Weather Stations - You Get What You Pay For...Most of the Time.

     Last August my LaCrosse Technologies Weather Station model WS-2812U-IT went belly-up after just over one year of use.  The anemometer quit on me.  I opened up the anemometer to see if there was any kind of damage, but I only found that the batteries were dead.  I found out the hard way that taking the thing apart is difficult due to one part in particular.  It is a little piece of black plastic in an L shape that covers 5 little LEDs.  If you break this little piece of plastic, you are SCREWED!  A black plastic disk goes in between it and the LEDs to sense the wind speed.  The plastic disk is on the shaft for the wind cups.  I tried to fix my anemometer but failed.  I contacted the company and sent the whole thing back.  They returned it with a new anemometer inside for free.  I set it all back up again and found that the new anemometer DID NOT WORK right out of the box!  I was thoroughly disgusted, to say the least, so I decided "I am done with this company!"
     I went on-line and searched for weather stations of different brands and found one that suits my needs.  It cost me $200 but I found it was well worth it.  It is made by Meade Instruments and it is the model TE923W-M.  This puppy has the usual indoor/outdoor temp and humidity, barometer, wind speed and direction, and rainfall, plus a UV sensor for sunburn risk, moon phase, sunrise/sunset times, and wind chill.  It even has a remote!  You can even have it backlit in blue, but the backlight only stays on for about 30 seconds or so.  The barometer has a bar graph that constantly updates showing you changes in pressure.  It comes with software for making charts and graphs of weather data.  It is called Weather Capture Advance V 1.2.  It is pretty darn cool!  I had no trouble at all setting it up.  This program also saves the weather data in an archive file so you can access it as needed.  I used to have a weather station made by MFJ Enterprises a few years ago and it had a nasty software program called Heavy Weather.  It took me forever to figure that program out!
     In summary, let me say that I am very pleased with this new weather station.  I think I got a good value for my money.  LaCrosse will not see another dime from me, tho.
      Here is an update on the Meade weather station.  When I updated my computer to Windows 7, I found that the Meade software would not work.  I went on-line to the Meade website and found that they don't provide updates to their software packages!  I tried looking elsewhere on-line for software that might work but I had no luck.  By this time, the weather station was showing its age and battery life was getting shorter, so I decided to go shopping for yet another weather station.
     I ended up with a nice one from Acurite, which cost $225.  The outside unit was an all-in-one outfit and it sends data wirelesssly to a receiving unit inside the house and that unit is connected to my router, which sends the data to a website from which I can access my data from any Wi-Fi hotspot or standard internet connection.  THAT is COOL!  The display unit is a full-color LCD outfit with back-lighting. I usually have to change batteries in the sending unit about every 4 months.  I did not put the sending unit up very high this time.  It is about 12 ft. off the ground on a self-supporting mast and works fine there.