New Aercus WeatherRanger Station

I’ve used an Aercus WX3083 weather station for over a year in parallel with a Davis. On the whole, it does what it says on the box and the accuracy is very close to that of the Davis. Of course, the construction leaves to be desired in terms of robustness and, probably, longevity but what do you expect for something 1/7th the price of a Davis? Unfortunately, it has now been discontinued so I can no longer recommend it.

Aercus have recently introduced the more costly WeatherRanger Aercus Instruments WeatherRanger - Greenfrog Scientific as its top model. It is a fully integrated system with everything together in one casing. I don’t know whether the components can be split from the case, but the photograph suggests not, meaning users may have to put up with inadequate radiation shielding (as is the case with earlier models). For me (and I have not seen one), it would be distinctly disadvantageous to have wind, rain, temperature, humidity, solar, UV etc. all together in a single caboodle at one altitude; I would want wind speed and directions way up in height, solar/UV where there is the least shade and temperature/humidity where there is the most shade.

No mention is made of accompanying software. Up to now, Aercus have tied in with Cumulus which, according to a 3 month test I’ve just completed, is woeful, generating errors for no reason. I understand that the author of Cumulus may have retired. However, the Aercus WX3083 works fine with WeatherDisplay, other than the fact that the console buffers fill every few weeks. I would imagine this new hardware will be OK with WD.

To cover my backside in this theoretical review, E&OE !!!


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