Oregon WMR200 Weather Station Review:
This is really top of the range when it comes to weather stations! This weather station will enable to gather all the weather data you’ll ever need! It is equipped with a touch-panel for fast data access. Oregon’s WMR200 collates over 10 weather measurements, from up to 100 meters away. With exact radio controlled time, indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, wind speed and direction, wind chill, dew point, heat index, barometric pressure and rainfall data, what more could you want! More weather monitoring can be added, the weather station can support up to ten sensors, which includes a UV monitor. The free PC software is another great bonus, making this the only Weather Center you’ll ever want!
Main Features:
Displays Weather Forecast icons—Sunny, Partly Cloudy, Cloudy, Rainy or Snow
Current moon phase
Indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity measurements
Measures temperature, humidity, wind chill, wind speed, wind direction, UV index (optional), barometric pressure and rainfall
Displays dew point, wind chill and heat index readings
Weather alert alarms for temperature, heat index, humidity, dew point, gust wind and rainfall rate
Automatic Atomic Clock
Data Logger Function stores data with a time stamp
Transmits up to 300 feet at 433MHz between the main unit and remote sensors
Main unit has touch-screen control and EL backlight
6 foot mounting pole for sensors
Low battery indicator icons for both main units and wireless sensors
Operating temperature range: –50°C to +70°C (–58°F to 158°F)
A recent review: A recent review of the Oregon WMR200
I bought the WMR 200 partly on recommendation and partly because I had seen it advertised on eBay by a guy in Germany at a substantial reduction on the usual UK price. It is advertised by Oregon as a “professional” unit, though I’m not sure what that means! My “value for money” rating is based on the full UK price – I paid ?229, at which price I would rate if 9 out of 10 for value.
The photo of the box (above) shows that you get a wireless touch-screen console, a rain gauge, anemometer, temp/humidity sensor and a small solar panel to extend the battery life of the T/H sensor and anemometer. Note that this does not charge rechargeable batteries, it just takes over from alkaline batteries in daylight.
The console incorporates a barometer and indoor T/H sensor. There is a dedicated channel for an optional UV sensor, and extra T/H channels.
The instructions are rudimentory at best and like a true engineer I ignored them and rushed up a ladder (in the rain!) with my drill. I suppose this was a step on the learning curve, but I would strongly recommend anyone to lay all the bits side by side indoors and make sure everything communicates and that readings are received from all the sensors. It is a simple matter to reset the console later to delete all the duff data from testing. In my case the rain gauge was faulty – to begin with it would talk to the console intermittently, then after an hour or so, not at all. I was up and down that ladder….!
I fixed the T/H and wind sensors on the chimney – the highest and least obstructed point I can find. This has worked out well for the wind sensor, but it is not a suitable place for the temperature sensor, which I will have to move, if it ever stops snowing! A black mark for the WMR200 here – if the wind sensor is in a high place and the T/H sensor is in a low place, the solar panel can’t feed them both! This is a very minor issue! I have the rain gauge on the flat roof of the garage, well away from the house and only time will tell if this turns out to be a good arrangement.
There are plenty of poles and plastic brackets, etc in the box and I would be surprised if you couldn’t make a satisfactory mounting for everything in any half reasonable location. My only problem was the need to drill a new hole in the anemometer mounting tube to get the correct north/south orientation – the best part of 20 seconds work!
The rain gauge was more of an issue because it was faulty and having ordered the kit from Germany, I was anticipating some hassle in getting a replacement. I phoned Oregon tech support who confirmed it faulty after asking me to try a few things. I came clean with them and told them the full story and they gave me the number for UK Customer Support. I phoned them and again told them that it was confirmed faulty by tech support, that I’d bought it in Germany and that I didn’t fancy the palaver of returning it to Germany. The guy couldn’t have been more helpful – he emailed Oregon head office, copying me in and they sent me a new rain gauge without question – it arrived a couple of days later and works fine (thank goodness!).
So, I suppose that’s a thumbs down for the dodgy rain gauge, but a strong thumbs up for Customer Service – I’m pretty satisfied.
In use, I have had one weird problem. For the first few days, I experienced regular breaks in wireless communication between the sensors and the console. I was putting it down to the shielding effect of foil-backed insulation in my walls and ceiling. However, I then noticed that if I disconnected the USB cable, all the sensors were communicating reliably. Strange and repeatable – unplug the USB, it works, plug it in and you lose communication. It gets stranger – plug it into a different USB port on the PC and it still works, plug it back into the original port and it stops working! The original port works fine with the mouse, webcam, card reader, my mobile phone …. I can’t explain this, but just in case someone has a similar problem, do try a different USB port! I also don’t know if the port on the PC is at fault in some way (probably most likely) or if the WMR200 has some oddity in its USB set-up.
Everything is now working fine and I’m now in the learning curve for the Weather Display software! I may report on that also in a week or two – sometimes the experiences of a newbie can be valuable – there are certainly plenty of pitfalls!
In conclusion, I am pleased with the WMR200. I like the big, clear touch-screen console, it all has a quality feel to it, and I’ve had a good experience of Oregon Customer Service.
Joe Amadeo: We have decided to withdraw from sale the Oregon Scientific WMR200A from our offerings at WeatherBuffs.com. We have experience numerous failures of the thermo-hygro (temp and humidity sensor). We have test one recently and found the same failure right out of the box, so we returned the unit for credit.
It would have been a decent station in its time as Oregon Scientific apparently “tweaked” wind reporting and got the data closer to reality. But in our opinion, all Chinese manufactured consumer stations leave much to be desired with wind data. Our experiences of testing Chinese stations over the years have led us to believe that 10-40% lower wind speed can be reported at any given time. The WMR200 appeared to do better than most but that is useless, in our opinion, with the incessant thermo-hygro failures over many, many units tested.
WeatherBuffs.com has to give the station a “do not buy” rating, especially given that Oregon Scientific demands that you return the entire station to them for “repair or replacement” of the station within several weeks time. This included DOA’s. We have asked and have been denied the option of having them send a thermo-hygro replacement. That is apparently against their policy.
Since Oregon Scientific refuses to provide working replacement parts for future failures we experience here and because of their whole system return policy and their claim of “repair or replace within a few weeks,” we are unable to defend their policy and we are helpless to support any sales we make.
We strongly recommend the new La Crosse WS-2811U-IT-OAK. It is still a Chinese manufactured station and it’s NOT A DAVIS, but for its $249.00 list price (street around $199.95 today), its a real bargain especially with its USB wireless to PC connection. Of course, we would always recommend Davis instead, but even the new Vantage Vue is about $100.00 more compared to the La Crosse. In fact, we still recommend the WMR968 over the WMR200 as it generally works well and requires no support.
WeatherBuffs.com has a recommendation that will prevent many WMR968 failures: add a thin bead of silicon sealant to the edges of the solar panels where they meet molding. This will help prevent moisture from corroding the internal elements which is a common occurrence.
Joe Amadeo
WeatherBuffs.com
1+ 925 685 2873 PDT
California, USA
A recent review sent to me: A little carefull pre-planing and reading these reviews can help avoid many of the disasters that probably happen with something so economical but so sophisticated. I picked the WMR200 because it seemed the more modern of all the brands out there that was present early Aug 2009. I has a really cool touch screen display,and backlighting/lit buttons, and I also liked the fact that it came with a consolidated mast design.
I figured that by going with the best dealer, it could head off some of the problems other viewers had, and I think I was right. Ambient Weather has chat service, and even 800 phone support: this seems to be a new thing as I couldn’t find it before, but their 800 phone support menu has changed.
For someone who has computer and gizmo interest this was a piece of cake to set up; just a few hangups. The rain gauge came in inop. It is a good idea to set everything up on the kitchen table so everything is definitely in range of each other to confirm operability. Even the rain gauge reported the water test we performed accurately, but later became totally inoperative. The base station wouldn’t even count it as a device on the console. We sent it in for RMA, and another is coming. I checked to make sure replacement parts would be available, but the folks over there panicked at first and said it would be months to get them from the factory. However this was in error.
I like the setup so well I order a whole other older station just so the signals wouldn’t get crossed and so I could get a rain guage with solar charging.
The newer one went together real well, but dont waste time with any of the mounting schemes except the EZ-30-12 pole mount. That one worked very well despite the saleman’s trepidation. It looks really good on the telephone pole and is solid as a rock. Do not get the rain guage shelf for this model line as it is so frail I feel it is responsible for knocking out the rain guage from ratteling in the wind; it was so flimsey that it couldn’t even hold the rain guage steady, and level! You’d be better off with a wooden board.
We did use the SRS100 sun shade however, as I had learned in research you have to put these things out in the open to get accurate measurements and the instruments shield that is sold with it is more for shady yards than serious science. We mounted it with the all-in-one mast with rubber bands and zipties to hold the temp/hygrometers in place under the shade. It all looks very professional, and my buddie’s back yard looks like a goverment installation now! I will post pictures later.
I tried everything in the book at my long history as a gadget tech to solve the inop condition of the rain guage but after talking to Ambient Weather, it was obviously not going to work. So hopefully the new one will be fine. Don’t forget it does not have solar charging, so battery replacement will be in force. I’ve used Oregon wireless outdoor sensors for years and they are very tough, and don’t plow through batteries very often. In fact, for the first time, I just changed the batteries in a temp sender I bought back in 2003!!
(Update 9/22/09): RMA was successful on the rain guage and the new one is working fine! The data between it and the one on the WMR968 match perfectly, a big thanks to Ambient Weather on that one!
Now here is the really cool part(to me); with the Virtual Station(internet capable version) you can send station information to a web page at Weather Underground and view your stats at any time off the internet anywhere, they automatically assign you a station number for your area. Be prepared to have your GPS coordinates and elevation from sea level for this. Even cooler, I found a ‘gadget’ at that site that dislays wind direction/speed, temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity, all from your own personal weather station!! I put this and the main Windows Weather Underground gadget on my desktop sidebar to complete a real time watch of all the weather data I would need except precipitation(which I can get from my web-page link). It even has better radar!!
With all this info, who needs WeatherBug? HA! I am very happy with this arrangement, and will report on the WMR968 solar assisted weather station, that I purchased with this, to complement it. I did this originally because I wanted a functional rain guage now, but I’m glad we have two consoles. One for the living room and the other for the computer. You will like the convenience of the USB connection for this console.
I have checked the accuracy with other NOAA stations in my area and I don’t know what people are talking about on the accuracy of these cheaper instruments; they concur with MUCH more expensive devices used by the weather service in my area. The only difference in data is the fact that the NOAA devices are mounted in areas that are known to be cooler and out of the wind. But most of them that are out in the open completely agree with my data, off BOTH stations.
I have no reasonable cons to this system as of this time; I did get confused about which software was what, as we got the CDs mixed up upon shipment. But make sure you enter the paid version key into the virtual weather station software, if you want to use internet connectivity.
I’m hoping I can find a way, of getting the consol to run in the background as a service, but for now I just minimize it to the taskbar and it doesn’t conflict with anything we do on the computer PC in anyway. Uses almost no bandwith or resources.
I hope I have covered all possibilities, but I will revisit this review and add more data later. Thanks for your patience, and hope you have good experience no matter which brand or model you pick here at Amazon!
(Update 9/22/09): We now seem to be getting high battery usage on the anemometer, and you guessed it, Oregon Scientific is giving me the same run around everyone else is reporting. I plan to contact them, and simply order the part, as it isn’t worth the hassle of trying to get an RMA or warranty, I can always place a complaint with the Better Business Bureau later. The only product out there as modern as this one, may be the Davis Vantage Vue(wireless):