Review: Ambient Weather WS-5000

For whatever reason, dads like paying attention to the weather with useless precision. We’re also notoriously difficult to shop for. The Ambient Weather hardware ecosystem, which shows you everything from daily rainfall to the current UV index via a series of weather-measuring doohickeys, accessories, and screens, is the best thing ever for middle-aged weather nerds.

You can even pool together with family and friends to buy separate components for multiple birthdays or gift-y type holidays—maybe even more if Ambient Weather continues to release new products regularly. It’s a boon for hard-to-shop-for fathers and nerdy types everywhere. My dad got his first one in December, and now he has them in two locations, with one at our family vacation home. I’ll be shopping for accessories for years!

Becoming Al Roker

The higher-end WS-5000 kit I got from Ambient Weather included two large sensors that need to be mounted somewhere with the most representative weather in your yard. The instructions suggest a rooftop or clearing, so I chose the top of my garage, where an easy-to-install pole mounting kit screwed into the peak at the front.

Photograph: Parker Hall

The two main sensor units contain various science-y tools, like a rain cup and a barometer, to measure humidity, temperature, wind speed, UV, and precipitation. They connect via W-Fi to a small screen that sits on my desk and acts as a head unit for the sensors, displaying all their current readouts. I wish this thing had a touchscreen, but otherwise it works fine for a real-time readout of the data on hand.

According to Ambient Weather, the sensors will transmit up to 1,000 feet line-of-sight, or about 300 feet not line-of-sight, but my family and I have gotten much less range than that. It depends on where you mount the unit, but I suggest making sure it's located relatively close, with power (think more like 100 feet).

Photograph: Parker Hall

Once you get it set up, you're basically good to go. The sensors use batteries that last essentially in perpetuity, thanks to solar power, and the head unit just plugs into the wall. Then you can log in to Wi-Fi and sync the device to your Ambient Weather account, which is where the fun really begins.

Using the Ambient Weather app (iOS, Android) on my phone or the website on my laptop or desktop, I can easily monitor the weather at my house in real time, and even check out the weather readings of other units around me. I can now tell you what part of my city is coolest at any given moment, using only data from other local weather nerds. Neat! You can, of course, keep your information private if you’d like, but where is the fun in that?

Photograph: Parker Hall

So Much Fun Stuff

The information that the weather station provides—everything from the moon cycle, daily, weekly, and event-based rain reports, barometer readings, wind speed, and direction, and temperature highs and lows—is really fun to follow and learn more granularly about where you live. Where I particularly love the Ambient Weather ecosystem, though, is in the myriad of accessories you can add.

Photograph: Parker Hall

I now have a moisture sensor in my garden bed that tells me how dry my soil is, which is an awesome way to know I need to turn on my remote sprinklers while on vacation. An air quality monitor inside my workspace tells me temperature and humidity (important to monitor for some of my acoustic guitars), and another monitor really made me open the window when cooking indoors. All of these things are trivially combined by the system and displayed alongside my other metrics on the Ambient Weather dashboard. It’s the easiest thing to set up ever.

Ambient Weather recently added a better digital display that you can buy aftermarket. As I said, the one that comes with the unit is a bit retro-chic, requiring you to use physical buttons to input logins and passwords, and with only a few selectable layouts. The new Weather Window, as the brand calls it, is much larger and more modern-feeling, and it does include touchscreen controls and variable layouts, but it’s still not as fantastic as it could be.

Photograph: Parker Hall

I wish there was a way to show the weekly weather forecast on the main screen, instead of having to tap the display to see that, among other UI niggles. I do like that the Weather Window comes with a frame-like edge, which makes placing it where you might place a family photo, or hanging it on the wall, particularly easy.

By the Numbers

Most of us don’t need such minutiae in our lives, and that’s fine. For the person who wakes up and plans their whole day based on the temperature and precipitation, or who constantly checks weather radar and talks about it, the Ambient Weather system is the closest we will come to reaching nirvana on Earth.

That might not be you, but it is almost certainly someone you know. I love being away from home and knowing how wet the soil in my garden is, that my house temp and humidity are correct. I like seeing when the sun and moon are going to rise and set at a glance, and knowing how many inches of rain, at a spot above my head, we have gotten in rainy north Portland. Every time my dad and I get together, if we're not talking about Formula One or the local soccer team's current woes, we're talking about what our stations are telling us.

If learning the micro-trends of your yard and chatting, meaningfully, about the weather to friends, relatives, and strangers is your kind of thing, then an Ambient Weather system, really any of them, is probably a fun thing for you to check out. You might even find it useful.