Topic: Hard to choose

[dgresko]

Hi all,
I want a new PWS but Im having a difficult time making a choice. Previously I had an Ambient brand Osprey. It lasted about 2.5 years before the wind and rain meters stopped. But the entire time I had it the rain and wind readings were way off so I never really liked it despite its good reviews.

Now I've been looking for days and I've come up with the following points:

1. All devices with without moving parts that have haptic rain sensors seem to be very inaccurate.
2. The wind meter in the same kind of devices devices seem to need a heating plate or else they are inaccurate in cold ( I live in Nebraska and it gets very cold)
3. Davis seems to be the gold standard but is out of my budget.
4. Acurite looks like it's horrible.

I need a system that's $350-ish, has a decent WIFi indoor monitor, and that's actually accurate.

Your advice is greatly appreciated.

[R.Sidetrack]

You won't find out a perfect system.
I suggest Ecowitt, but consider buying separate sensors. The rain gauge should be mounted near the ground, where you can easily clean it.

And you can avoid paying for a display and use your phone or PC browser. Use the money you save to buy one or more spare/backup sensor(s).

[dgresko]

Ty.
A screen is a requirement. We want to see everything at a glance without having to use a phone or go sit at a PC.

I'm curious about the ecowitt. Everything I've read says ecowitt and ambient equipment are clones so what's the advantage?

[R.Sidetrack]

The primary manufacturer of Ambient equipment is Fine Offset. Fine Offset  also manufactures all Ecowitt  equipment (plus manufactures product for other vendors) and owns the Ecowitt brand.
 
While Ambient is better known, they go out of their way to modify the stock Fine Offset/Ecowitt firmware to try to lock Ambient customers into only buying Ambient branded hardware.

You will get better parts availability and better tech support with the Ecowitt brand.

A knowledgeable member of this forum, Gyvate, has built this Ecowitt Wiki: https://meshka.eu/Ecowitt/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start
A very useful resource.  While that Wiki can be somewhat useful for Ambient products manufactured by Fine Offset, its  not useful for Ambient products sourced elsewhere. For products where Ambient has substituted their own customized version of firmware, the standard Ecowitt features may not apply.

[R.Sidetrack]

While you said you wanted a dedicated display, you COULD  use an old tablet (just needs working WiFi) to substitute for a dedicated / purchased display.

Many Ecowitt gateways have an integrated webserver. So its possible to feed your data to your local PC / tablet / phone via WiFi without having to go through the internet.

Plus you can upload to Ecowitt.net (via working internet) and access that data from anywhere.  For free.