Review of my Netatmo Weather Station
After purchasing a home, one of the first things I wanted to do was to get a personal weather station up in the air! My first thought was an older, legacy product like a Davis Vantage Pro 2 unit or something like that, but I really wanted to go more modern, something I can easily connect to remotely, and things that play nice into my smart home. All of this lead me to Netatmo.
Now, I had to be sure I was getting quality sensors, because what is the value of the station if there is a 5 degree error? So I checked out Netatmo’s specs and I put them below. But for the sake of getting to the cool stuff, just trust me for now, read on and then view the specs below, later.
Pieces:
So I got all 3 pieces with my kit. I got the main package, which included the home base station, plus the outdoor temperature sensor.. I also ordered the rain gauge and wind sensors. Note: you have to have the base/home station in order to add the other “modules” to it, like the rain gauge and such. See the pictures below for my installs.
Wind Sensor:
The wind sensor is so cool I wanted to write a little about it. So the sensor is made from high quality plastics, making it weatherproof and resistant to hail, winds and UV. It’s a sonic unit meaning no cups and wind vanes, it uses 4 ultrasonic transducers. This unit is only about $100, uses 4 AA batteries, but has a rating up to 100mph and an accuracy of +/- 1 mph, and accurate within 5 degrees (wind direction). I thought this was awesome!
Connected Home:
The thing I really loved about this was how it worked with my connected home stuff.. Example 1) If it rains, I use IFTTT to tell my Rachio sprinkler system to go on a rain delay. This lets me make sure I am not watering when it rained, which is just useless. I can also make my house lights flicker blue when it starts raining, or remind me I have windows open, or automatically close the garage door if it begins raining, etc.. So much potential!
Interface:
The interface for the system is pretty slick too. There is of course a phone app, and also widgets if you are on android. I really like the web portal though, where you can go in and deep dive a bit more. All of the data is stored in the cloud too and you can download it and do your own interpretations. (I blurred out my location in top right, but it would show up there otherwise). You can also share this data easily to Twitter (hoping more networks coming soon?).
Cons:
The only real con I have seen so far is that the update period is only 5 minutes. I need to ask support if the sensors are recording at intermittent times, which I think they are, as my wind gusts sometimes is higher than what the graphs show? I’d like to see a more frequent update, but I would guess they did this to preserve battery on the remote mounted equipment.
Specs:
This is the specs on their outdoor temperature sensor
Temperature (outdoor):
Ranges from:
-40°C to 65°C / -40°F to 150°F
Accuracy:
± 0.3°C / ± 0.54°F
Of course I greatly cared about the rain and wind sensor quality too..
Tipping buckets
Ranges from:
0,2 mm/h to 150 mm/h / 0.01 in/h to 6 in/h
Accuracy:
1 mm/h / 0.04 in/h
For the wind sensors
4 ultrasonic transducers
Wind speed:
Range: 0 to 45 m/s (160 km/h, 100 mph)
Accuracy: 0.5 m/s (1.8 km/h, 1 mph)Wind direction:
Accuracy: 5°
