I bought my first personal weather station back in 2002. It was an Oregon Scientific WMR-968 that I paid $299 for on eBay.
The WMR-968 was the most affordable wireless system I could find at the time that had the full complement of sensors (wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, barometer and rain gauge). After I had owned it for a year I wrote up a review that you can find on my weather website.
There were nicer systems available but since I wasn’t really sure how involved I would get with the weather station so I cheaped out a bit, figuring I could replace it with a nicer system later if I felt so inclined.
I had some hardware problems with the WMR-968 over the years that I fixed (and some I didn’t), and I also made some modifications/customizations for it , including building a radiation shield (two actually; this was the second) for the temperature sensor. I also created and maintain a weather website and constructed a precipitation identification sensor to use in conjunction with the weather station.
However, on a recent rainy day I discovered that the rain gauge wasn’t operating properly, and after spending an afternoon cleaning and repairing it (and getting cold and wet) I got it working again. But within a few hours it began having the same problem. That, coupled with the fact that the touch screen for the base station was getting progressively flakier made me decide it was time to think about buying a new weather station.
I debated with just purchasing a new WMR-968 system and simply swapping out the broken parts with the new ones. I assumed the parts would be interchangeable with my current ones and it thereby would be minimal work to install the replacement parts. (I found the WMR-968 selling for around $200 at Ambient Weather.)
But considering all the problems I’ve had with the system and the fact that I’ve also had some reception problems with the wireless connectivity it seemed a good idea to look at other options (all of which cost more of course). I figured if I bought another WMR-968 it was possible that I would encounter the same problems; after all you do get what you pay for.
Ambient Weather has a nice web page comparing the different features of the weather stations they sell so I used that as a starting point.
Based on the feature and price comparisons I first looked at the Davis Instruments Vantage Vue 6250 that can be purchased for about $300. The Davis Instruments weather stations have always received good reviews but are definitely higher priced systems.
But the 6250 has a one piece instrument sensor unit with the anemometer (wind gauge) fixed with the other sensors that I don’t like. The anemometer should be mounted higher than the other instruments for the most accurate readings, and currently my anemometer is about 18 feet off the ground with the other sensors about four to five feet from the ground.
I also couldn’t find a lot of reviews online for this newer model so I decided against that system.
The next logical option therefore was the Davis Instruments 6152 Vantage Pro2 wireless system. It has an integrated sensor unit too but the anemometer can be mounted up to forty feet away from the other instruments, which would allow me to preserve my current configuration (more or less). So I decided that was the unit for me.
I figured if I needed I could eventually modify the standard radiation shield included with it and add a fan to make it an active aspirated shield for cheaper than the upgrade to the fan-equipped 6153 (another $120).
For some goofy reason the vendors selling the Davis weather stations can’t list their best price online (at least not directly) and many offer links to alternate “Low Price Quote” webpages sent via email. Davis apparently has a “Minimum Authorized Price” policy that precludes the vendors from listing sale prices below that amount directly.
The Davis 6152 is normally priced around $500, but Ambient Weather sells it for around $400 here.
Currently my WMR-968 is hooked up via a serial cable to my PC running Virtual Weather Station software, that stores the weather data as well as uploading the data to both my website and the Weather Underground site. Any true weather geek has his weather station hooked up to a PC, since there’s so much more you can do with it then.
But after deciding to buy the Davis 6152 weather station, I discovered that one cannot hook any of the Davis weather stations up to a PC running weather station software directly without spending an additional $120 or so to purchase some version of the “WeatherLink” adapter!
When I bought the WMR-968 as far as I know all the weather station display units had a serial port included to interface with a PC. Now almost ten years later it’s become an “option.”
I was a bit conflicted then about my choice, as I would need to spend almost three times what it would cost me to simply replace the WMR-968 with the same model.
But after more thought I decided that although $200 seems like a good price for a personal weather station with a PC interface, the problems I had with the WMR-968 over the years convinced me it would be foolhardy to buy another. (That, and I did learn from my chainsaw purchasing experiences!) It made more sense to get a higher quality unit this time around.
So even though the lack of a built-in PC interface strikes me as a ripoff I ended up ordering both the Davis 6152 wireless weather station and the “WeatherLink” USB adapter.
SUCKER!!!