Weather Station Hardware > What Weather Station Should I Buy?

Columbia Pulsar 800

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wxobserver:
Does anyone know anything about this equipment? I have searched here and the web and have been able to find very little info other than the specs. I am looking for a professional weather station. I’ve spent my life doing official wx obs for the NWS and FAA (US Government) and now I’d like to have something better than an ASOS for myself. I’ve had Davis wx stations since 1992 and I have no problem with them but I’d like something a bit better. Columbia seems to fit the bill but I can’t even find a price for it, much less any actual experience with it. Thanks!

CW2274:
Not only is this an all-in-one, other than the pressure, its sensors specs are inferior to the Davis. Not even close, for that matter. An aspirated VP2 with separate wind, rain collection, and temp/humidity is hard to beat in the price segment. If you want to drop some change, I suggest RM Young or Campbell. Forget any all-in-one.

Garth Bock:
Just out of curiosity I looked up this station and there is one thing this looks like it lacks....on site repairability. All-In-One stations of the past have had to be shipped back for repair. Modular stations like the Davis can be fixed by the user. Sure, there will be a loss of a certain bit of data while waiting for the part but it beats having no station while a simple (for example) temp/humidity sensor is being replaced on an AIO. Also, there has been a trend for some companies to shift everything to the cloud and not have a local console. The only way to see your data is with a phone app. While this is nice there was a company years ago who went out of  business and turned the user's stations into dead junk. Just some thoughts....

TheBushPilot:
Those look like rebranded Lufft compact weather stations. They have pretty standard measurement accuracies, nothing to write home about. Not that ASOS does either :lol:, but it being an all-in-one, I would stay far far away from them if you want something comparable. Now don't get me wrong, Lufft is a very good company with good products but the inherent designs of all-in-ones severely limit their overall usability.

Like CW2274 said, any industry standard sensor manufacturer that offers separate instruments will allow for a better overall experience if at the literal cost of expense. And to be honest you could buy a fully loaded up to date Davis and properly site it and get better results than one of those from Columbia Weather Systems. The Luffts run around $4000 versus a Davis at ~$1500. I'd consider those all-in-ones more of a temporary deployment device or where the end user has little concern over minute accuracies compared to a general understanding of the environment. Similar to the Vaisala WXTs, which are not meant for precision measurements.

If you wanted to go off the deep end and put together an "ASOS-type" weather station for around the cost of that Lufft, it can be done. Obviously with the benefits of modularity and being built by oneself using reputable instrumentation. Admittedly a little more involved but the payoff is incomparable.

Hope this helps.


Cheers

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