As I delved into the station discussions on wxforum, since several Ambient items (including the station) are made by the hardware company "Fine Offset", that got me off onto other tangents like buying the mini Ecowitt GW-1000 indoor gateway/station to capture data from the WS-2000 as well as data transmissions from other Ambient and/or Ecowitt/Fine Offset add-ons (like a lightning detector, PM2.5 sensors, soil moisture probes, temp/humidity probes, etc).  Ended up then buying a Raspberry Pi 4 (Cana kit) and getting weewx up and running on it to generate pages on a web server also set up on the Pi, so that I can look at the data stream formatted on a local webpage. I am still putzing around with that as I find time tweaking the code.

I do like my lightning detector and once you get it sited/configured so it is sensitive enough to pick up strikes but not so sensitive that it experiences stray interference, it has been pretty spot on when I've compared the activity it picks up to that displayed on places like lightningmaps.org.  I actually have it indoors a couple feet from a window pointed NW where the storms tend to blow in from.  I know a number of people have them outside under eaves or somehow enclosed/protected outside, but I knew that would be tricky to do here (and that goes for my outdoor PM2.5 sensor that I have Macgyvered to sit under my Stratus with a tiny plastic seedling "greenhouse cover" over it to keep it mostly out of the weather  and I know that model has a limited operating temp range too although they were supposed to also come out with a multiple particle size meter that I'm hoping expands the temp range).

So I have lots of projects going!

I believe the WS-5000 is basically a WS-2000 with an ultrasonic wind sensor.

 

[MPotter_WX]

I’m excited to say that I officially have the WS-5000! Turns out my wife got it for my birthday, haha (she reached out to a friend of mine in the met field who suggested it). Seems to be working pretty well despite not being in a great location. I plan on building a more permanent location in my backyard once the snow melts away.