Netatmo – the ultimate home weather station – Our review

You don’t have to be a weather nerd to love the Netatmo Weather Station because it’s all about information, connectivity and living in the future.  This system allows you to know what effect the weather is having on your home and perhaps even adjust things remotely to suit – and it’s super easy to install and use.

Pickup the Netatmo Weather Station starter pack for $299 and you get two thin silver cylinder devices – one of which is battery operated, the other used MicroUSB into mains power to stay connected.

The whole idea is to continually monitor the weather conditions inside and outside your home.

The “Station” sits inside connected to your WiFi network and power, and will monitor Temperature, Humidity, CO2, Pressure and Sound at the location you place it.

Included in the starter kit is an outdoor module, which you put some batteries in and place under an eve or pergola (Outdoor temp sensors shouldn’t be in direct sunlight, temps are always measured in the shade FYI)

The two devices pair via Bluetooth for configuration then stay connected to your home network each via WiFi.

Once setup, you then register a Netatmo account and using the Netatmo app you can see all your current and recent data gathered from the station.

By now, you’re hooked and you want more.  So you’ll duck out and get the Netatmo Rain Gauge and Wind Gauge.  $149.99 for the Rain Gauge and $199.99 for the Wind Gauge.

These two have batteries built-in, with a plastic liner just needing to be removed to activate.  The rain gauge needs to be twisted to open up, while the Wind Gauge needs to be unscrewed to access the batteries.

Once powered up, using the Netatmo App on your phone you pair the accessories to the Netatmo Station inside.  I had a bit of trouble with the Wind Gauge and it turns out I needed to replace the batteries.

I placed the Wind and Rain Gauges on the top of our pergola until I get a mounting bracket for them – they each have a tripod like mounting point and there are loads of accessories you can find on eBay, while a Netatmo mounting bracket is coming soon too.

At this point, you’re good to go.  Nothing more to do except sit back and watch the data roll in.

There is IFTTT compatibility for those who want the temperature or settings to trigger things like email alerts or interactions with your other smart devices like lights or heaters.

The data you are getting gives you a clear view of how your indoor heating or cooling is performing over time, as well as getting alerts on when to open your windows if the CO2 levels inside are high.

Using the wider community of Netatmo and even other connected weather stations, there is actually more real-time data on the internet from across the world, Australia included – than anything the Bureau of Meteorology has.

There are plenty of highly accurate predictive models which from what I’ve seen are able to give things like rain forecasts down to the hour.

This is certainly a solid investment, at $299.99 to get started – but when you compare this to some of the home weather stations on the market it’s really an incremental cost for the overall connectivity of the devices.

Certainly the Wind and Rain Gauges are competitively priced accessories – and there’s no other way to link other smart devices in your home based on the weather.

The rain gauge works without ever needing to be emptied – the water passes through, the sensor calculates the amount of water then it runs out the bottom of the gauge.  Simple, and effective.

I’ve never had so much data at my fingertips, and the Netatmo monitoring has allowed us to realise how just leaving the door open for a few minutes on a cold afternoon while the heating is on can have a dramatic impact on the temperature inside thus forcing the air conditioner to work harder costing me more money.

The data is well presented, the app is well designed.  The devices look great, and the setup is easy.  I can see Netatmo being a big hit for Father’s Day and Christmas.

 

Netatmo Weather stations are now available in Australian Geographic Stores.