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Davis Instruments Wireless Vantage Pro2 (MPN: DAI6152)
Description: Become an amateur meteorologist with the Davis Instruments Wireless Vantage Pro2. This unit offers and records all the weather information around your home with innovative and state-of-the-art technology. The console displays information in.... Read More Description: Become an amateur meteorologist with the Davis Instruments Wireless Vantage Pro2. This unit offers and records all the weather information around your home with innovative and state-of-the-art technology. The console displays information in five different modessetup mode for initializing the unit, current weather mode, which notes all current weather conditions, high/low mode, which displays the daily, monthly, or yearly high and low readings, alarm mode, which allows you to set or clear any alarm settings, and graph mode, which features over one hundred types of graphs displaying your choice of weather data. In current weather mode, the console features a compass rose. The wind speed and direction are measured by the included anemometer, and the dominant wind direction is indicated by an arrow on the wind rose. Wind speed in miles per hour is also noted inside the compass. An icon forecasting the weather for the next twelve hours appears next, helping you plan ahead. Five icons indicate if the weather will be mostly clear, partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, rainy, or snowy in the hours to come. Additionally, if rain or snow is possible but not likely, the rainy or snowy icon is accompanied by the partly cloudy icon. The following icon notes the current moon phase, followed by the time and date. The outdoor temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and barometric pressure tendency arrow occupy the next line. This information is all collected from the outdoor Integrated Sensor Suite , placed up to four hundred feet away accounting for walls between it and the console.. . Internal sensors read the indoor temperature and relative humidity in your home, followed by the outdoor wind chill. Directly under the wind rose a graph appears, representing your choice of information in a series of dots. The daily rainfall in inches or millimeters follows, and an umbrella icon appears if it is raining at the moment. The rain rate in inches per hour follows, and a text ticker at the bottom of the console offers the immediate conditions in current mode. Each display can be toggled to show different information, such as the rainfall per month or year instead of the rain rate. Moreover, each of the five modes offers an entirely new set of weather data. The console features over thirty alarms that can be programmed to sound whenever a reading exceeds a set value. When the alarms are set, they will sound for up to two minutes when the programmed condition is reached, and a bell shaped icon blinks until cleared. Text at the bottom of the ticker screen defines which alarm has activated. . . The tidy black console features a large screen with backlight for quick referencing, as well as twelve function and four directional buttons for easy navigation around your screen. Each button has a second function, enabled by pressing the 2ND button on the top of the unit. The console uses the included AC adapter or three C batteries for power, and the ISS is powered by the solar panel. Personalize your station by adding optional accessories and sensors. The unit can read up to eight temperature stations, eight temperature/humidity stations, and two leaf and soil moisture/temperature stations . The ISS uses a solar charger as its main power source, with an included three volt lithium battery as backup. Place the console on a flat surface or wall mount it for high visibility and easy access when you want to change the display, and pole or post mount the ISS with the solar panel facing south for optimal performance. Use the Davis Instruments WeatherLink software to record the weather history on your Mac or PC for a complete meteorological log book. Know every facet of the weather every day with the Wireless Vantage Pro2. Assembly required. One year limited warranty.. . Console Dimensions: 6.125L x 9.625W x 1.5D. ISS Dimensions: 13W x 14.5H x 7.75 dia.. Anemometer Dimensions: 8L x 8.25H x 4.75 dia.. Console Power: AC adapter or 3 C batteries . ISS Power: solar powered with included lithium battery backup. Transmission Distance: up to 1000 feet in open space. Console Mounting: wall mount or place on flat surface. ISS Mounting: pole or post mount. Anemometer Mounting: roof or pole mount. Construction: plastic housing. Mfg. Warranty: one year limited warranty Minimize |
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| Date Reviewed: 03/28/2006 |
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Strengths: Easy to setup, good customer service, quality construction
Weaknesses: Price, but discounts are readily available if a person does a little Internet shopping. Firmware updating process is pricey, too.
Summary: 2006-05-03 08:45:02 This weather station is great. It is wireless and accurate with lots of data for people like me who like information! I have the Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS) attached to my backyard fence about 150 feet away from my house. The receiving station is in my den and still works with a wall between it and the ISS (i.e., line of sight from the ISS to the receiver is not necessary). In addition to providing me a lot of good information, I volunteered, like many who buy a weather station like this one, to send my data to the Citizen Weather Observation Program or CWOP, which is a private-public partnership with NOAA. They use this information for forecasting and apparently Homeland Security uses the data as well. To ensure the integrity of the data NOAA receives, they critique your readings (i.e., too high, too low, etc.) using comparables in your area and makes recommendations for correction. NOAA advised me that my outside temperature sensor was reading too high, so I purchased the optional fan radiation shield for about $75 (retails from Davis for $100), which seems to have fixed the problem. NOAA now believes my readings are within the expected range of error. There is a way to calibrate the readings if required but that is an adjustment I would prefer not to make.
Using the optional Weatherlink software (required to participate in the CWOP program) you can view all your readings, which I accumulate and send to my computer every 30 minutes (the ISS sends data to the receiving station every 10 seconds or so, but uploads to the computer is every 30 minutes).
For whatever reason, my Dell Dimension Computer 4700 that is about one-year old won't work with the receiving station and related Weatherlink software. It works fine with a 4 year old laptop and a custom built computer with a Intel D930 chip. I just live with the Dell not working with the Davis receiving station. I communicated this issue to Davis support and they were most helpful in isolating the problem to the Dell Computer. (Dell wasn't so helpful--they think it might be a motherboard problem, but first I must reformat the hard drive and see if that fixes the problem--something I am unwilling to do).
Like most things in life, this product requires some maintenance. Specifically, the rain collector needs to be cleaned of debris about once a month, or more frequently when the leaves are falling. Very easy to do however-- soap and water and a pipe cleaner. The ISS also needs to be periodically cleaned to remove spider webs etc. that seem to accumulate. The ISS also has a common lithium battery (CR-123A) to backup the solar collector which requires periodic replacement. Davis says this battery will last 8 months to about two years, depending on the availability of sunlight. The batteries in the receiving station (3 "C" batteries) should be replaced about every 9 months, per Davis.
Davis has recently changed the way in which the firmware in the console can be updated. If the console has firmware dated November 28, 2005 or later, one can update the firmware over the Internet using the data logger used with Weatherlink software. If your firmware is dated prior to November 28, 2005, you need to update the firmware using the proprietary Davis hardware. Davis rents this hardware for $28. Once updated, one can update over the Internet. Updating the firmware is periodically necessary for bugs and to reflect changes like the new daylight savings time periods that Congress changed last year.
In short, a great product, Davis is a good company, and maybe most importantly, I am having a lot of fun, once I convinced my neighbors it was truly a weather station on the fence and not a listening device!
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