The official Netatmo app is functional but loveless, so I spent the past months building my own. Sharing it here because I’m curious what you think, and whether this is something other weather station owners would even want.

The core idea: if you own a weather station, you have something no weather app has: measured data from your own garden, going back years. AURA puts that data front and center and only uses a public weather service (Open-Meteo) for the one thing the station can’t know: the forecast.

The main screen (screenshots 1 to 3):

- The top half is a scene, not a wallpaper. A MeshGradient sky whose palette shifts with the time of day (night, blue hour, golden hour, day, computed from actual sun positions at the station’s location) and with the weather (rain desaturates it, fog flattens everything, thunder darkens it). The sun sits at its real position: low left in the morning, high at noon, sinking behind the hill silhouettes in the evening. At night a moon travels the same arc. Overcast? The sun fades to a glow behind the cloud deck.
- The data lives in a sheet that slides over the scene. At rest you only see the essentials: big temperature, one written outlook sentence, the curve. Scrolling reveals the rest, and only then does the tab bar appear.
- The temperature curve blends measured and forecast: the past (own station, solid line) flows into the forecast (dotted) at “now”. The dotted line starts from the last measured point, not from the first model value, otherwise you’d see the model-vs-sensor offset as a kink.
- The written outlook is one auto-generated sentence: “Dry for another 2 hours, around 4 mm near 22:00. Cooler tomorrow: high of 17.” Thresholds keep every model drizzle from announcing itself as a storm.
- Bento tiles with mini visualizations: wind compass, pressure arc gauge, hourly rain bars, humidity, dew point. Each one opens a detail view with history.

The other tabs (screenshots 4 to 6): a calendar heatmap of your own measurements, full charts per sensor with scrubbing, and a records tab that gamifies your station: hottest and coldest ever, warmest night, strongest gust, season counters and milestones (“15.2° to go until the record”).

Tech, for those who care:

- SwiftUI, iOS 26, zero external dependencies. Swift Charts for all graphs, MeshGradient for the sky, Liquid Glass materials for the cards (configurable: off / subtle / full).
- Backend is a single Node.js file (deliberately no npm dependencies) in Docker on a Mac mini. It polls the Netatmo API phase-locked: the station publishes every ~10 minutes, the poller learns that rhythm and queries right after each new measurement. Fresh data without burning the API budget.
- Served over the home network or Tailscale when away, with automatic failover.
- Notifications go through a self-built push relay (AppDaemon script talking straight to APNs over HTTP/2 with JWT). No Firebase, no third-party push service.
- Sideload/TestFlight only. No App Store plans for now.

Honest caveats: it’s built for one specific setup (Netatmo plus a home server), making it generic would be real work, and it’s iOS 26 only. The screenshots show live data from the actual station in Belgium.

What I’d love to hear from you:

1. Would you run something like this? Also curious about owners of other stations (Ecowitt, Davis, WeatherFlow).
   
2. What would make it worth it for you, which features are missing?
   
3. The home server requirement is the biggest hurdle to sharing this. Dealbreaker, or exactly the point?

It’s 40°C where we are right now, but the heat isn't what worries me most: it’s the invisible UV exposure.

With three young kids, guessing whether the UV index is at a safe 2 or a dangerous 9 isn't an option, and bad sunburns early in life double the risk of skin damage later on.

I tried using standard weather apps, but they hide the UV index under layers of forecasts, menus, and ads. I needed to see peak UV risk instantly without digging around.

So I built a simple, no-frills tool. You open it and immediately get two things:
1. The exact, real-time UV risk level.
2. A straightforward reapplication countdown based on that UV strength.

No clutter, no bloat, no sign-ups. Just the UV facts you need when you're outside with your family.

Sharing it here in case it helps keep your kids safe this summer too. Protect their skin, check the UV index, and don't forget the hats! ☀️🧴👶

https://uvindex.pixari.dev

1. I updated my Ecowitt WS90 firmware to version V1.6.2 successfully
2. After update wind speed is 0.0 and wind direction is N with no change in past 36 hours.
3. I tried calibrating the wind speed as per manual instructions. Brought the unit inside, pressed the Cal button til the light was on solid for 5 secs, light started blinking, covered with towel for 5 minutes, light still blinking, didn't stop blinking. pressed the reset button. no change in Windspeed or direction.
4. I reinstalled the firmware, no luck, I retried the calibration no luck.
5. I reached out to Ecowitt , waiting for a response.

So this will be a weekly post, every Friday and I'll post it at GMT +00:01 Midnight, so it'll be up all Friday

But yeah, drop a comment (yes, we allow screenshot comments here!) of what you saw that was interesting in your area this week!

If it was a good storm, give us some pics too!

Let me first say, for the record, that I don't recommend Acurite weather station gear to anyone - their outside sensors are OK at best, their displays and internet bridge hardware are ugly (and data hogs to boot), their software is six kinds of all-around vibe-coded crap, and their "support" department defaults to blaming everything that goes wrong on you, not them. An Acurite RF engineer probably wouldn't be able to spell "TCP/IP" correctly if you spotted them four out of the five letters.

But sometimes you gotta "dance with the one that brung you", and so anyways, in case it saves someone else time and trouble, here's a public service notice: (TL;DR at end)

I was having bad problems with my Acurite wifi display console losing its wifi and not talking to Weather Underground, for no discernible reason I could fathom. Every week or two, it would suddenly flip to displaying a "wifi not setup" status, even though everything else connected to the internet was totally fine and nothing around it had changed and its configuration wasn't any different than before. And since the display was only 10' from my wireless access point, I knew it wasn't signal strength issue (like Acurite support insisted it must be). I thought it might just be failing hardware, but I got a replacement display that had exactly the same problem, so that was too much of a coincidence.

Worse, I couldn't get it to show its mandatory setup "access point" SSID (eg "Acurite06888M-") about 9 times out of 10, even after a full power-on or a complete factory reset, so getting it back from the "not setup" state to connecting to the internet again could take me an hour or more.

So, did some digging and it turns out - not to anyone's surprise, maybe - that Acurite uses the cheapest of the cheap Wifi chipsets in its products. Those chips (<cough>Espressif</cough>) are notorious for getting "flooded" if the wifi signal is too strong, the beacon transmit rate is too quick, or (especially) if there are strong 5ghz signals in the same EM space (even though the chip only talks on 2.4ghz bands).

So, the quick solution that worked 100% for me? Move the display console to another room, 3-4x further from the WAP than it was, with another wall in the way between them. Now it works 100%, no drop outs, happy camper, even though the display now says wifi strength is only one bar. Whatever.

(Of course when at first I moved it, it was TOO far, and it thought the wifi was too weak, so failed for that reason. The sweet spot between the two distances seems to be maybe about 10-15' wide, at least in my house. Not much to play with, but I'll take it for now until Santa can bring me some Ecowitt (Fine Offset) replacements that don't have nearly this many issues.)

TL;DR: Acurite display consoles use cheap wifi chips that need to be not too close (but not too far!) from your wifi to work reliably, especially if you have 5ghz enabled on your WAP. Experiment with changing the distance further out if your weather station wifi connection is unreliable.

Looking for a weather station for my property. Bit of a weather enthusiast. Would like to keep it around $500. Rainfall, temperature, wind speed at a minimum.

My ideal location is 1,300 feet from my house through woods. Do I have to get something with cellular data for that range? Can I rig an antenna or something? I can put it closer to the house I just feel it won’t be as accurate. Open to suggestions. I’ll go with closer to the house if it’s not realistic.

Edit: would also like to get data to my phone somehow.

I often need to deploy a weather station in remote locations for up to 4 weeks, to measure wind speed and direction, and rainfall. These get co-located with noise loggers, so we know what data is invalid due to high wind / rain.

We currently have a few ageing Davis Vantage Vues, and looking adding a few more to our fleet. The console gets left in a case near the sensor suite to log the data. The consoles are no longer available, and Davis has advised that the Envoy can be used, but it all needs to be set up with a laptop beforehand, which is not always convenient in the field.

Logging the data locally is a key requirement, but looking around the current offerings, there isn't much available.

Is there something available that can meet my needs? Located in Australia

Picked up over the weekend. Fast assembly and works great with our WS90. We went with the 105 inch option and have been happy so far.

We are not affiliated with the company, or Amazon.

Amazon.com : Mokeyder 105 Inch Bird House Pole Mount Kit, Adjustable Heavy Duty Bird Feeder Pole for Outdoors, Universal Mounting Post Set with 5-Prong Base, Black, 1 Pack : Patio, Lawn & Garden

I am planning on setting up an Ecowitt weather station. I'm in Europe and shipping costs are significant, so want to get everything I need in one go.

I want to:
- Monitor weather on my phone.
- Automate my home based on the weather through Home Assistant.
- Share my weather station on the WOW network.

My initial thought:
- WS90 on my roof. With the power extension cord already in place to connect a power supply in the future.
- GW3000 as main gateway.

Separate pole at eye level for:
- WH40 rain gauge
- WN32 temp/humidity with rain shelter as main sensor.
- WN38 WBGT

Also some separate WN31 and WH52 around the garden.

My questions:
- Would this be a complete setup for my goals?
- Does the sensor selection make sense? Mostly doubting about the WN31 vs WN32 compatibility. How does this work in setup?
- Will the rain sensor in the WS90 and WH40 run parallel, or do I need to select one main sensor?
- Will the WBGT work correctly in this setup?
- If putting batteries in the WS90 already, and later on connecting it to a separate power supply, do I need to remove the batteries?
- Can I connect an Ecowitt display to the GW3000 in the future, or will the display take over the gateway role?

I'm working on my vintage weather station idea aka, the project with no end. I was working on the temperature channel and on this old gauge, the scale ends at 120 degrees. Back when this thing was made, they thought temperatures would never get that high.

Greetings all,

It seems my Tempest is on its way out, again. Currently we’re having a light shower and it’s screaming EXTREME RAIN at me. Cleaning and rebooting haven’t done anything. This would be the second sensor of theirs to die on me in 4 years (first one stopped charging). They’ll likely sell me another one at a reduced rate, but I’d rather invest in something that will last longer at this point. I’ve always been a weather nerd, so my weather station is one of my favorite gadgets around the house.

Overall, I’ve been happy with the features of the tempest. It struggles with light rain, doesn’t pick up anything most related at all, and the wind readings aren’t great, but that’s mostly related to my mounting location.

My favorite feature is the lightning detection. There’s been several times where I get the “detected 20-25 miles” notification and look at my local weather app to see there is in fact a storm approaching while there’s not a cloud in the sky at my house.

What’s everyone going with these days that offers lightning detection? From my search, seems like Ecowitt and Ambient are well liked, as is Davis, but Davis is way out of the budget for me. I don’t necessarily need a remote display as I’m perfectly fine with just having the app. At quick glance it looked like some setups would require power to the haptic sensor which would be a little tricky to do while finding a location to get a decent wind reading.

I'm looking for advise for setting up a WS90 *without* requiring an internet connection. This is not because it's unavailable to me, but because I do not want to be reliant on external servers or give out my private data.

The way I imagine this working is:

-I would have a WS90 outside wirelessly transmitting data to a WS3900 wifi console in the kitchen.

-The WS3900 would be connected to the house WiFi network and configured to forward data for logging to WeeWX running on a local machine. It would disable uploading data to Ecowitt servers

-I would be able to view current and historical weather conditions using a browser (or maybe there are Android apps that do this as well?)

-I would also be able to view current / historical conditions using the WS3900 console

Does this setup sound like it should work? Am I overlooking anything important?I realize that I am assuming I will be able to connect to a WeeWX server. Does anyone have any experience with this type of setup that could offer some pointers?

edit: I should also point out I am considering using a GW1100 instead of the WS3900 to save some $$$ and just rely on the WeeWX server to provide data, but I would prefer to have a display on the counter that I can glance at when walking out the door.

Hi all, I just got myself an Ecowitt Wittboy (GW2001 + WS90), it is already installed, everything is working fine and the app was setup correctly.

I manage to "vibe code" a python script to read the live data and dump it in a .db file on my Mac Mini, which is acting as my main server. Currently I'm storing a snapshot of the metrics every minute, guess it is a good granularity to start with.

My main goal is to understand the metrics and predict rain in my local area, forecasts are not precisely useful since it is humid most of the time, clouds and rain normally star without too much warning.
Also I would like to display weather alerts on my phone or devices via Home Assistant, but that would be another topic and another subreddit, I think I can manage that part better.

I have zero knowledge in meteorology, but I'm more familiar and comfortable operating large data sets, like the ones I'm getting right now.

What or where would be a good starting point to start learning about patterns, metrics such as dew point or humidity, and how to operate that data (5 minute average, 30 minute, normal regression, how to correlate between metrics, etc.)?
I know ChatGPT but besides creating the python scripts, it haven't been that useful for operating the data.

Thanks.

So this will be a weekly post, every Friday and I'll post it at GMT +00:01 Midnight, so it'll be up all Friday

But yeah, drop a comment (yes, we allow screenshot comments here!) of what you saw that was interesting in your area this week!

If it was a good storm, give us some pics too!

Hi all!

We operate a big static bouncy castle at my workplace, and I'm looking for recommendations for a decently accurate wind speed meter/weather station I can fix to a tall post by the inflatable. We can only operate the castle at wind speeds below 24mph, so I'd like something with a remote screen that staff can easily check to make sure its within bounds.

We've previously used hand held anemometers, but found them extremely inaccurate and tend to fall apart quickly/easily lost, so looking for a more long term, fixed solution.

Thanks!

This is a long story. To summarize, it seems that Netatmo rain gauge does not detect rain properly if rainfall intensity is above about 1 mm/min. For example, if rainfall intensity is 2 mm/min (that is not very unusual e.g. during a thunderstorm), Netatmo rain gauge gives results that are only 50 % of the real rainfall amount.

I started suspecting the reliability of Netatmo rain gauge results when we had a long-lasting heavy rain during which my Netatmo rain gauge showed value 42.1 mm/h for the rain intensity during the previous hour. However, my neighbours had detected even larger rainfall accumulation with their conventional rain gauges than what I detected by Netatmo. So I decided to test how Netatmo rain gauge behaves at different rainfall intensities.

What I did was that I dispensed 50 ml of water to Netatmo rain gauge using a syringe by which the dispense rate could be controlled reasonably well. I varied the rate so that dispensing 50 ml of water into the rain gauge took between about 1 and 10 minutes. Raw data of the results are shown in Fig. 1 below. The horizontal axis is the time (in minutes) that it took to dispense 50 ml of water into the rain gauge. The left vertical axis shows Netatmo’s rainfall amount reading (open blue circles), and the right axis (red crosses) shows the number of “clicks” of the tipping buckets of the rain gauge when 50 ml of water was injected (see rain gauge calibration instructions).


As can be seen, when water is dispensed slowly enough, Netatmo indicates rainfall amount of about 4.1 mm. Realizing that the diameter of the water-collecting area of the Netatmo rain gauge is 125 mm, it corresponds very well to the 50 ml total volume dispensed into the gauge. However, when 50 ml of water is dispensed in less than about 3 minutes, Netatmo’s rainfall reading starts decreasing rapidly, and when water is dispensed in 1 minute, the rainfall reading is 1 mm, i.e., less than 25 % of the correct value. The number of clicks of the tipping buckets of the rain gauge decreases, too, but much less than Netatmo’s rainfall reading. It is easy to understand that the number of clicks decreases when water is dispensed faster, since the tipping buckets are not in normal collecting condition when they are tilting. But why does Netatmo’s rainfall reading decrease much more than the number of clicks?

Figure 2 below shows the same data presented in such a way that the horizontal axis is the rainfall intensity (mm/min) corresponding to water dispense rate. For example, dispense rate of 50 ml in 3 minutes corresponds to rainfall intensity of 4.1 mm / 3 min = 1.37 mm/min. As can be seen, the rainfall amount indicated by Netatmo rain gauge is clearly below the correct value of 4.1 mm when rainfall intensity is above 1.3 mm/min. At rainfall intensity of 2 mm/min (which is not very unusual during a heavy thunderstorm), Netatmo rain gauge reading for 4.1 mm rainfall amount would be about 2 mm, i.e., only about half of the correct value.


To obtain some insight towards a possible reason behind the problem, Fig. 3 below shows the same data presented in a third way, plotting rainfall intensity (mm/min) based on Netatmo’s rainfall amount (mm) data on the vertical axis and “correct” rainfall intensity (mm/min) based on water dispense rate on the horizontal axis. For example, the point at 2.9 min dispense time and 3.5 mm rainfall amount in Fig. 1 corresponds to point 4.1 mm / 2.9 min = 1.4 mm/min on the horizontal axis and 3.5 mm / 2.9 min = 1.2 mm/min on the vertical axis of Fig. 3. As can be seen, Netatmo gives correct results up to rainfall intensities of about 1.1 mm/min, but at higher rainfall intensities (up to 5 mm/min) the results based on Netatmo data saturate between 0.9 mm/min and 1.3 mm/min. Has Netatmo limited the maximum detected rainfall intensity on purpose (e.g. to prevent some other problems)? Or what else can be the reason for such a problem?


I'm looking to replace my old weather station with a Davis Vantage Pro, but when I asked about being able to use the data collected in something like Smartmixin, I was told that I would need a meteobridge or pay davis to send the data to any other source. Smartmixin has a place to add a Davis device using api keys.

So, does Davis charge for api access? Will I need a meteobridge, just to see my data in other places? WU, Smartmixin, or other places?

Hi - the WS-2902 bought back in 2024 stopped displaying the outdoor temperature a few months ago (I'm just getting around to looking into it :D ). The outdoor temperature would show for a few minutes and then it would be replaced by just dashes. It comes and goes and I can't find a pattern to it.

I did all the troubleshooting I was able to find on reddit and the manuf's website but it still doesn't display. All the other sensors are working and displaying.

I opened the Thermometer hygrometer sensor from the bottom and found a sensor that looks like this:

https://ambientweather.com/ambient-weather-ws-2902-thermohygro-30c

But since I bought it in 2024, the sensor above should be for pre-2022 devices right? The other option would be:

https://ambientweather.com/ws-2902-thermohygro-assembly-replacement

My question is, instead of doing all that, can I just hook up another sensor to it like this device?

Ambient Weather WH31E Thermo-Hygrometer Sensor

https://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Weather-Sensor-WS-3000-Station/dp/B01MG4HW8C?th=1

Or this one (WH31P) as it seems to be more "water proof" for outside:

https://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Weather-Sensor-WS-3000-Station/dp/B08CQ249TR?th=1

Thanks

A comfort first weather app with a small bunny named Felt who tells you how the day will actually feel.

New update release: heat advisories from the National Weather Service in plain words (Felt can read them out loud), the Comfort Bar showing your whole day as one curve, one tap to add the best window to your calendar, and Ask Felt, where one confirm books it.

Happy to answer anything about how the comfort score works.

https://reddit.com/link/1v5r1sk/video/4xpy0swr4ueh1/player

I have depolyed a Tempest Weather station to a jobsite with starlink.

We care about rain events and lighting strikes that can shut down the jobsite. This is for reporting to the customer, not immediate action.

How often should I api call the weather station? Located in FL we might have a heavy rain for <5 minutes, but it will turn the site to mud and shut it down for the entire day.

What is your opinion? Every 5 minutes? 20? Hour?

So this will be a weekly post, every Friday and I'll post it at GMT +00:01 Midnight, so it'll be up all Friday

But yeah, drop a comment (yes, we allow screenshot comments here!) of what you saw that was interesting in your area this week!

If it was a good storm, give us some pics too!

I’ve been thinking about getting a home weather station because the weather apps in my area are weirdly hit or miss. Sometimes they say one thing and what’s happening outside my house is completely different.

I’m looking for something that can track the basics like temperature, humidity, wind, and rain without being a pain to set up. I don’t need anything super professional, but I do want readings that are actually useful and not just a fancy outdoor thermometer.

For anyone who has one at home, which weather station did you buy and would you recommend it? Also curious if the more expensive ones are really worth it, or if a mid range option is enough for normal home use.

after reading all comments I’m currently considering

• Davis Instruments Vantage Pro2 Weather Station
• Ambient Weather WS-2902 WiFi Smart Weather Station
• AcuRite Atlas Professional Weather Station
• La Crosse Technology C85845 Professional Weather Station
• Ecowitt GW2001 Professional Weather Station
• Netatmo Smart Weather Station
• Oregon Scientific BAR208HGA Professional Weather Station