Personal Weather Station - Suggestions?

[DieselBound]

Pretty much have to have that camera sheltered (for us it's an issue of a lot of rain!). I'm running some sec cams and had thought about controllable ones, but I didn't feel I needed the extra complexities: more costly (though there are some good and fairly cheap cameras), and they require separate power (my cams are running POE, Power Over Ethernet). Between my weather station and my sec system I pretty much know what all is happening at my home.

WeatherUnderground's ap isn't very good, that's for sure. You cannot really zoom in: HEY! I've got old eyes! And, on my phone anyway, it regularly fails to start up, says to try again later; I kill the ap and it starts up just fine- they're not flushing some memory, bad programming. Maybe I should look to change over to Ambient's server (and ap).

 

[dragoneggs]

Yeah give the Ambient app a try. The dashboard is very easy to read, nice graphs. I have a Lorex sec cam system but I don't think I can tie into that. I made a mistake and should have bought POE system instead of the BMI proprietary cables.

Pulled wires to all exterior corners through the attic and ceiling... that was a big job. At least when I replace the cameras I can use the old lines to fish. Do you simply use Cat 5 or Cat 6 wiring from base to your camera?

 

[DieselBound]

Yeah, yeah, cat5/6. I believe that cat5 is supposed to be POE capable, but always make sure. If you make up your own cables be sure to get a NON-cheap tool for installing the plugs: I fought with a cheap one that folks said worked for them. Longest cable was only about 30' or so, but buying a made-up cable of even this length is a bit costly, so I bought a bunch of cable: if I want to add more cameras further away I can.

You need to have a router that supports POE.

 

[dragoneggs]

Yeah, yeah, cat5/6. I believe that cat5 is supposed to be POE capable, but always make sure. If you make up your own cables be sure to get a NON-cheap tool for installing the plugs: I fought with a cheap one that folks said worked for them. Longest cable was only about 30' or so, but buying a made-up cable of even this length is a bit costly, so I bought a bunch of cable: if I want to add more cameras further away I can.

You need to have a router that supports POE.

Thanks for the router tip. It’s fairly new but never noticed.

 

[graywarrant]

No one has mentioned Netatmo yet. It's a pretty solid system, just don't mount the outdoor unit where it could get directly rained on.

Ties data in with wunderground. Really nice app with data history, check your weather form anywhere in the world.

I don't have the anemometer or rain gauge add-ons, though. Just three temp/humidity/CO2 sensor units.

I've had a Netatmo system at our vacation home since 2014. Been great, decent battery life and the setup interface/process is smooth. I've added a second indoor temp sensor, rain and wind gauge.

It ties in w/Wundrground via a third party app (have to research which one). Phone app has all the bells and whistles and as mentioned above historical data as well as the online portal. We get a lot of wind and rain at our little piece of WNC and it provides some piece of mind to be able to see what is going on up there as we only visit about once a month.

I've used trail cameras for my "video" security system, but will soon be going the NVR route.

Ray

 

[cdb2]

Just picked up one of the Ambient Weather WS-2000 setups for the farm here. So far it's working great including the data upload to WU. The android app is pretty solid, seems better than the ones I looked at for the other brands. Also does data logging to a memory card which may come in handy for storing the data points long term, otherwise may have to rig something up to pull the data out of the WU stream.

 

[DieselBound]

Ugh! Sensor on my Ambient weather station has crapped out. I just recently noted that it had been acting up (hadn't really caught it before when it had started acting up). At just a bit over 1 year old I now have to replace it. I contacted their support and they just kind of shrugged it off: pointed me at a note that rain gauge fluctuations, which I was seeing, could be due to the sensor being shaken during winds- I'd made it clear (because I read all their troubleshooting info before contacting them) that there was NO wind when I was getting spurious precipitation readings. They mention that life expectancy is one to ten(?) years. I pointed out that I didn't think that the PNW (Pacific Northwest) was necessarily a harsh environment.

Rather than do yet more research for some other unit/manufacturer I opted to just break down and buy a new sensor. I'm not ready to shell out big money on another station (such as Davis) which may end up having some sort of early failure.

 

[dragoneggs]

Sorry to hear, DB.

My Ambient WS2902 is working great after about a month. Am enjoying the Ambient app checking in when I was overseas. The history graphs make it seem I didn’t miss anything.

 

[Oaktree]

I believe that cat5 is supposed to be POE capable, but always make sure. If you make up your own cables be sure to get a NON-cheap tool for installing the plugs: I fought with a cheap one that folks said worked for them. Longest cable was only about 30' or so, but buying a made-up cable of even this length is a bit costly, so I bought a bunch of cable: if I want to add more cameras further away I can.

You need to have a router that supports POE.

Yes, CAT5 will support PoE, I've installed several VOIP phone systems, and we just re-used existing CAT5 wiring that went to desktop PCs (the phone system allowed you to loop thru each desk unit so the PC & phone shared the same cable). If you look online you can find pre-made CAT5 cables for reasonable prices...added bonus, most of them use stranded wire as opposed to the solid you buy bulk, and the connectors seem to be more weather resistant. Putting connectors on stranded CAT5 is a royal PITA.

If you don't have a PoE switch, you can buy an injector.

My wife was mentioning that she'd like a PWS for Christmas and I was wondering...do you need to use a smartphone ap to program/access them? I see a lot of posters mentioning that here, and none of the descriptions online were clear on that. I ask because neither of us has one.

 

[cdb2]

My wife was mentioning that she'd like a PWS for Christmas and I was wondering...do you need to use a smartphone ap to program/access them? I see a lot of posters mentioning that here, and none of the descriptions online were clear on that. I ask because neither of us has one.

The Ambient WS-2000 I just purchased can be fully setup from the display screen, does not require a phone app. Not sure about other brands/models.