Honeywell TE821W Wireless Weather Station with Rain Gauge, Wind Gauge, Thermometer Atomic Clock, Barometer
by Honeywell
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List Price: Category: Home See more product details |
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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: 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: General Review - Calibration Error, missing parts
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this for my son for X-mas. Just unpacked it and right off the bat, there is a missing part to attach the wind speed cups to the shaft. (I hate tab "A" to slot "B" stuff when there are missing parts!!!!!)
I e-mailed customer service at Honeywell. We will see how that goes and I will post on customer service later. Also, this came with two remote sensors for temperature and humidity. I have the two sensors sitting side by side with the base unit and they all read different temperatures. (Remote Unit 1, 71.2 degrees), (Remote Unit 2, 73.6 degrees) and the base unit 75.8 degrees. They are all within 3 inches of each other. I even walked away for 15 minutes figuring they were so accurate they were picking up my body heat. NOT!
My thermostat and a secondary thermometer in the home both accurately match and read 70 degrees.
Not sure why they are all different. I looked at some more expensive models, but we bought the Honeywell because of name recognition and reputation. Oh well, so much for that theory.
On the positive side, the units are well sealed from weather, hence, lots of screws to access and replace the batteries as in another post here. I am not sure what else will not be working until I fully set it up.
For now, I will probably return it.
Customer Review: Hard to set up & not that accurate
Summary: 2 Stars
Got this as a gift from my parents-in-law, which was fantastic, but the product is frustrating. It's hard to set up and calibrate, and the battery compartments can only be accessed through doors that have either 4 or 7 tiny screws made out of soft metal that are easy to strip if you're not careful. And we live in Colorado Springs at 2050 meter elevation and the setup only goes up to 500 meters, so the barametric pressure readings and history will be inaccurate. I want a weather station because the weather here changes dramatically, but I want one that's easier to set up, maintain, and operate.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.