# Thoughts on this personal weather station



## mre_man_76 (Aug 4, 2018)

Hi all. Looking for thoughts and opinions on this personal weather station:

https://www.lowes.com/pd/AcuRite-5-in-1-Weather-Station-Color/1003137848

@Mightyquinn @Ware

Looking to dial in my irrigation and resume my pgr apps. Haven't used regulators since greenkkeeper went paid.


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

I don't have any experience with AcuRite. If I was shopping for a station that wasn't a Davis, I would probably take a look at the ones from Ambient Weather:

https://ambientweather.com/all-weather-stations


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## Spammage (Apr 30, 2017)

mre_man_76 said:


> Hi all. Looking for thoughts and opinions on this personal weather station:
> 
> https://www.lowes.com/pd/AcuRite-5-in-1-Weather-Station-Color/1003137848
> 
> ...


I had a couple of those before. They don't seem to last more than a year or two and aren't very accurate. I went with an AcuRite Atlas this last time and really like it. I have my rainmachine using the weather data for automatic watering and it's great. The 5-in-1 typically read temp and humidity too high and couldn't register wind speed above 38 mph. If anything, I think the Atlas reads about 1 degree low, but is otherwise spot on.


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## mre_man_76 (Aug 4, 2018)

Thanks for the info guys. This was reasonably priced so wanted some thoughts before I grabbed it. Think I'll go in another direction do you some of the reviews I read stated this must be connected via pc and pc must be on in order to upload data to the app and weather underground. This is a deal killer for me because I can't afford to make decisions based on data that's possibly outdated.


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## Mdjamesd (Sep 5, 2019)

I bought an acurite 01512 for a friend back in dec of 2017. Still works, and seems to be fairly accurate


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## pp6000v2 (Mar 8, 2021)

The "station" itself is what you're mounting on your pole or roof. The display screen included in that Lowes package works over wifi, it's not connected to your computer for data logging. Measured against other thermometers and a trusted anemometer, I've found mine to be accurate. The screen does need to be on for it to upload. The station isn't storing data, it's just a sensor suite, and the screen is logging the output. That one has a battery backup so if power is disconnected for a little while (hours- not days or weeks), it will continue to receive data. For my display screen's weather underground connection, data is pushed to WU every 30 seconds.


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## Jeep4life (Jun 19, 2019)

I've been into weather stations for a number of years now (weather being my other hobby beyond the lawn/yard). With weather stations you have to keep in mind that they are out in the elements 24/7/365 so like many things you get what you pay for. Cheaper stations are as accurate as 95% of the population would need, but they're only going to last a few years.

The Acurite 5-in-1, or "Iris" as they call it, was my first upgrade from the very basic 3-in-1 station. It's still running in my yard after about 7 years (I use it as a backup), but during the summer occasionally it will spike to a VERY hot temp before coming back down later. That's due to the plastic heating up and the issues with the internal fan that is supposed to keep air moving across the sensor to prevent the temperature spike. It didn't start doing that until several years after purchasing.

I later upgraded to a Davis Instruments station (Vantage Pro2+), which for around the cost of an iPad or iPhone is as accurate as you can get without getting into scientific grade costs. I've loved it and the fact that if anything breaks on it I can order parts individually instead of having to buy a new station. I also have soil moisture sensors in the yard and garden that tie into the weather station and app to get a better idea of when to water and how much water is evaporating/being used.

With the acurite station, the below equipment is what you need to send the data to their servers so you can utilize their app. You can also use this to send the data to Weather Underground.

https://www.acurite.com/shop-all/weather-instruments/weather-sensors-and-parts/displays/access-my-acurite-remote-monitoring.html

These may be over your budget, but i'd suggest one of the below units for accuracy that also have a reputation for being quality equipment that will last in the elements.

https://shop.weatherflow.com/collections/frontpage/products/tempest
https://www.scientificsales.com/Davis-Vantage-Vue-Weather-Stations-s/34.htm

Good luck!


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

Tempest is another station worth taking a look at, but at $329 it is a step up in price from the AcuRite or Ambient Weather offerings.

With a ~$370 budget, I think the Davis Vantage Vue bundled with the Weather Link Live becomes the clear choice.


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

@Jeep4life beat me to it.

As he mentioned, I don't know anyone who has regretted spending a little more for a quality station. :thumbup:


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## Theycallmemrr (May 16, 2019)

Ware said:


> Tempest is another station worth taking a look at, but at $329 it is a step up in price from the AcuRite or Ambient Weather offerings.
> 
> With a ~$370 budget, I think the Davis Vantage Vue bundled with the Weather Link Live becomes the clear choice.


@Jeep4life 
Which one would you recommend between the two? First thing I would like to do is be able to export the data so my Rachio could use it. What other things do you use yours for? Is there any way to get a soil temp probe added to either?


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

Theycallmemrr said:


> Ware said:
> 
> 
> > Tempest is another station worth taking a look at, but at $329 it is a step up in price from the AcuRite or Ambient Weather offerings.
> ...


The Davis WeatherLink Live will connect with up to 8 different stations - so in addition to the Vantage Vue Inegrated Sensor Suite, it would communicate with a Davis Leaf & Soil Moisture/Temperature Station.

I no longer have a Rachio, but if my memory is correct they will read data from PWSWeather and CWOP. The WeatherLink Live will upload to Weather Underground and CWOP. It will not upload to PWSWeather at this time. If you want more third-party upload options (like PWSWeather) for a Davis station, you would need to look into a solution like the Ambient WeatherBridge.

I'm not sure which services Tempest will upload to, but it sounds like you'll want to make sure whatever station setup you choose will upload to a network that Rachio uses.


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## Austinite (Oct 4, 2018)

Great thread! Been looking for something that incorporates soil moisture levels, lots of great choices. Integration with Google Home for me is a must and looks like I have several quality choices.


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## UncleFoolio (May 14, 2021)

I have an Ambient Weather that I use for my Rachio, and I think @Ware is right- I had to set up a "cron" job via a free website that took data from Weather Underground every 2 min I think, and pushed it to PWSWeather so that my Rachio could use it. This was like 3-4 years ago, so- need to see if any of that is changed from Rachio's perspective in terms of what Rachio now supports.


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## UncleFoolio (May 14, 2021)

Looks like Ambient Weather may integrate straight with PWS now, along with Google Home, etc:

https://help.ambientweather.net/help/community/


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## mre_man_76 (Aug 4, 2018)

Liking all the feedback. I even came across a reasonably priced used Davis vantage pro2. Seller claims only issue is the unit is faded from uv exposure.

Any thoughts on durability of the Davis vantage pro2? Want to know if this is worth investing in older equipment.


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## Glen_Cove_5511 (Jun 13, 2020)

I have been using a LaCrosse for 5 years and like it. It integrates with Weatherunderground.


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## UncleFoolio (May 14, 2021)

Looked up what my process was doing. I'll link to a thread I think I used a few years back. If you go with Davis, this process will get your data from Wunderground to PWS to work with the Rachio.

1) Establish an account at wufyi.com (effectively, this then gets you a url call that you need to execute every xx minutes to move data from Wunderground to PWS
2) Establish an account at cron-job.org. This allows you to run your url call every xx minutes. This site is free.

Here's the thread that walks through it:
https://community.rachio.com/t/using-wunderground-com-to-integrate-personal-weather-stations/217/184

Here's a shot of what my url looks like in the cron job scheduler- for obvious reasons, I left off my password, but you get the idea


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## Jeep4life (Jun 19, 2019)

Ware said:


> Theycallmemrr said:
> 
> 
> > Ware said:
> ...


I don't have a Tempest so can only speak on what i've read about them, but between the two I really like Davis items because of the ability to easily buy parts, the proven accuracy and longevity of the stations and the ability to build on it over time (I got my vantage pro2 station and then slowly added additional sensors to it over the years and then started adding soil moisture/temperature sensors when I was ready). I added a UV sensor (nice to see how strong the sun is before going to work in the yard), a solar radiation sensor (which gets me the ET or evapotranspiration; how much moisture is being used by lawn/evaporating). That got me to the point of irrigating like a bank account (if you know the lawn needs 1 inch of rain per week and you can calculate what it's using you can irrigate whatever you don't get from rain). That's easy if it's dry, but becomes more difficult on when to start after it rains so I then added soil moisture sensors and soil temperature sensors. So now I use a combination of the sensor data and what I see to irrigate (plus with zoysia I think it helps with fungus issues or at least I tell myself that to help justify).

You can get most stations to talk to your Rachio setup (I have a Rachio as well) as long as you are reporting online. Davis WeatherLink makes it very easy to automatically send to CWOP and Weather Underground. Then you can go through Rachio to tell it to use your station, so there's no need to export anything for its use. My only complaint right now is that they don't support the soil moisture sensors yet that Davis uses (Irrometer Watermark Soil Moisture Sensor) so the Rachio AI calculates it by itself. I think it also calculates ET (evapotranspiration) on its own, but truthfully it's not that big of a deal for me because i'm using the data I get from my Davis setup rather than Rachio anyway and run my Rachio schedules manually instead of using its AI/calendar.

Not sure about Tempest and soil moisture sensors. Tempest is a new guy on the block in the weather station category and I think I think I read a while ago that they may adjust readings based on AI. I'd rather have a station that I know is accurate out of the box. My Davis station reports to CWOP and as a result the data is used by NWS and other organizations for many things. One of those uses is the national weather models, which use the data as part of their starting points...meaning that it goes through a quality check every day...so I can see the accuracy compared to airport and other stations nearby.


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