New up and coming weather station, 'Weather Flow'

Yeah, that was my thought too :slight_smile:

Like NorCal Dan I’m also concerned about how this will hold up in high humidity salty air.

As it is now I need to replace a part on my Davis Pro2 Plus about once a year due to the coastal air.

I think this looks very interesting. But since I live in Norway, where we have snow 4-5 months a year, it looks like this is not for me :frowning: First of all I need a weather station that is working in snow. And just as important, I need to measure precipitation all year, not only in summer. And since this station is not able to measure precipitation when it falls as snow, I can’t do that. Today I have a Davis VP2 with heated rain collector that works fine for measuring precipitation all year. If this was available as an option for Weather Flow, I would absolutely be interested.

Will your system have a capability similar to Data Logger found with the Davis weather stations? Very handy if you do not leave your computr running 24/7.

FYI - Looks like it can be shipped to more places now.

Well now, it seems that weather happens all over the globe.....who knew? To celebrate, we've just opened up shipping to all countries in the EU, plus Australia and New Zealand. See our 'Damn Good Deal' perk for your international shipping pleasure and please tell all your foreign friends afar! - the WeatherFlow team

Yes, international shipping! Thanks for the continued input and feedback! Here are some more answers:

Regarding a radiation shield, we do not currently plan to design one specifically for AIR, because our goal is to keep it simple. We also figure most home users should have a decent shady spot. We are going to make it abundantly clear that AIR must be placed in the shade, away from sources of heat, in order to provide accurate air temperature and RH readings.

Of course, AIR should fit nicely in most off-the-shelf radiation shields from Davis or Ambient or elsewhere - either passive or FARS. We are testing a few here. And while AIR & SKY are specifically designed for HOME use, we do plan to offer more robust devices at a later date, which will include an integrated radiation shield as well as other features suitable to more remote or harsh locations (like GPS, cellular and/or satellite comms, large batteries and solar power).

Regarding the need for an smartphone, iPhone, iPad or tablet… If you don’t happen to have a Millennial around who can loan you his or hers for a few minutes, there is another other option! Just wait for our DISPLAY unit to launch (probably December). DISPLAY will act as a high quality dedicated local display, and it will also act as a HUB, collecting data either from the Internet or directly to the stations. You will be able to use DISPLAY to configure your stations - no smart phone required!

Regarding performance in humidity, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how well our stations hold up. We have a patent-pending sensor chamber that exposes the Temp, Pressure and Humidity sensors to the air without compromising the device’s weather-proofness. In fact, we’re aiming for IP67 rated, meaning they can be fully submerged in water safely to 1m. Of course, the humidity sensor will read 100% for a while if you dunk it under water. But the station will continue to function and the RH sensor will work fine again after it dries out.

Regarding the snow question - to be clear, these stations will definitely work in snow. They don’t have a way to measure the snow, it’s true, and if the gap fills with snow the wind reading will be wrong, but everything else will still work! If you need snow measurements, though, our stations are not for you.

Regarding data logging, you won’t need to leave your computer running 24/7 because our stations do not need a computer! They connect directly to the Internet through your WiFi network or via your smartphone/tablet. Also, in the event your Internet connection goes down, each station will be able to store between 15000 (SKY) and 20000 (AIR) individual observations directly on the device. So, depending on your sampling schedule (which is configurable: 1m, 5m, 15m, 60m, etc), you’ll be able to store somewhere between 45 days and 24 months of data on the station itself, conservatively. Again - that’s only if you lose your Internet connection.

Thanks again for the feedback - keep it coming!

David

same here, more than happy to add compatibiiity to my template, I already have NetAtmo, I think it is still the only template that has that.

One more thing, I always wished there was a station that would also have optional air quality sensors. I did find some, but they are always just separate sensors, sold only for that purpose and not possible to connect to any PWS. It would be really nice if some PWS could have that too and so report the data along with all the other ones in one data package. I was thinking about things like CO2, aerosols, NO2 etc. For example, for me, I live in a big city, lot of electrical railroads here and electric cables, so lightning detector is useless due to interference. On the other hand, air quality and emissions is something I would be very interested in.

Something like this, but built into a station, or compatible with one:
http://airqualityegg.com/

Weather Flow will do VOCs, CO2 and dust (particulate I would guess).

For me it’s not about measuring snow, but measuring precipitation. And precipitation needs to be measured all year, also when it snowing. Otherwise the statistics will be completely wrong!

But I get your message: This station is not for me and the hundreds millions of people who live in part of the world where it’s snowing at least one day of the year.

Living on 60

Also not taking in consideration, the more competion often causes lower prices (not always I know), more development to be ahead competitors and not at least I think it has a future along with Netamo.

I even think we are going to look more of these products in the future, and hopefully Davis may have to lower there prises some day.

And if it has IFTTT we properly also will see more Home Automation users will look that way…
Correction, Ahhhhh, just seen is HAS IFTTT :grin:

Erik M M

I agree here…

About the display futured in the fall 2016, it has to be more versatile, since a cheap tablet, a free kiosk app and your are going with Wunder Ground as shoved on the homepage.

Maybe more like a “move around blocks where you want, showing what you want and when, with history as you want it”
Yes, I know, just an idea…

Hi folks. We totally agree that air quality is becoming more and more important. And an outdoor AQ device that integrates with a PWS seems like a great idea. As you can see on Indiegogo, we’re already planning to do an INDOOR version (“BREATHE”) soon. And we are also considering an outdoor AQ unit for the future.

Regarding measuring snow (either water equivalent or actual inches), we would LOVE to figure out how to include that in a home weather station. But requiring a heater would change the power requirements by several orders of magnitude, as you can imagine. It’s safe to say, however, that our forthcoming commercial line of weather stations will include a snow option at some point.

As for the DISPLAY, “move around blocks where you want, showing what you want and when, with history as you want it” is a brilliant idea, and it’s basically what we’re working on. We’ll be posting screenshots of the app to our Indiegogo campaign soon.

Speaking of the DISPLAY, it’s surprising how little feedback we’re getting on that through our Indiegogo campaign. We’re starting to wonder if it’s even necessary. Curious to know what this community thinks about that?

David

For me I think it is important just not sure at what price point. I currently have a cheap tablet running 24/7 that displays info from my web site using a special web page I made just for the tablet. It grabs updates every 15 seconds. I know different people like different things but mine is mostly text based so I can easily read the important info (temp. wind speed, rain, pressure, dew point and humd.) from across the room. Things like highs/lows for the day are in smaller fonts and I can get closer if I want to see that.

IMHO, it’s much harder to read these things from far away if they are displayed as fancy gauges and graphs. Having movable blocks would be great as everyone has different needs.

What might be an option is to have an app designed for tablets so users could just use their own tablet since they can now be purchased so cheaply and many have them laying around not being used. There are a number of advantages and disadvantages going either way (app or dedicated hardware).


Changing the power requirements must be much better than getting incorrect data for precipitation?

Hit the pre-order button out of curiosity and get:


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Isn’t just possible to add an power-plug to the thing what measure precip so those who need the heating just can add the power as some kind of option? The ability to get accurate precip-measurements every day of the year are a MUST.

One thing i don’t understand is (this applys to others too), why first build a station and then ask “what do you think about it?” instead of FIRST ask what the real users wants and THEN build the station based on that info? Here is the reason for why we still runs 10+ years old Davises as “best whats available for resonable price”…

I’m not sure, but this may be a function of crowd-funding requirements ???

I think many are missing the target audience for this station. The vast majority of consumers is not interested in the water equivalent of snow. What would be of more interest to the majority is an accurate way to measure snow depth.

Davis Pro owners are in a different class, they’ve already spend upwards of $1K on a system. In reality, what percentage of Davis Pro owners actually have heaters on their station?