No. I’m not suggesting that you shell out hard earned cash money to get an Atlas. Completely unnecessary, unless, of course, you want to! For the sake of completeness, I’ll review the Atlas Personal Weather Station (PWS) at the end.
I appreciate that not everyone needs to collect his or her own weather data when quite local data can be gotten from Wunderground. I cannot. And there are times when I need to know my local-local weather, and that I’d like to verify what my sites and apps are telling me. Heck, even my mom needs a rain gauge and a thermometer on her patio!
I’ll see for myself
2. BUILD YOUR OWN WEATHER STATION
Measure
- temperature: thermo meter
- humidity: hygro meter
- pressure: baro meter
- rainfall: rain gauge
- wind speed: anemo meter (optional)
Given temperature and humidity, you can calculate dew point, and heat index (HI).
That’s it!
Amazon has approximately 75,642 clock-looking 3-in-1 wall hanging contraptions that measure temperature, humidity, and pressure, from 8679 manufacturers that all look exactly the same and have zero reviews. So I’d recommend going to your local county co-op or hardware store or big box store and actually looking at what you’re getting. At the co-op you can ask what the farmers use. Pick up a rain gauge while you’re there.
WRT the barometer, decide in what units you want the output: inHg, millibar, hPa. I’d recommend choosing the the one used by your local meteorologist, or where ever you get your local forecasts.
Amazon does have a handheld anemometers for not too much. Twenty-five pages worth of under $25 (though only two pages with 4+ star reviews)
This is interesting and old school.
Oh my gosh! It even has a wind chill chart! Too cool!
If you really want to see for yourself, don’t forget to observe and record these data and them graph them!
Review of AcuRite Atlas below.
Atlas PWS (Review)
I got a 5% discount because I’m a farmer! The sensor itself is sold without the options that come with the more expensive version (lightening detection, which of several monitors, etc.). Basically build your own.
INSTALLATION
Stupidly easy to install. Here’s the owner’s manual if you’re inclined to take a look. I could not have done it myself because I’m not tall enough!
MONITOR
The monitor– as I may have mentioned– has a design flaw. There is no backup battery. It runs only on AC from a wall outlet. Jackery to the rescue.
I don’t care for the graphs. I don’t like that the graphs will only present 48 hour or 6 hour trends even though I have an SD card installed. I don’t like the “scale” on the graphs– meaningless. I don’t like that the unit only saves 48 hours of data without an SD card. I don’t like that if the power goes out, and I’ve not made previous arrangements to ensure a flow of electrons, and stays out, the monitor’s date reverts to 1/1/18. I don’t like that there’s no way of finding out if the SD card is full except by taking it out.
I do like the display itself– lots of information at a glance. I like the ability to set alarms, e.g., beep when the wind is >30mph.
SENSOR
Too many false lightening strikes. That’s about it for me for the negative, though reading reviews some people are not that lucky.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Haven’t had any issues so I don’t personally know, but some Amazon reviews about customer service are brutal.
This made me laugh. In the reviews, several folks complained that the sensor was larger than expected and they wouldn’t be able to install it on account of home owners’ associations rules. Idiots. Don’t live where you don’t actually, really, own your own private property.
SUMMARY
I’m happy with it. I like knowing what’s going on here, as opposed to the nearest weather reporting location or someone else’s PWS.