Topic: SURVEY/POLL - Fine Offset Weather station (Ambient, Ecowitt, Froggit, Misol..)

[Rocketman]

I finally decided to look for an ultrasonic weather station after having conventional analog weather station for years .
The analog one’s I’ve had , Dallas 1 wire  and AAG ,Davis vantage pro 2 ,Digitech XCO434 ,built my own which had IQUEST DATA LOGGER DS 8442i remotely connecting UHF radio link ( Tait 2010 radios )and connecting to Hydrotel Server  located in Hamilton (total distance of 50kms ) raw data was sent to direct to the Americas cup One world challenge yatching syndicate in 2001 . There were two sites located at the highest repeater siites on the western coast of Auckland ,New Zealand .
They won the first thirteen races of the challenge ,but then we had a wind shift of 180 degrees ( wind changed and started coming the eastern coast ) which meant realtime data that they could use and eventually they lost 😠
Anyway , I bought my Pantech HP2553 from eBay shipping was from Australia from a reseller floraliving . I see he’s now sold close to 1400 units .Once I had the unit I checked the firmware was up to date and it was the same as Ecowitt .

[Gyvate]

as per our compatibility matrix in the WiKi, the PanTech HP2550 console is an Ecowitt HP2550. Same applies to full stations. The difference between an Ecowitt HP2553 and a PanTech HP2553 is only the label printed on the console.
Did you add it to the poll ?

[Rocketman]

  Yes I did

[Gyvate]

status 27-Oct-2024: 128 users
since 01-Jan-2023 353 different users have created a post in the
WXforum.net » Weather Station Hardware » Ambient Weather and  Ecowitt and other Fine Offset clones forum.
Assuming (educated guess) that about 300 of them are regular visitors of the forum and own a Fine Offset (clone) station.
=> 128/300 = ~43 % of the regular forum visitors and Ecowitt/Ambient/other clone have voted here.

Given that, as one can derive from public sources, Fine Offset have sold at least about 300,000 weather stations via resellers and the Ecowitt retail channel, the users here in the forum represent 0.1 % of the Fine Offset station owners.
=> ~299.000 users did not raise their voice here in wxforum.net.

There are about two rather large Fine Offset related weather forums and three larger Facebook user groups in the net -
Member number/regularly posting in the past two years:

wxforum.net ~300
wetterstationsforum.info (Germany): ~ 200
Facebook Ecowitt Family: ~2,700
Facebook Wittboy/WS90: ~1,200
Facebook Ambient: ~18,000
together ~22,500
Making the (rather wrong but not too bad either) assumption, that the members in these forums/group are disjunct. then about 7.5 % of the Fine Offset station users raise their voice in one of these platforms. And I'm not saying that all posts are of negative content beyond error reports. Many are handling related or just informational.
Another guess is that maybe 25% of these users are not only temporarily but constantly unhappy with the product they purchased
(< 2% of the sold stations).

so, about 5.5 % temperarily complaining but after all happy customers.
92.5 % are silent and potentially happy customers.
As a whole 98% are happy with the product purchased.

Just to get an idea how representative the opinions sometimes uttered here are ...

(I'm not speaking of reported errors and statements of factual nature)

These are, of course, not exact numbers, but the order of magnitude is very likely to be correct.

[Gyvate]

status 16-Jan-2025: 161 users
~54% of active forum users (Ambient Weather and  Ecowitt and other Fine Offset clones subforum)

[Gyvate]

02-Feb-2025

Fine Offset reseller devices	|	Fine Offset retail (Ecowitt) devices
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
98	|	134
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
42 %	|	58 %
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------

total:
232 Fine Offset devices
164 users
EDIT: changed 56% to 58% 

[Gyvate]

03-Feb-2025

Fine Offset reseller devices	|	Fine Offset retail (Ecowitt) devices
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
100	|	137
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
42 %	|	58 %
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------

total:
237 Fine Offset devices
168 users

[Gyvate]

08-Feb-2025

Fine Offset reseller devices	|	Fine Offset retail (Ecowitt) devices
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
104	|	139
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
43 %	|	57 %
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------

total:
243 Fine Offset devices
171 users

[Gyvate]

24-Feb-2025

Fine Offset reseller devices	|	Fine Offset retail (Ecowitt) devices
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
112	|	143
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
43.9 %	|	56.1 %
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------

total:
255 Fine Offset devices
182 users

[Gyvate]

14-Mar-2025

Fine Offset reseller devices	|	Fine Offset retail (Ecowitt) devices
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
114	|	149
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
43.3 %	|	56.7 %
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------

total:
263 Fine Offset devices
189 users

[MVMHK]

I bought an Ecowitt device which was a purchase from a friend who also bought one, it appears they are amongst the cheapest for personal users here in Australia. Easy to setup and use.
So I know 2 other people who don't know about these forums who have an Ecowitt device and I only stumbled across this site because it is something I would like to learn more with my PWS.

[Gyvate]

12-May-2025

Fine Offset reseller devices	|	Fine Offset retail (Ecowitt) devices
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
120	|	158
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------
43.2 %	|	56.8 %
------------------------------	---	-----------------------------------

total:
278 Fine Offset devices
201 users