Ambient Weather WS-2902 WiFi Smart Weather Station

I have received this on the 9th and it was a tad difficult to set up at first but once it was set up, it worked like a champ. Even rained over the weekend and was accurate. It reports with Weather Underground, Ambient Weather's own site as well as Weathercloud. It now has Alexa (Amazon's Personal Assistant). It worked up to the 6th day where the sensor stopped working entierly So I tried to reset it via reset button disconnected for a day and did everything online that was posted. And no good, so I had to RMA my first unit. I thought I would have to send in my device and wait for that to come back I would not have been able to do that until Sept 1st. But Ambient sent me a new one right away and a RMA lable so I do not have to spend anything to send it back and I never seen any company do this for RMAs except in advanced RMAs. I got this on the 24th started with the receiver and no good, So I had to put the new sensor together and it worked with my original receiver so I do not have to go through the process of reprogramming it. saving me a few minutes. Thank you to Ed from Ambient weather for helping me and proving there are still great companies in the US that care about you whenever you need help. Customer service is excellent returns service is stellar. I have yet to put the sensor in its permanent spot. If you ever have a question do not hesitate to call them they are excellent in helping you with whatever you need. I also bought a 4 year insurance from SquareTrade so when the warranty goes out, I will have a way to replace it. Pros: Easy to put together. Easy to read. Nice display LCD (monochrome over color filmed display which is pleasing to look at) Larger Segmented LCD numbering. Internet Reporting to Wunderground, Ambient, and Weather Cloud and Weatherbug* Solar Panel. 1. Light sensor (3 types of measuring W/M², KLux and Kfc) Primary measure in the us is W/M² 2. U/V sensor 0-10 with words LOW, MODERATE, HIGH, VERY HIGH, and EXTREME! 3. Wind Speed, Direction, Gust, min/max 4. Barometric Sensor with trends (+/-) averages for 12, 24, 48, and 72 hours and it measures in hpa, in/hg and mm/hg as well as ABSOLUTE and RELATIVE. 5. It has indoor temp (with humidity) and Outdoor (with humidity) w/Chill factor Dew point and Heat Index. 6.Rain gauge with metric/imperial measurement with Day, Week, and month TOTALS. It also measures rate for hour as well as for the event. (Like a sudden storm I think) 7th. I assume is the 7th item for the 7-in-1 a forecast it shows a depiction of a Sun with clouds and grass along with rain/ice/snow. Cons: None really The manual is straightforward but could have an explanation for what Kfc is Klux is Candles and what W/M² is. And the buttons on the receiver is sensitive. Otherwise nothing else.

I had been looking for a home weather station for years and finally decided to pull the trigger. Mainly because I had the perfect poll for it that had been sitting under out carport for years and my wife threated to get rid of it with the next bulk trash pickup. Use it or lose it, so I put it to use. If you are looking for a great weather station at great price this is the perfect unit. This station has all the basics you would want and more. Rain gage that measures not only the amount of rain but hourly rain fall as well as 24 hour rain fall, weekly, monthly and rain event totals. The unit has a wind vain and anemometer for wind direction and speed, of course. It also has temperature with heat index and wind chill. We have a pool so I love that the unit measures UV index and Solar Radiation. Assembly: Not too difficult. Everything goes together pretty easy if you have a basic knowledge of putting things together. If you don't then call your kids or grandkids to come do it for you. Directions are rather long and wordy and at times seem out of order. It also has a few steps for optional equipment that does not some with this particular unit. Dug through the box looking for those things before realizing they were optional. The wind vain and anemometer cups slip on and you just need a small screw driver to tighten them down. Rain gauge twist into place and the wire filter pushes right in. The unit runs on solar power but uses two AA batteries as a backup. Took me a minute to figure out how to get the cover to slide off, I never want to push too hard and break something. The biggest issue you will have is how and where to mount the unit. I have a large yard and a garden framed with rail road ties out around 100 feet away from the house. I also had an old pipe with tripod feet that use to be on our roof with our internet dish that I was able to mount the unit too. I was able to bold the stand to the railroad ties so it is not going anywhere. The u-joints that came with the unit securely mounted the unit to the pole I had and was fairly simple. The thing to remember is mouth it facing north, which I was easily able to do using the compass on my iPhone and the arrow on top of the unit. And do not forget to check the level of the unit. It has a level dot on top. I thought I was done, but then noticed that and spend another 30 minutes trying to adjust the base and the u-joint and pole screws to try and get it perfect… then just got mad and bent the pole and BAM… unit level. It took the unit a few minutes to find the indoor unit. I had to then move it around to find the best spot for reception. I have tried moving it all over the house and the base has a tough time reading the station if you move it too far away or there are too many walls between the station and the base. I have it setting on one of my wife’s tables by a back window within eyesight of the weather station. It gets five bars there and is working great, however my wife thinks it clashes with the aesthetic of the table… can’t win them all. Pros: Within a few hours of setting the unit up we had a big rain event. Unit worked great. We got over 3 inches of rain over night. With wind and rain unit held firmly in place. Display is easy to read. Also easy to setup and create accounts on Ambientweather.net and other weather apps that let me check out the weather conditions at my home wherever I am. Cons: Not many major ones. Set unit DST (Daylight savings time) thinking it would automatically spring forward and fall back with time change, but instead it would randomly spring forward an hour. Once I turned DST off the clock has kept the correct time. I could see if you have a small yard, or are in an area where the house are close together, or have a lot of trees, you may have a hard time finding a clear, unobstructed, spot to mount the unit. Also, if you do not have an existing pole to mount the unit to you could spend as much on the poll and hardware as you spend on the station itself. As for the unit itself the wind gauge does not look to read over 99.9 mph. I live on the Texas coast, took a direct hit from Hurricane Harvey in 2017, so that is a possibility where I live. While the unit might not display wind speed that high it may still read that and post it on the Ambientweather.net site. Lastly, If you are not computer or tech savvy then have your kids, grandkids, or someone under the age of 25 come over and help you with that part of the set up. I had an issue connecting it to our WiFi trying to follow the directions, and my son took it and without even looking at the directions had it connected in about 30 seconds. Overall great weather station for a great price.

Update, late September 2025: the Ambient Weather WS-2000 has proven to be extremely reliable and accurate. I have a calibrated manual gauge I use to report rainfall totals for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS). The WS-2000 is typically within 0.01" of the manual gauge, which is surprising based on my experience with other manufacturers. The price point is somehwt higher, but so far has proven to be worth the difference. We live remote from the news stations we watch, so it's nice to have something reliable "locally". Temperature readings are +/- 2 degrees from the local airport, so well within range. I did add a lightning detector given our location. I've set a series of alerts via the web app, for example to tell me when lightning is closer than five miles, or when a wind gust has exceeded 20mph, for example. Very pleased with the performance to date... (Initial review, late January 2025) Ambient Weather is now the third vendor I've used for our personal weather stations. We had an Acurite for over 14 years that our daughter bought us, which finally just wore out in the Texas weather. Reviews for the current Acurite model gave me pause, so I went with a different vendor with higher functionality (supposedly.) I fought with an InsaneLogic for almost a year and finally threw in the towel last month. That digital unit in a year never ONCE matched rainfall totals of those in a calibrated manual gauge, typically off by a large amount. (Note, that new unit was mounted in the same location as the previous Acurite, which might have been off by 0.02" typically.) Granted, the price point on this unit is a pretty good bump. But I'm stunned by the level of precision during the first month's use. I did calibrate the unit's absolute barometric pressure, and my readings are +/- 0.01 inHg of those of the regional airport. Key point: when we initially got the original Acurite, we lived in a metropolitan area, so rainfall totals were a primary focus then. We live in a more remote location now, 90+ miles from any local television station, hence the interest in more location-specific data. There's a dizzying array of add-on sensors available for various functionalities. I may get a lightning sensor, as our location is somewhat remote and it would be nice to know if lightning is within a 25 mile range. I'm not implying this is a one-size-fits-all weather station given the price point. But to this point, I'm extremely pleased with the price to performance ratio. And I will definitely update the review and relay additional information should that change.

This is my third weather station within two weeks. The first two got sent back. I wouldn’t suggest buying them unless you have unlimited amount of time to spend figuring them out. But this one - I had set up and connected within 20 minutes. And it works great. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is because even though it’s set to CST, it runs an hour behind. And I haven’t been able to get it to change. Very happy with this brand, the directions and the ease of set up. Definitely will purchase again but if it lasts as long as the last good one, it will be awhile.

My biggest problem, finding a weather Station that would connect to my wifi. I had an older lacrosse unit that wouldn't connect to the new wifi. I tried a sainlogic Station, was very hard to connect and stay connected. The app was very hard to work with and lay out wasn't very good either. I have used acurite Stations in the past without wifi and was going to try one until I read a review which made it sound as bad as the old lacrosse unit I had. The ambient Station connected to my Comcast 6g, 5g, 2.4g wifi on the first try using my cellphone. Not being very good with computers the explanation on how to get past the connected without internet took me a while to figure out. But once I got past that getting everything hooked up and working with the app using email with supplied links was quick and easy. The only thing that could make it simpler, a different explanation on the connected without internet for computer iliterats like me. The Station has been connected for a little over a week with no connection issues. I have it mounted on a 3/4" pipe which is smaller than recommended but seems very secure. The outside unit is about 55' from the console and the console is about 10' from the wifi. Not much of a test for range. The inside console readouts are all able to be calibrated which is nice. The app is set up pretty good and the tile order can be changed as well as heading on the tiles can be modified. The only complaint I have with the tiles is that the font size is too big on the tile causing me to have to turn my screen magnification and font setting down into the negative settings so that things don't overlap or end up running past the tile boarder and disappearing. This makes the screens on my other apps much smaller. I've seen one other complaint about this and I've been in contact with them and hopefully they'll come up with an update on the app to resolve this. I'm still giving the unit 5 stars overall.

Decided after years of using local weather stations on Weather Underground that I wanted to join the ranks and run a station of my own. After looking through all the stations they recommend on their site I can eventually settled on Ambient Weather as the best midrange option. Their stations weren't quite as cheap as some of the other options but those cheaper options also seemed to come with some pretty mixed reviews. On the other hand there were other options that were far more expensive to the point it seemed impractical and out of reach for your average consumer. I had first settled on the WS-2902C as the option to go with as that was what was on Weather Undergrounds site. However, while looking at Ambient Weathers own site to get more details I came across the WS-2000 which, while more expensive, seemed to be a better option with a better more in-depth display and future expansion for more sensors, including a lightning detector which was something I was interested in eventually getting. As near as I can tell the actual sensor array is the same for both the WS-2902C and WS-2000, it seems the main difference is in the capabilities of the screen/system that is in the house. With the WS-2902C it's a LCD basic display that shows the weather stations data while the WS-2000 has a TFT display that displays more information and allows for the connection of multiple other sensors such as 8 other temp/humidity sensors, water leak detectors, soil meters, and lightning detectors. Basically it seems the WS-2902C is a fine option if the weather stations data is all you want to see, but if you want increased expansion capabilities and, in my opinion, a better display of the data then the WS-2000 is the way to go. Setup was easy and the most difficult part was finding something to mount it on. At first I picked up a 1" segmented pole designed for bird feeders but I determined this was not stable enough once setup. My eventual setup was an 8' long 1-5/8" chain-link fence post with a no-cement fence post anchor. I buried it through the anchor 2' in to the ground and it is very stable. If you end up getting the station, or have a similar one, this is a very effective and cost-efficient mounting method (about $25 total). Setting up the station from there was quite simple. Most of it comes assembled and you merely have to attach the cups to the anemometer, the windvane to the wind direction sensor, and put the cup rim on top of the rain gauge. From there you just attach the mounting brackets and secure it to the pole. Add the two AA batteries (use lithium if you're in a place that gets cold, the system uses a solar panel on top when it's able) and you're set from there. The rest from there just involves loading up the screen and configuring your location, wifi information, and connections to ambientweather.net and wunderground.com if you wish to use those services. It took less than 24 hours for Weather Underground to start displaying the station on their site. I have been impressed with the data that is presented and how it is presented on the screen. The screen layout provides a great layout for all the systems data in a good and easy to understand layout. On top of that it also maintains historical data and has an SD card port you can use to export the data if you wish to archive it or load it in to another system. So far the it has been very responsive and has been very accurate as I've compared its readings to nearby stations as well as thermometers and hygrometers. In fact, it was immediately apparent it was more accurate than my old basic weather station which I left up for a time after putting in the new one. I am definitely happy with this purchase overall. There were a few elements of the setup screens and navigation on the screen that were not very intuitive but overall these issues were very minor and not enough to warrant dropping any stars. Yes, Ambient Weathers options are a bit more costly than say an Acurite or LaCrosse system but these definitely seem like better stations than those. Sure, it might not be at the level of a Davis or RainWise but those stations run a minimum of $500. If you want the best mid-range option for a personal weather station I personally feel that this is the best option at present.

I have had a weather station (Davis Vantage Pro) for years which is an awesome weather station but is a bit dated (it also recently stopped transmitting). So in need of a new weather station I purchased the WS-2902 after looking at reviews and prices. Hardware setup is easy as it can mount to any pole between 1-2 inches in diameter. The installation is just two u-bolts and took me about 5 minutes. Plugging in the base station it instantly connected and started to read data from the weather station. It really could not have been easier. Software setup had two problems but neither of them were directly the fault of the base station. First, the setup of the base station requires a WIFI network with AP isolation turned OFF. AP isolation just means that no device/computer using wifi on the network can see any other device/computer on the network. So AP isolation turned on will not allow your cell phone to see or talk to your base station once it is connected. My router from Xfinity is terrible and for some reason doesn't allow you to turn AP Isolation off. Luckily... I have an extender upstairs I connect to that does... problem solved. Next software problem was uploading data. It is supposed to upload to 3 different websites (Ambient Weather, WeatherCloud, and Weather Underground). I set them all up (easy) but the data going to Weather Underground was a mess. Even worse... the data would not upload to Ambient Weather or WeatherCloud for about 20 minutes. This left huge gaps in the data charts. The problem was Weather Underground. It seems that according to the Ambient Weather FB group, Weather Underground has had huge technical problems for the past week. People can't connect and problems of bad data persist. I went back to the phone app and removed the Weather Underground from the list of sites to upload to. Suddenly... everything worked PERFECTLY. The data going up to Ambient Weather updated every minute. The data going to WeatherCloud updated at the right intervals (I think it is every 10 minutes) and the charts looked great. So if you purchase this weather station I suggest setting it up so that the data uploads just to Ambient Weather's website first and hold off setting up the other two for a day or so. This way you have some level of confidence that the whole system is working properly. When WU gets itself back up and running right I will probably reconnect and upload to it. So far the data has been very accurate. I've compared it with the local airport and surrounding stations and it appears there are little changes in calibration needed. Oh... and I can also query my Alexa about the outside/inside conditions. It works very well also. My only complaint is that it appears the Ambient Weather website doesn't allow you to share your weather information. You need to log in to see it as there is no way to make it public. WeatherCloud, however, is open and doesn't have that restriction but Ambient Weather 'looks' much nicer. Oh well, it still gets 5 stars.

First off, if you just want a simple personal weather station and aren't bothered being limited to two online services, then the kit, as-is, will work well out of the box. Instructions are fine (this is really dead simple) and you should be up-and-running in 30 minutes or less. That said, if you want to upload to more services, or are looking for value, the equation is more complex. The array and indoor sensor broadcast at 915 MHz, so you could pick those up and process their feeds without the panel. That said, the panel simplifies uploading weatherunderground style data to a custom server, e.g., weewx (this is only available if you unlock it via the awnet app; this is not in the instructions). This seems to happen fairly frequently, probably as soon as a data packet is received (reportedly every 16 seconds or so for the array and 64 seconds for the indoor sensor). I.e., the panel acts as a 915 MHz receiver and relay and has a nice display as a bonus. At this point, the question becomes: is this good value? Well, the main part is the sensor array, which is a Fine Offset WH65B (FFC ID WA5WH65B). You also get an indoor temperature sensor (see below), and a display panel, which is a Fine Offset HP2550 running some lightly customized software. Many, many brands white-label these parts (e.g., Ecowitt), so you could find a better deal elsewhere or possibly find the components individually. Whether that is worth the time and effort depends on how much the package costs when you're thinking about buying it. For $200 this is a fairly convenient package that works well. A few notes: 1) The indoor sensor, which is a Fine Offset WH32B (FCC ID WA5WH32B) appears to only display temperature in Fahrenheit. Would recommend immediately cracking it open to see if there's a way to change that so you can use normal units, although I did and couldn't find a simple way. 2) The pressure gauge, of course, reads actual pressure. This can be adjusted for altitude somewhat simply or adjusted to sea level pressure using a more complex formula. The display panel will do neither adjustment out of the box to display what it calls "relative" pressure, and the most it can possibly do is apply an offset. This is close enough for an approximation of altitude pressure, but the panel should display this offset value as either offset pressure or altitude pressure. Their recommended method of setting the offset is garbage. Instead, calculate altitude pressure as closely as you can using your altitude and upload your data to a system (like weewx) that can actually computer sea level pressure. Then compare that value to a known-good reporting station that is guaranteed to be in the same pressure zone.