Thinking of switching from OS WMR300 to Davis VP2 with solar radiation sensor

Given the enormous price increase, can anyone tell me if it’s a good idea to switch from Oregon Scientific WMR300 to a Davis Vantage Pro 2 with solar radiation sensor? I don’t know why I didn’t do more research when I bought my WMR300 and get a Davis just under 2 years ago, and I’ve been kind of regretting my decision ever since. Don’t get me wrong, the WMR300 has been very good to me, but doesn’t offer everything the VP2 does. However, I can’t see shoveling out the excess cost associated with the VP2 if I know it’s not a good product. The reviews look nice though and they’ve changed the rain gauge to include bird spikes and made it more cone-shaped, but essentially it does the same thing, I imagine. I’ve never seen a bird land on my weather station!

Basically I’m hoping that the station will allow me to post stats to my web page like the WMR300 base station does, as in collecting data and allowing me to put that live data on my site. Isn’t the data logger required for this purpose? Isn’t that about an extra $200 on top of the cost of the station, let alone the extra $150 for the software? Is all that really necessary if all I want to do is put the data on my page?

I thank you for your valued input. It may help me to make a somewhat final decision for next year when hopefully I can afford it.

Dan

Great idea :thumbright: I’ve had Davis since the original VP was released and IMHO it’s a quality station with good support and parts availability.

Yes, you do need a datalogger to connect to a PC. The Davis datalogger either USB, Serial, or IP, includes the Davis software but you can continue to use WD. There are also third party loggers, USB, wifi, that are less expensive than the Davis one.

Many users have positive experience with https://www.scaledinstruments.com/ but you should shop around for prices, don’t pay retail. Shipping to Canada seems be a big issue (wasn’t NAFTA supposed to fix all that?).

Thanks for the quick reply niko…

Well, your President has changed NAFTA to the USMCA Trade Agreement which is basically no different from NAFTA and it doesn’t offer Canadians much in the way of benefits, but only benefits the United States. So there goes that idea out the window. I hear tell Trump doesn’t even like our Minister of Foreign Affairs - he calls her a bad negotiator, so that makes matters worse. We won’t get a break from this, but not to go into a whole debate about politics here.

I checked Scaled Instruments and I noticed their prices are pretty high and once I put everything together, I figured that it’s going to cost me well over $1,000 US (about ~$1340 CAD with the current exchange rate), and I’m not looking at spending that kind of money right away. If my WMR300 holds out for another 3 years until my mortgage is paid off, then I’ll consider it, and costs might have come down by that time.

It’s nice to know you think it’s a good idea. I could put my WMR300 up for sale on Kijiji, Craigslist or eBay if I decide to sell it.

If you Current setup is working and functional what are you missing from Davis that you need.

When you make your assessment and cost benefit analysis, remember to include the cost of ownership of replacing your current unit with the Davis.