Customer Reviews

Davis 6162 Vantage Pro2 Plus Solar Powered Wireless Weather Station w/Solar Radiation & UV

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I purchased one of these about 5 years ago for my Parents out in the country and it is fantastic! I put it up on a 24-foot iron pole on a hill about 500 feet from their house to get it into a completely open area. The display station inside the house picked-up the signal perfectly.

Amazing amount of data: Rainfall accurate to 1/100th of an inch; Wind direction & speed; temperature; humidity; solar radiation; UV index and more. Data updates rapidly so you can see the changing wind speed and direction in real time. Shows rainfall rate per hour and sometimes here in Texas, that is AMAZING! It forecasts the weather using built-in algorithms very well. I have been amazed at how many times it forecasted rain when it was a hot, dry day and sure 'nough, it rained within 24 hours. It is the Cadillac of weather sensing and information suites!

The only problem is that it has NO contingency for birds sitting on it! This is a real problem. The birds sit on the rim of the rain collector and they 'drop' waste into it which eventually clogs the little hole the rain is supposed to go through to be measured. This stops the accurate rain total until you can get up there and clean the rain bucket out. Also, the birds sit on the weathervane/wind direction sensor and cause it to register incorrectly and have also caused the sensor to change position on the end of the stem it is located on. This causes the wind direction to be displayed incorrectly until you can get up there and reorient the sensor arm in the correct direction. I have asked Davis Instruments on numerous occasions what could be done to prevent this from happening (because it is A ROYAL PAIN to get up on top of the 24-foot pole to clean and adjust the sensor suite) and they have always told me they don't know of anything that can be done.

I purchased a new one of these for my Parents for Christmas this year and I am going to glue some pins/spikes/tacks/? upside down to the top of the rain bucket and weathervane arm to keep the birds from landing on them. This is how they keep birds off of billboards in high-bird areas (look at the billboards around LAX airport). The spike points keep the birds from landing on them. So, I'm going to try that on a small scale. I thought about putting some type of hardware cloth over the sensor suite or around it but that would negatively affect the accuracy of this amazing piece of equipment.

I am going to take the old unit and send it to Davis Instruments for refurbishment and then install it here in the city for me and my neighbors. One suite will drive an unlimited number of the 'display stations' you put inside your house so all my neighbors can participate in the data if they purchase a display station for their own house. I will connect my station to the Internet/Weatherbug so I can see the weather conditions at my house even when I am out of town.