Topic: Simple WS for remote monitoring and reporting to WU

[jb510]

OOPS: Mod please move to "Weather Station Hardware »What Weather Station Should I Buy?" -- it won't let me delete.

Can someone recommend a weather station well suited for the following.
- reports data to WU
- measures indoor and outdoor temps
- has a decent indoor display (huge bonus would be if it auto-dimmed at night).
- It'd be nice if it worked with Google Home/HomeKit.

This I don't care about
- wind speed, it's just minimally important where I am (thick forest), but I'm also not opposed to it. 
- other sensors like lightening, soil moisture, etc... 

Ambient WS-2000 - seems the obvious fit, but is a bit on the pricey side hence wondering what I might be missing.
AcuRite Iris - seems like a decent fit as well, but my last WS was an AcuRite and I got fleeced years ago when they shut down support for their AcuLink USB hub.  I might get over that, but I notice they're getting weather from Dark Sky which was acquired by Apple and I wonder if another AcuRite fleecing is coming.
WeatherFlow Tempest - also seems like a good fit, but I don't like that it doesn't have an indoor display. If I could get that to be the screen saver on my Google Home Hub that'd be awesome, but my understanding is it's just voice reporting.

[Mandrake]

I think the Ambient WS-2000 is the one that ticks the boxes for you.
It certainly does everything that you asked for and can add the additional sensors that you want and all displayed on a nice hires screen that auto dims.
Perhaps you can grab a deal if one comes up.

[jb510]

I rolled the dice and bought an "AcuRite 01210 Wi-Fi Indoor Outdoor Lightning Detection Weather Station for Home (01210M)" from Amazon for $145. That seemed like it would tick all my boxes, except not being AcuRite based on the bad experience with the SmartHub shutdown.

That was a mistake. 

#1 In spite of being "wifi connected" there is no way to see weather on your phone or via a web portal, except to connect it to WeatherUnderground and see data there.  I planned on connecting it to WU, but that displays a lot less data/history than one would get using MyAcuRite.  For MyAcuRite you still have to buy the separate hub and after my past experience when AcuRite shutting down the service the SmartHub relied on a year after buying it, rendering it useless, I'm not interested in going down that road again.

So this unit is getting returned 48 hours after receiving it and setting it up.

#2 It was missing the lightning sensor... I looked _everywhere_, it just wasn't in the the box in spite of the 1210 package listing it as included. Heck even the label on the box says "with lightning sensor".  I guess someone forgot to put it in the box because it didn't look like the box had ever been opened.

#3 The display is OK, but not great.  The viewing angle from above (as if sitting on a table) isn't great.  Also a huge part of why I bought it was for the DarkSky forecast, which is accurate, but which is so tiny on the display it's unreadable from more than 4' away.  Further the display has no customization options, like for example more prominently displaying the forecast or indoor temp.

So... amazon return label is already on the box, it's sitting on my porch and I'm ordering a ws-2000 now.

[EdOz]

AcuRite has made a living from producing horribly low-quality stations. But then again, they're likely making millions from their deals with Walmart, Target, et al. I thought the Atlas was going to be a change of pace .. hell from the hour I spent with their development team before our review and when I saw em again at a show I was fooled.. but it's still not good enough.

A lightning detector that didn't really work well, an wi-fi access point that was a pain to connect,  and a rain gauge that was seriously undercounting rainfall. Only great thing about AcuRite is they put fan aspiration in the Atlas as a standard feature. But much of the rest of the lineup isn't good. And people wonder why the Atlas Elite still isn't out -- why would people buy it when the company still doesn't have the Atlas right.

Solid buy on the WS-2000. Ambient isn't perfect either, but they made a smart move in partnering with Ecowitt. Best alternative to Davis IMHO