AcuRite Atlas Professional Home Weather Station
An overview of my AcuRite Atlas Professional Home Weather Station installation.
🕛 Time - 2 Hours
💵 Cost - $218.76
Materials
- AcuRite Atlas WiFi Professional Home Weather Station ($195.77)
- Black Spray Paint (Existing)
- Composite Decking (Existing)
- Construction Screws (Existing)
- Lithium AA Batteries ($22.99)
Tools
On a whim, I purchased an AcuRite Atlas Wifi weather station. The package includes a Wifi display and a weather station that needs to be mounted outside. The weather station needs to be at least 5 feet from the ground. The National Weather Service suggests a height of at least 33 feet. It needs to be unobstructed by buildings, away from heat sources, and located away from sprinkler heads.
I opted to position the station on the garage roof. I created a small platform using composite decking and painted it black to match out garage color. While it could have been a bit higher on a pole, this took advantage of materials I already had. I also measured the distance from my office, on the second floor, to the unit with a laser distance tool because that's where the WiFi display would be. It was about 40 feet.
As suggested by the manufacturer, I installed Lithium AA batteries because they work better in a cold climate. I ensured that the platform was level before mounting because the rain gauge requires it.
Once mounted, I plugged in the WiFi display inside and configured it for connection to both our network and to the weather station. It was very straightforward. There were several Amazon reviews complaining about connectivity, but I haven't had any issues. I think the near line-of-site orientation of the weather station and display is helpful.
I've been using the weather station for the last few weeks, and it has worked well at capturing all the metrics. We've had a few good storms, and it has tracked rain fall almost in-line with the airport near our house. It also picked up lightning strikes that happened during a recent thunderstorm. The wind, temperature, humidity and pressure readings also have been in-line with our local weather reporting.
The AcuRite app is decent. I used to get errors when trying to view charts but that seems to have gone away as more data has been collected.
Overall, I'm really happy with the unit. It was really easy to setup and configuration was only a little finicky. It's more data than I actually need but I love the nerdiness of it.
