Ok here is my review of am Acurite 01055 Pro Weather Station with Bridge. I bought it to give to my Brother in law who lives about a mile up the road. I need to get it all working and setup before I install it because his computer skills are about what mine are for Klingon cloaking devices.
It came from the Post Office in separate shipping box. Which is good, I was afraid that they would ship it in the display box.
The display box was kinda flimsy.
I opened it up and checked for all of the parts and anything that might be broken, all was well. One thing I noticed right off was that it did not come with batteries. The last two weather stations I bought did.
The sensor unit is about half the size of a Davis unit and came fully assembled. No need to mount wind vanes or cups. I think they are targeting people who want any easy simple install.
I initially put the sensor unit next my Davis in hopes of making side by side comparisons. This was to be a temporary location until I got it all working and ready to move it up the road to my Brother in laws house. It took me less than 30 minutes to unpack and setup the test site.
The next part was the display. It is smaller than both my Davis and Oregon Scientific displays.
I waited for it to sync with the sensor unit and waited. No contact. I took it out to the porch still no contact. I finally had to carry the display outside next to the sensor before it would make contact. Once it connected I carried it back inside and it lost contact. Both the Davis and Oregon work from that location.
I gave up and moved it up closer to the house 50 feet from the office. Still no contact. If I took it out on the porch it worked, inside it stopped. So much for the three hundred foot wireless range.
I gave up again and moved it up onto my upstairs deck 20 feet from the office. It made contact. Well I would hope so. The display in on the sill inside the window.
I am kinda dismayed now because the planned final location was going to be about 200 feet and it sure ain’t gonna work at that distance.
Next was to set up the bridge. Instructions were simple enough. Hook it up to your router one of the lights will blink while it downloads firmware, when both lights flash push the register button for 4
seconds (actually there were two sets of instructions. One said four seconds and the other said two and a half seconds to four seconds) and then enter the MAC address of the bridge into your account with Acurite.com.
Well I plug it in and I get two steady lights. No sign of any download going on. I turn it on and off a couple times ,two steady lights. I swap lan cables, no go. Well maybe I don’t need flashing lights. I push the register button, nothing. I repeat about ten times still nothing. I go the Acurite.com registration page enter all the data. Click register. I get a message that I am either stupid and don’t know how to enter a MAC address or the bridge is not connected.
Ok maybe the button is multipurpose like on some routers ect. I push and hold for 10 seconds the lights blink once and stay steady. Humm no download no two flashing lights. I try the registration again just for fun. Acurite says I am still stupid. I try the on off again, nothing. I am kinda mad by now I push the button about ten times as fast as I can, bonk, I now got two flashing lights but no download. And, it still won’t register. I turn it off and on and bingo it starts downloading. Instructions say it may take 30 minutes. It took longer.
I finally get the one steady and one flashing light and the register button works. A frustrating process and I don’t think the average buyer would ever have gotten it to work. I sure hate to think of what support would have told me to do.
I went to Acurite.com turned on the Wunderground upload and it worked right off. So far the numbers are tracking fairly close to the Davis unit. I would not expect them to be the same as one is on a second floor deck and the other over grass. The bridge is not reporting any wind gust. I don’t know if it is supposed to or not. I am going to give it a few days to settle down and check accuracy and then move it up the road. I am going to be real unhappy if I can’t get some range out it.