I had been looking around for a cheap but reliable weather station for use at home. I wanted a unit that would upload data directly to the internet, and provide me with some on screen display.
Froggit is a name I had never come across before, but they are very big in Germany and sell a good selection of weather related products online.
The Froggit WH3000SE is available for around £149 with one screen but you can also purchase it with 2 screens if needed. The unit is wire-free, yes everything is mounted at the end of the garden, and no wires are needed to connect any of the sensors together.
From unpacking it out of the box to installation takes around 10 minutes and 2 x AA batteries. The unit comes in 433 or 868 MHz versions I think mine is 868 MHz, and that’s really good as 433 is quite busy these days.
The outdoor unit has a solar panel, I think much of the daytime power is generated from this unit, allowing the batteries to last longer.
The indoor screen is colorful and full of data, but it does have a narrow viewing angle. Put it on a desk or shelf so you are higher, and it’s just fine.
The unit can upload data to Wunderground, Met Office, Ecowitt and weathercloud.
To mount the unit in the clear you may need to order a small pole so the unit can be mounted on a fence or house. The idea is to keep the unit within easy reach, as you will need to change the batteries and periodically clean the rain gauge.
Stage one is to connect your phone or tablet to the Froggit unit, this should be easy but you can often run into trouble. The phone would connect to the Froggit unit, but it detected it didn’t have an internet connection and so it doesn’t try and route any traffic. It’s one of these options put in by the phone companies to help the user experience. I had to convince my phone it was OK to connect, otherwise it just kept timing out and failed to connect.
Once I had convinced the phone to connect, the setup was reasonably easy, I find Ecowitt is the best site for reading my own data.
This really is the best display for your own weather, but you can upload it to multiple sites at once, so WunderMap is also a great source of community data.
The wireless range seem fine for the average house, the range should provide you ample range to place the sensor unit in the garden and have the base display indoors.
As I understand it the outdoor sensor unit needs to be in the range of the indoor display, and the indoor display needs to be in the range of your home WiFi.
So if you are looking for a good starter kit, this excellent wireless range, then this really is a good unit. Temperate, rain and humidity to name a few all seem accurate. You can check out the review and further information on the unit online.
specifications:
Internal temperature (accuracy: +/- 1 ° C)
Outdoor temperature (accuracy: +/- 1 ° C
Indoor humidity (accuracy: +/- 5%)
Humidity outdoor (accuracy: +/- 5%)
Barometric pressure (Accuracy: +/- 0.08 inHg (range: 27.13 to 32.50 inHg)
Solar radiation (accuracy +/- 15%)
UV (accuracy: +/- 15%)
Precipitation (accuracy: +/- 10%)
Precipitation (resolution: +/- 0.01 in)
Wind direction (accuracy: +/- 1 °)
Wind speed range (0 to 160 km / h)
Wind speed (accuracy: +/- 3.5 km / h or 10%)
Wind speed calculation (every 16 seconds)
Wind gust calculation (every 16 seconds)