Honeywell TE821W Wireless Weather Station with Rain Gauge, Wind Gauge, Thermometer Atomic Clock, Barometer
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Honeywell TE821W Wireless Weather Station with Rain Gauge, Wind Gauge, Thermometer Atomic Clock, Barometer
Customer Review: Nice Basic Home System
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased the TE821W-2 system in December. This system is no longer carried by Amazon but the only difference is the -2 kit has 2 remote sensors.
The system works fine and we are happy with it. I have this unit online to Weather Underground, PWS and CWOP.
I would recommend going ahead and spending the extra money for Lithium batteries. The batteries in the kit will work fine for about 30 days before you start losing signals. My wind and rain gauge are close to 100 feet from the base unit. After several days below 32 degrees the sensors would lose contact with the receiver. I would have to use the search mode on the receiver to establish connection. Once I replaced the batteries with Lithium this problem stopped.
Make sure you don't do anything with the receiver (push buttons, move it) for 10 minutes after it has started to initialize for the first time or you will be starting over because the barometric pressure will be off. Don't setup your altitude for the first day or this will cause issues too.
You need to download the latest Weather Capture Advance software from the web site. The software in the package is basic and not good at all. The advance version is better but is missing many features I would like to have seen, like current daily rain total. The software shows Yesterday, Last Week, Last Month and Total since you started recording but does not show you today's rainfall total. You can get this and more details by downloading the WUHU software and running it to retrieve the data from the Weather Capture Advance software. The software for the station does not provide real-time updates (shortest is 2 minutes) and the sensors only transmit every 30 seconds. If you need or want real-time data you will have to step up a system like Davis sells.
Overall this is a good basic (first time) weather station for those who enjoy keeping track of weather in their neighborhood but don't need streaming updates. If you want more details and options you need to step up to a Davis system.
I gave the unit a 4 because it is a good basic unit. I would have given it a 5 if the software was better and the sensors streamed. For the price you can't go wrong with this unit.
Customer Review: Not Recommended Except as a Toy
Summary: 2 Stars
Although relatively inexpensive, and more robust than I expected, it has quite a few design problems that make it useless as a tool for reporting or archiving meaningful weather data. The equipment has the following problems:
1. Outside air temperature is wildly wrong (as much as 11 deg. F) when checked against a calibration standard. It is not a bias or a linear error, but rather appears to be erratic
2. Windspeed reads 22% low against a known standard anemometer.
3. Having tried three different software packages, the master unit still refuses to download meaningful historical data. It will download tables, but the values in the tables are all set to zero. For example, the temperature reads 0 Deg. C, 32 Deg. F at every time point; wind velocity reads North at 0 mph at every time point.
4. Manual is poorly written, poorly translated from Chinese, incomplete and wrong
5. Master unit contol buttons have mysterious functions, are counter-intuitive and frustrating to use.
6. The operating altitude cannot be set above about 3,000 ft. MSL. I (and a significant portion of the people living in the US) live above that altitude, so the barometric readings must be manually converted.
The equipment has the following good features:
1. Although the outdoor plastic parts seem flimsy, they have in fact, after 2-1/2 years, held up in bright sunlight at 6,000 ft. MSL without the ultraviolet light turning the parts to powder or anything falling apart.
2. All components have worked reliably since installed -- even though their readings are not accurate enough to be useful for anything aside from amusement
3. Large, easy-to-read icons and numbers are provided on the base station unit. Backlighting and contrast are very good.
4. Provides a sun and moon ephemeris (solar rise/set times and phase of moon).
5. Barometric pressure trend chart is useful, and very easy to read.
Recommendation
Acceptable as a children's toy, but not useful for recording actual weather parameters.
Customer Review: Very good value for the money
Summary: 4 Stars
I couldn't find another weather station with the same features for the money. I was looking for accurate wind speed readings, especially, and a Web site review gave it a better rating than Oregon Scientific stations. However, assembly was not helped by the instructions which could have been improved. Some features were not well-explained and set-up programming could have been more explicit. But, once assembled and programmed, it has worked very well (except for the "Atomic" clock which hasn't found the time signal).
An update on the Atomic Clock - it started working after a few days. All systems are go after six months and I am still well-pleased with this weather station. I think it is the best station available for the money.
Customer Review: Worked great for a while.
Summary: 1 Stars
We bought one of these a couple of years ago (not at Amazon). It worked great at first, but about 6 months ago the components started failing. First, one of the remote temperature sensors (ours came with two of those), then a couple of months ago the wind gauge stopped working and finally a few days ago the rain gauge stopped working. And no, it's not the batteries.
In the trash it goes... It seems like they built about a year and a half to two year life into the components. Maybe Honeywell doesn't have the technology to make electronics work in harsh conditions (not really that harsh in our area), but we're certainly not going to put out $100.00 plus every couple of years for these things.
Bought a simple remote wireless thermometer and a simple plastic tube-style rain gauge ($9.00 and $2.00 respectively at Walmart). I guess to read the wind I'll just go outside and wet my finger.
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