Considering WeatherFlow Tempest or?

1

I had another brand weather station that did not work very well over the 160ft distance between the outside unit and inside Display/console. So, I sent it back and currently without a weather station. I came across WeatherFlow when searching weather stations on Amazon.
For those of you that have had “other” weather stations and now have WeatherFlow, I would like your option on the device, the App and support? With this Personal Weather Station being so new I am a bit unsure whether to purchase from WeatherFlow and the new Tempest.

Cheers

1 Like
2

Hi @rnix.1, welcome to the community! You have joined at an interesting time. WeatherFlow are just beginning to roll out their new Tempest hardware and app. There are some members of the community who are not happy with the changes (progress doesn’t suit everyone!), but please don’t let this put you off.

From a personal perspective, I am very happy with the hardware. I have only owned basic weather stations before, so this was definitely a step up for me. The ability for you to access your data freely from their API was a massive bonus, and there is now a large collection of third party apps you can use to view and archive your data (Smart Weather Station Third-Party Applications). The app is good, and the support from WeatherFlow is second to none. I can’t comment on the performance of the wireless range as mine is much closer than 160ft, but I am pretty sure there are users on here who have their devices much further away and have no issues.

5 Likes
3

Hi Peter,
These are interesting time in many ways!! Plus many thanks for sharing. Do you have the Tempest or Sky?

1 Like
4

I have the Air/Sky bought through the initial crowdfunding campaign. I am hoping to buy a Tempest later in the year. Do let us know if you need any more help/advice!

1 Like
5

Hmmm - lets see…

Support - great. Always a pleasure to deal with. Totally professional. Very customer-focussed.

Build quality and hardware reliability - pretty good and improving. Some growing pains in Air+Sky+SolarPanel that appear to have helped in the evolved design of the Tempest.

Biggest thing to consider is the WF model - you basically need your station to send data to their servers for them to tune your sensors via the Continuous Learning magic. For some people who just want to buy a shrink-wrapped box and turn it on and have it work ‘without’ any internet connectivity, this might be a show-stopper. It certainly would limit usefulness in something like a remote cabin or the like I’d think.

Programming interface - way fun and the sole reason I did mine back in the original Kickstarter days. It’s great having control over your data. It’s also nice that WF publishes their algorithms for derived calculations. Check out the API page that’s linked to in the header above here in the forums.

Big downside for me is inaccuracy of the rain sensor. Just does not work here for me in the Seattle area. While I understand the rain-check thing as a next-day fixup based on some proprietary magic combination of math and surrounding observations, for me I really wish the rain values in realtime were accurate. If you care about seeing ‘realtime’ rain readings that are accurate, you might want to consider whether to go WF or not.

Suggestion I guess I’d have is that if you’re uncertain, try to pick up a used Air+Sky for a song from somebody who upgraded to Tempest. Get your feet wet and see what you think. I have to think that gently used Air+Sky will be available pretty cheaply as soon as folks get their Tempest units.

6

Vince, thank you for sharing and I see you are Tempest Field Tester. I have to agree the customer support is amazing even to someone like me that does not have their equipment, yet. William with Weather Flow Support answered all my questions and provided all the information I requested.

Of all the weather stations I have researched, there were two systems I was considering and decided on WeatherFlow Tempest, which I have ordered. I understand WeatherFlow is working on additional sensors, (information shared from William) and a tip rain gauge is one. Since you state the rain sensor is inaccurate that could be one reason but I would think since the unit is always learning, Weather Flow could correct the rain sensor inaccuracy with software update.
Again, thank you for your feedback and sharing your view, all the best.
Cheers,
Reggie

7

If you have a co-located rain gage you know is accurate WF has a form where daily information can be uploaded and they will use it to calibrate your own station. My SKY units are reasonably close now. I have a CoCoRaHS gage I report on and have been uploading reports for my SKY stations and for the Tempest stations during the field testing.

1 Like
8

Sure. My opinion is that thousands of customers shouldn’t have to work that hard to get accurate realtime rain data, and if everybody did the form WF wouldn’t be able to hire enough people to do the hand-tweaking. Others may of course have different opinions.

Key thing here is that rain-check is irrelevant to me personally. I would like rain in realtime to be accurate, as I grab the data off the wire(less) and store it on my local systems here. The only reason my WF gear uploads to WF corporate is for their continuous learning stuff, and of course hardware diagnostics if the hardware goes wonky.

1 Like
9

I think they did say they were looking at developing a tipper that could be integrated with the system. That would be the best of both worlds.

1 Like
10

I wasn’t trying to counter what you were saying, just pointing out an option available.

11

Absolutely. Lots of ways to get there of course.

12

I just tried registering a co-located raing guage (Davis Vantage Pro2) and the form would not accept my Tempest Station ID URL (https://smartweather.weatherflow.com/station/19078). It kept showing an error saying “Please enter a valid Station ID”. Are tempest stations not allowed for this service?

13

NVM. I just figured out that it wasn’t asking for the station ID URL like illustrated in the example, but rather only just the numeric ID.

3 Likes
14

A little late perhaps but I am a new Tempest user. Here are my initial thoughts. I replaced an old commercial unit that was inaccurate - particularly on wind velocity. So far I am impressed with the Tempest. The rain amount seems reasonably accurate. We are having unusual WX here in Colorado now. It has been raining and blowing (high wind warnings) all night. This has been a great first 14 hours of operation.
Concerning support: So far I am not real impressed. I sent a request yesterday for information and I have no reply yet. I am currently surfing the user forum, trying to learn more about my unit before asking some dumb questions. I have found a lot of information that applies to the older Air/Sky units and not so much that applies to the new Tempest. Also there are a few dead links. That said, with COVID you have to allow for some slowness. Based on what I see for the older equipment I think there will soon be much more information for the Tempest. I would buy it again if that helps.
Dave…

15

Official support is a bit swamped, last 2 weeks over 2000 units came online and the requests just exploded. They are helping each of you but some can be helped quickly, others … takes a bit more. They will come back to you.

If there is something we can help on forum, do ask … might we can help :wink:

5 Likes
16

And definitely don’t worry about asking dumb questions - we have all done that in the past!

3 Likes
17

Ask here first - we have’em outnumbered at this point I think.

1 Like
18

Ok, I finally got an answer from support. I asked for the name of the current Android app to use in starting up Tempest. The “Quick Start” instructions that came with my unit said to download and install the app “got.wf/tempest-start”, I could find nothing of the sort so I asked the above question. I also asked about “Terms and Conditions” on what looked like it may be the appropriate app because in the T&C there was a lot of attention paid to monthly and annual fees and the fact that they would not be prorated if you cancel early etc. I was under the impression that there were no “fees” associated with Tempest usage so I asked why these existed. Here is the answer I received…
Christina Falconer (WeatherFlow Support)

Jun 9, 2020, 3:56:42 PM EDT

Hi David,

Thanks for contacting us. The Andriod App is called “Tempest” it should say By WeatherFlow in the description.
There is no monthly fee to use our App.
Here is the link for set up instructions that has a link to the App:

Hope this helps!

Kind Regards,
Christina Falconer
WeatherFlow Support

Well, I immediately checked for an app named “Tempest” and found only one that is described as a business app “a software product designed around the needs of the modern agency”! Clearly not the Tempest app I was looking for. The response also indicates that there are no fees yet the app that I used to install my system clearly did discuss fees in detail - except for actual cost. So I am still confused about what I should have done but cannot ask follow on questions because my ticket was closed without asking if the response answered my questions.

The link in the response directs you to an app called “Tempest Weather”. Again, no app by this specific name exists in the Google Play Store. I used “Tempest Smart Weather” and it seemed to work but there were still the unexplained issues of fees in the T&C.

Can you see why I am not particularly impressed with your support office? Yes, I am sure that with the addition of thousands of new Tempest accounts and the impact of COVID things busy are slow. If only the original documentation had named an app that actually could be found this problem may not have existed. I still do not know if I used the proper app as I just used what I could find and after reading the T&C decided to press ahead and halt if the install asked for a credit card - it never did. So why all the legalese about fees and subscriptions? Please explain.

Did I use the correct app?

Now add to that the fact that there seems little actual information about Tempest in the various pages of Weather Flow including some dead links and areas that have not been updated for three years and I have a product that seems to work well but I may be missing some great features because there is no real user manual. So, OK I admit to hacking my way through and beginning to search the forum for tidbits of information. It appears to me that the hardware was rushed out the door before there was much structure behind it for support.

Please do not get me wrong. I am happy with the unit and the performance I see so far but there should be a comprehensive manual too go with it that describes how to get all of the various whiz-bang features to work. An example is data graphing. I see illustrations showing graphs but how do you get there? I found one place that said something like select “graphing” but didn’t say where to find that possible selection. I have looked everywhere. The process should be clearly described in comprehensive users guide - if only I could find that.
Does that make any sense?
Dave…

19

I found the graphs via more hacking. I thought the logical place would have been under “History” but that is not where it is and it is not under a “graphing” button. Would have been nice for a manual to explain how it is done. Time marks at the bottom of some graphs appear to be in two shades of blue. The time is in a lighter color inside a box filled with a slightly darker shade of blue. Very hard to read. Need more contrast. Is the a way to adjust the color scheme?

Graph
Graph1130×591 78.1 KB

Dave…

21

Sorry you have had so much trouble. I’m not sure why the app didn’t appear for you. This is what I get on a phone without the Tempest app installed when I typed in tempest in the Google Play search bar.

Attach9272_20200609_231856~2
Attach9272_20200609_231856~2579×1862 187 KB
Attach9273_20200609_231856
Attach9273_20200609_231856771×1714 127 KB

Did you not see the same app?

Also, the first generation Smart Weather System was called the SKY + AIR. When you see references to the SKY it compares to the Tempest as far as mounting, Solar Radiation, rain, and wind. When you see AIR it compares to the Tempest as far as temperature, humidity, pressure, and lighting. The Tempest is generally better in these and other areas but at least there is some comparison which may be helpful.

On the weatherflow.com website, if you select the support tab you get a screen similar to this:

Screenshot_20200609-232812_Edge
Screenshot_20200609-232812_Edge1080×2193 320 KB

Selecting the circled link gets you to many other items related to the Tempest along with the first generation SKY+AIR system. The Tempest Quick Start Guide link takes you to a page like this with a direct link to the Tempest app:
Screenshot_20200609-233120_Edge
Screenshot_20200609-233120_Edge810×2475 379 KB

Sorry you missed that info but hopefully this helps some more. Feel free to ask where to find different things here in the forum as there are many of us users who can most likely help.

3 Likes