Ambient Weather WS-2902 WiFi Smart Weather Station

I had been looking for a home weather station for years and finally decided to pull the trigger. Mainly because I had the perfect poll for it that had been sitting under out carport for years and my wife threated to get rid of it with the next bulk trash pickup. Use it or lose it, so I put it to use.If you are looking for a great weather station at great price this is the perfect unit. This station has all the basics you would want and more. Rain gage that measures not only the amount of rain but hourly rain fall as well as 24 hour rain fall, weekly, monthly and rain event totals. The unit has a wind vain and anemometer for wind direction and speed, of course. It also has temperature with heat index and wind chill. We have a pool so I love that the unit measures UV index and Solar Radiation.Assembly: Not too difficult. Everything goes together pretty easy if you have a basic knowledge of putting things together. If you don't then call your kids or grandkids to come do it for you. Directions are rather long and wordy and at times seem out of order. It also has a few steps for optional equipment that does not some with this particular unit. Dug through the box looking for those things before realizing they were optional. The wind vain and anemometer cups slip on and you just need a small screw driver to tighten them down. Rain gauge twist into place and the wire filter pushes right in. The unit runs on solar power but uses two AA batteries as a backup. Took me a minute to figure out how to get the cover to slide off, I never want to push too hard and break something.The biggest issue you will have is how and where to mount the unit. I have a large yard and a garden framed with rail road ties out around 100 feet away from the house. I also had an old pipe with tripod feet that use to be on our roof with our internet dish that I was able to mount the unit too. I was able to bold the stand to the railroad ties so it is not going anywhere. The u-joints that came with the unit securely mounted the unit to the pole I had and was fairly simple. The thing to remember is mouth it facing north, which I was easily able to do using the compass on my iPhone and the arrow on top of the unit. And do not forget to check the level of the unit. It has a level dot on top. I thought I was done, but then noticed that and spend another 30 minutes trying to adjust the base and the u-joint and pole screws to try and get it perfect… then just got mad and bent the pole and BAM… unit level.It took the unit a few minutes to find the indoor unit. I had to then move it around to find the best spot for reception. I have tried moving it all over the house and the base has a tough time reading the station if you move it too far away or there are too many walls between the station and the base. I have it setting on one of my wife’s tables by a back window within eyesight of the weather station. It gets five bars there and is working great, however my wife thinks it clashes with the aesthetic of the table… can’t win them all.Pros: Within a few hours of setting the unit up we had a big rain event. Unit worked great. We got over 3 inches of rain over night. With wind and rain unit held firmly in place. Display is easy to read. Also easy to setup and create accounts on Ambientweather.net and other weather apps that let me check out the weather conditions at my home wherever I am.Cons: Not many major ones. Set unit DST (Daylight savings time) thinking it would automatically spring forward and fall back with time change, but instead it would randomly spring forward an hour. Once I turned DST off the clock has kept the correct time.I could see if you have a small yard, or are in an area where the house are close together, or have a lot of trees, you may have a hard time finding a clear, unobstructed, spot to mount the unit. Also, if you do not have an existing pole to mount the unit to you could spend as much on the poll and hardware as you spend on the station itself.As for the unit itself the wind gauge does not look to read over 99.9 mph. I live on the Texas coast, took a direct hit from Hurricane Harvey in 2017, so that is a possibility where I live. While the unit might not display wind speed that high it may still read that and post it on the Ambientweather.net site.Lastly, If you are not computer or tech savvy then have your kids, grandkids, or someone under the age of 25 come over and help you with that part of the set up. I had an issue connecting it to our WiFi trying to follow the directions, and my son took it and without even looking at the directions had it connected in about 30 seconds.Overall great weather station for a great price.

I've owned this since July 2020 (5 Years) and I just replaced the first set of batteries. The solar power works great. It did need a little maintenance, the wind speed thingy got clogged up with sand, but everything in New Mexico gets sand eventually. I took it apart and rinsed it out with some WD-40, I hope that does not attract more dust.I'm impressed that this unit is still going strong. It has since reported highs of 114°F and lows down to -12°F. Hot dry New Mexico weather is known to beat these up but this unit is still kicking. WU ID KNMRIORA36

This is a replacement for the other cheaper well know brand after several DOA units we received and they have needed replacements after every 2 years or so. I was very pleased that this one worked perfectly out of the box in a few minutes. The WIFI linking directions were a bit wonky, but then I installed the Abient Weather app and set it all up quickly. I was surprised to see I did not have to configure anything since the location,time, and Date was all sent to the display automatically unlike the former brand which needed resetting after battery changes. The free app links us to many other users supplying weather info to the app. I have a neighbor a block away and we can check each other's data to make sure ours are still accurate!It's not hard to figure out why there are so many Chinese knock-off of this brand.

3 years I purchased a model 2902 Ambient weather station. Within 6 months the display had gone bad, but the manufacturer replaced the display under warranty. I like this model because it does have the outside array on it for the elemental weather things you would want to know and because this model can be easier to mount on a higher pole to get a better wind speed indication. The outside array is located about 75 feet from the back door of the house with the display placed inside at the back door. Our array is about 15 ft in the air on a metal pole and attached to our fence with alligator clips. We had no issues with it being blown down and we have wind alot here. We have never encountered any problems with getting an accurate reading, the RF not being strong enough between base and array, or WIFI issues with reporting weather statistics to the app on the phone. The one downfall of this model is the viewing angle of the display has to be pretty much straight on in order to read the display which is done in different colors. Recently we replaced it with a new, and same model weather station, as the wind last fall blew the spring out of the rain cup and we could not get accurate readings on rain because the cup kept filling with dirt, etc. and the display had started to go black for hours at a time and then would come back on. However, to be fair, the display was on a counter which does see water at times from cleaning the counter and I believe this is what ultimately was killing the display. This time we have installed the new display on the wall which can be difficult to accomplish so you can actually read the display. Even a minor tilt this way or that and the display cannot be read. We finally got it right though. My biggest complaint might even be a little funny except it took us hours to figure out. We had taken down the old array and put it in the trash bin located at the front of the house. When we installed the new array, we could not for the life of us figure out why the new array was not giving us the right numbers. We reset and reset and reset until finally giving up. The next day a light bulb went off that the old array in the trash can, even minus batteries, was still sending an RF signal to our new display. Because the outside array had a solar panel on it, the battery was still charged and still connected. We had to destroy it by cutting all wires. Finally, we killed it, and the new array worked with the new display. It would have been nice if the directions had relayed something about what to do with the old array to get it to stop.