Ambient Weather WS-5050 Ultrasonic Smart Weather Station

Wow I LOVE this Ambient Weather WS-5000. Don’t waste your time on lousy competitor models!I had an AcuRite Atlas for a couple years, but I got tired of constantly losing the historical weather trends every time we had a brief power outage. The AcuRite has a major design flaw by not having any kind of time sync (no Internet NTP or even radio time sync) the AcuRite Atlas resets the clock back to factory default time, and then all the weather data is messed up.While the AcuRite Atlas takes less time to install (it is all one piece unit, no assembly needed), this WS-5000 blows it away as far as the careful thought that Ambient Weather put into the display and presentation of information. For example, the AcuRite Atlas shows 48 hour rainfall on the display. Why not 24 hour? The WS-5000 has all the info laid out in a way that I can see the useful stats at a glance, very intuitive and in a beautiful presentation. The AcuRite display is also very pretty looking, but I can tell that the Ambient Weather WS-5000 display was designed by weather gurus who probably debated each icon for many weeks before deciding how to show it on the screen.But perhaps what I love the most about the WS-5000 is to be able to show the swimming pool temperature on the display using the optional WH31P waterproof thermometer probe sensor. It’s nice to have the pool temp always shown right next to the weather station stats, because this has the ability to set the extra info display onto a single sensor, in addition to the choice of cycling between sensors.It’s also very cool to be able to use the optional soil moisture and air particulate sensors with this.The Ambient Weather iPhone app features are better than the AcuRite app. The historical data charts are super useful, and I can use this with more home automation features like IFTTT. The WS-5000 can tie in with Wunderground hyper local weather, which is fun to contribute to, and to see other people’s weather station info in the neighborhood and how the microclimate varies.While I am super excited about the WS-5000 so far, this product is not perfect. If the manufacturer is reading this, I hope they can address some things in the next design. The instruction manual is terrible, and so is the user interface for the display buttons. It is not intuitive which buttons to press and what they do to navigate the various display menus. These buttons should be scrapped and go with a touchscreen design next time. It would be better to have a wall mount bracket to make it easier to line up and level to mount on the wall rather than two screw hanger notches on the back (which are always tricky to mark and line up on the wall). Also, I had to to a factory reset before it would recognize the main sensors, and wasted time being puzzled why it wasn’t working straight out of the box. Finally another minor improvement would be to not show the humidity circle on the display if a sensor does not have the humidity feature. I have to look at a blank humidity circle all the time for my pool temp sensor. It’s very minor, but would be more beautiful and less cluttered without this inactive item on the screen.Overall, I highly recommend this weather station! I think this may very well be the best one for residential use on the market at any price (the more expensive pro models from other brands have extremely antiquated info displays).

Initial set up is a bit tedious but much easier than my previous Davis Weather Station. The controller is well designed and easy to use. It has a number of add on accessories like soil temperature, lightning detection, air quality, water leak detectors (for wash room or utility room) etc. It has a good range for connections up to 1,000 feet. I have my station about 250 feet from the house and it works fine but your WIFi connection may be a factor for lower performance. You need to put your wind detector in an area free of obstructions to get accurate 360 degree detection of wind speeds and the higher location the better. eg chimney or above a roof line. The web software is easy to use and a good design. Very handy if you want to keep an eye on what's happening when you're away. It has a camera option as well although I don't have this as I have blink cameras. The bird spikes for the rain collector are not worth buying. They are very difficult to attache and you endue using something kludgy to glue it on. I had my son print one that simply attaches to the ridge of the collector which works perfectly. They could do the same thing or better yet incorporate it in the design to begin with. You do not have to mount the rain collector component on the same pole as the wind detector. Or if you prefer you can mount the rain collector lower on the pole to make it easy to clean out and reduce birds roosting on it. Birds do not want their nests too low for predators to get them so if you mound it about 5 feet off the ground they will probably not bother. I have had this for over two years in very severe weather right on the river edge and have had no problems with its performance. I clocked a 58 mph gust yesterday. I have not seen most of the problems that people have cited. I actually have two at our homes and both have performed perfectly.

The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is the setup. Several people talk about the difficulty with setup. I thought this would impact sensor detection or WIFI. The sensors are detected very easily. The difficulty is entering IDs and passwords for WIFI and other setup. I was not sure how to do this from the manual. I found some Ambient produced You Tube videos that were very helpful. The console does not have a touch screen. Everything is done with buttons that control direction or upper/lower case. It is quite tedious. Once you get through that, the system is WONDERFUL!I debated about the WS-5000 or a model with a combined sensor including the mechanical wind sensor. I decided to go top of the line. I am glad I did. The wind sensor works well.I have had a weather station for about 17 years. I replaced a La Crosse Technology setup where I had two consoles, one on a desk in the family room and one in the office. The consoles had built in temperature sensors for indoor temperatures. The WS-5000 comes with one indoor sensor that is separate from the console. I ordered a second sensor - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MG4HW8C?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1 . I also ordered a second console https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08F6PGMJP?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details . Be careful you get the correct sensor. I originally ordered another indoor sensor. You can only have one of those. The one I am using is an indoor/outdoor sensor. The console doesn't list the WS-5000 but it works.I was able to label both of the indoor sensors the way I want on the WS-2000 console. I could only change the name for one of them on the WS-5000 console. I don't know why Ambient doesn't allow a name change on the WS-5000 console. Not a big deal.I never bought a Davis system because I don't like the console. The Ambient consoles aren't as graphically rich as some of the cheaper systems. The screens are very clear and nice to look at. There is a lot of data on the screen. You can have a light or dark background. You switch by pushing a button. You can turn off the screen with a button as will so it won't bother you at night if you have it your bedroomI had the rain sensor for the La Crosse system on bird feeder pole with a cheap plastic cutting board on top. I put the WS-5000 rain sensor on this same platform. Here is the link to the pole https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J4QGDK6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1The WS-5000 temperature/wind sensor needs to be mounted in direct sunlight. I ordered two of these - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08Z72XMP7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 and used poles from them both to get enough height. I only have one place in my yard that stays in direct sunlight. I did not want to do a roof mount because of radiant heat and because at my age, it's not prudent to climb that high. The pole is too small to bolt the sensor to. I taped one of the pole sections to the top and used a small piece of plastic to make it big enough. I would have liked to have used the Ambient pole with the large base. It would have taken too much space in the lawn and would have required weights. This setup has prongs that go into the ground and works great.The manual isn't clear on what app to download. I found the correct one and included a screen shot. The app is great. It has a lot of detail. You can see tiles of your data as well as graphs. It shows other stations in the area and gives a forecast. Data loads very quickly.I think the temperature is more accurate than the La Crosse units. We have some small displays from La Crosse. I have looked at those before going out for a walk and then wished I had a warmer jacket. It turned out to be colder than the unit measured. The Ambient unit has measured colder the the La Crosse (I got this in March 2023. It has been very cold in Utah this year. I don't have much reference for warmer temperatures yet.)I connected to Alexa very easily. I can get an Ambient report by asking for it. You cannot just get temperature or another data element. You get them all.I spent a lot more money on this that any other weather station I have purchased. This is definitely a premium product. If you can afford it, this is the system to choose.