Ambient Weather WS-0900-IP Wireless Internet Remote Monitoring Weather Station

Update: I've moved the review up to 5 stars. I know nothing is perfect, but for the money this is a great weather station and does everything I want it to do. Its cheap, easy to set up and your weather info is available on Wunderground or ambient weather's own web dashboard site. This weather station is a fraction of the Davis VantagePro I bought years ago, seems to give the same data, and is infinitely easier and cheaper to connect on line. I had a couple of questions about the set up and they were quickly answered by customer support email.Its hard to tell how long this system will last. Frankly it if poops out in a year or two it would still be a good buy. Battery life in the three units is still a question mark. No idea how long they will last.Just got this yesterday and I'll update if something changes, but this is a great weather station. I've had a couple of Davis weather stations which I would say are generally of better quality, but Davis is living back in the 90s with their technology. Especially when it comes to interfacing with the web. This weather stations literally took less than an hour to set up and configure. Next thing you know I'm out on Wunderground. The only thing that was a bit tricky was the barometer calibration. It took me a few minutes to understand what the manual was saying, but after that I was good to go.Wireless range - My base unit is in the kitchen. The indoor unit is about 10 feet away, so no problems there. The outdoor temp/humidity unit is on the porch, maybe 40 feet away. The walls are cinder block with a couple of windows. No problems getting the signal. The wind/rain sensor is probably 50-60 feet away and seems to get good signal too. So everything seems solid.Have not had any rain yet, so I cant speak to how well or accurate the rain gauge is. The outdoor temperature/humidity unit should be set somewhere out of direct sunlight, but away from buildings which might affect the reading. For now, I've put mine on top of a cabinet on my porch and it seems to track the temperature of other local stations.A few gripes:When you read the manual, you get the impression this system is not as Mac friendly as you might like. However the Mac setup was stupid simple and went quickly. The only part I'm not sure about is the instructions say if you need to update the system's firmware you'll need to do that on a PC system. My firmware was up to date, so I did not have to worry about doing that (yet).Manual could use a bit of work. Some things could be clearer and it at one point it references "when fishished, go to Section 9.3. " without saying what comes after the last dot.Batteries: I dont know how long these AA batteries will last. The two remote temperature units are pretty easy to change. The Rain/wind unit has a screw, metal tab set up that is a bit difficult to get at.Just to clarify a couple of things so you do not have any suprises; The base unit plugs into your home router with a supplied ethernet cable and requires an available 110 outlet for the power supply. I thought this was a stand alone unit you could place anywhere and just pick it up with your wireless system. But this is a nit, and really does not degrade from the system.All in all this system is great! For $89 I think its the perfect weather system for home use. I took one star off only because there are a few things that could be better. But cost/quality/simplicity/connectivity this is a solid 5.

It build is a bit flimsy, but not more than any other inexpensive unit. I knew that when I ordered it. Otherwise, it's very easy to set up, and its wireless range is as-advertised. We have ours down on the dock, probably 250 ft away, with the receiver located in a window with direct line of sight. The sensors seem to be quite accurate. Temp and humidity agree pretty well with my sling hygrometer. I've not verified rainfall or barometric pressure.UPDATE, May 2019: Our weather station has been tortured in the sun, wind, salt air, and rain for over 2 years now. It has not yet exhausted the original batteries I installed. The parts still move freely. The anemometer has not rotted in the sun and broken (as our Accurite station did in about a year). A large seagull once even perched on the delicate spinning cup part, and the station has survived one hurricane and one weak tornado. The base unit has always been situated at the far end of the main unit's range, and it is still receiving signals. This unit has now exceeded our expectations. The only issue we have is the one we have always had -- that it somewhat under-registers rainfall. Even with this problem, I reaffirm my 5-star rating. The unit gives good service for a relatively low price, which is unusual these days.UPDATE Nov 2022: We finally retired this weather station. Remarkably, the plastic sensor array made the distance of 6 years, which is better longevity than we got from a Davis anemometer. The component that failed was the base station, which kept registering data and allowed us to directly read the data through our network, but which stopped sending data to Weather Underground. We attribute this possibly to a power surge. I don't think anything in our network configuration changed. Regardless, we couldn't get it to work.I'd say 6 years is some pretty good service out of this thing for the money. The anemometer and the wind vane both rotated as freely when I took the unit down as the day I put it up. The plastic is now more of an oxidized beige than its original gleaming white. The remote temperature sensors look great too.We replaced it with the Ambient 2902D, which seems to be every bit as good a product, but with more useful features. The 2902D seems to have the same stainless shafts and ball bearings as this unit, so I expect it will last as long.

Purchased this and had a defective anemometer so I did a return exchange. My replacement was a repackaged return but everything worked so I kept it. Then after six months the anemometer failed again. The rest of the kit works well and stays connected but if you want a reliable wind speed measurement get something else. The rain gauge works well but in high winds it gives false readings since that sensor has exposure to wind turbulence. I gave it three stars for it's potential and good temperature data logging. If you ever get something that looks repackaged from Amazon send it back. I took apart the sensor and the pc board was dated 2015 and I bought it in mid 2017. I would try Accurite for a budget weather station since I had one that lasted over two years and it was a real cheap model.