Customer Reviews

Honeywell TE831W-2 Complete Wireless Weather Station with PC Interface, Silver

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Let me start this review by saying I like this weather station. I can not believe I said that since I bought and sold the 924 model. That is the one with the weather radio. With that unit I had nothing but problems. I kept losing reception, the weather radio was too loud even at its lowest volume and you had to guess on what button to press since they were all on the back of the unit and then hope you did it right. Very frustrating indeed.
Even though I think that the TE831W-2 was made before the 924 model, I have had none of these problems so far that I experienced with the other model and it was a great price for what you get. Just a word on ordering from ANT Online, even though I bought it new it appears that while everything looked new it came with old batteries in every instrument where there should not have been any batteries at all. The CD came broken for the weather capture software. Of course a quick trip to the Honeywell site took care of this problem as I just downloaded the newest version of the software. A word about the software is that it is very simplistic, but it works.
The base station picked up all the instruments in about 5 minutes so I mounted everything outside and so far so good. The biggest problem I had was with the installation of the anemometer and lining up the screw, but eventually I got it.
Lets see what you get here. A barometer with a 12 hour weather forcast and a graph that is on the top left corner of the base unit. On the bottom left you get a clock and date or phases of the moon. On the right corner of the unit you can see the outside temperature and humidity and the indoor temperature with humidity readings as well as view the dew point. The next window is the current wind with gusts and history with wind chill and on the bottom right you have your rain gauge readings. All buttons are lined up on the bottom of the unit so you can see what you are pressing in each window to change your data. On the back of the unit there is a light sensor that works so this can be set to on, off or auto. The light when turned on in the base unit is blue. There is the ability to set the weather station for several different weather alarms.
This is all great, but it would be nothing if the readings were not accurate. After testing the readings that the weather instruments were giving out my findings were that the barometer was spot on, the temperatures and humidity readings were on the mark and the rain gauge seems to give precise readings. The anemometer was probably the weakest link for the weather station, but even this was working up to a certain point. It just wasn't as accurate as the other weather instruments as I suspected. There is also at times a confusing, but complete weather station manual to look at if you need help.
Still for the money compared to more expensive units these weather instruments seem sturdy and everything works on the weather station. I will edit this review if this Honeywell weather station shows that it does not hold up or problems should arise, but for the time being I like this weather station enough to fully recommend it.

I've only had my unit for a couple weeks, but I am fairly satisfied with it, relative to the cost. It has features that match other weather stations in the $160-$400 range.

Setup was simple enough, just follow the directions. One caution - as the instructions state, you MUST install the batteries in all of the sensors first and have them close to the base station, then power up the base station. Otherwise, the base station may not associate with the devices and you are in for some hassles.

A USB cable is provided for connection to the PC. Many weather stations are still using serial ports. My PC doesn't even have a serial port, so this saved me buying an adapter.

The included software is a bit primitive, both graphically and user controls. You can see the current conditions, or a historical graph for one reading. This product is relatively new, so there isn't a lot of support in third party software. WUHU, software for uploading data to wunderground.com, just added support in early January 2009. Weather View 32 also claims support for the TE8321W.

I appreciated the fact that all of the measurement units are separate, giving me the ability to place them where they are convenient for me. The price you pay is installing 10 AA batteries. I placed the rain gauge in the middle of the yard where I can easily access it to remove debris.

The TE831W comes with two temperature sensors. Unfortunately, they are not as accurate as I would like. My two sensors had a 0.8 degree Fahrenheit difference when placed side by side. The specifications do say the temperature is only accurate to within 2 degrees. Normally, that wont be a big issue for me, but we just had freezing weather and the difference between 32 and 33 degrees is important in those conditions. I chose what appeared to be the most accurate of the two units for my outside temperature.

The rain gauge is reading reliably at 50 feet through one exterior wall. The annonometer was originally at about 75 feet, but was reading intermittently. I moved it near the rain gauge and it is fine now. I will move it to the roof when the weather improves.

The temperature sensors needed to be closer, unfortunately. When mounted next to the rain gauge at 50 feet, the temperature sensor was not readable by the base station whenever my PC was on. I moved it to a spot 20 feet away, and it would still occasionally loose connectivity when the PC was on. Finally, I positioned it just a few feet away from the wall and it is always connected. The "less accurate" sensor is in the garage where it also has intermittent connectivity, but that is 75 feet and a bunch of walls away, so I can't complain.

The included PC software, WeatherCapture 1.4.2, looks like something from the early 90's, and user control is limited. My plan is to upload data from my weather station to wunderground.com, and I will typically view my data from there, or use the base station.

The device is new, so 3rd party software support isn't as good as other, more popular weather stations. WUHU very recently added support for the TE831W for uploading data to wunderground.com, and I have read that Weather View 32 also supports it.

In summary, for the price, this is a good value. To get significantly better performance, you'd have to spend a lot more on weather station like the Davis Vantage Pro-2 Wireless 6152

I am giving this product 5 stars - not because it is perfect, but because it is really well built and works well, for the money. Sure, you can buy a Davis, etc for $500, but this is about 1/4 of that price, and it is working great. I read the other reviews, and most are accurate, but some do not fully recognize this value issue.
My experience:
1) I bought 8 Lithium batteries - two for each of the 4 outside units. Cost is about $20, but a) they will give a bit more range, b) they are recommended for operation below about 0C (32F), and c) they may last a bit longer.
2) I read the manual, which is quite good, and followed the directions. Make sure you do the battery installs in the sensors first, as it says, before the main unit ! Then verify everything is being received before installing the sensors outside. (NOTE - don't forget to check/set the channel numbers on the temp/humidit sensor units before installing their batteries)
3) Build quality is really nice for all the pieces. Gaskets on the battery cases, brass inserts for the screws to keep them from stripping, etc. The designers and manufacturer of the unit did some really excellent work on all these parts.
4) Temp sensors all agreed within less than one degree. There are actually FOUR of them. Two in the temp/humidity units, one in the anemometer, and one in the inside base unit. Nice.
5) Rain guage seems to work well. Have not tested accuracy yet though. Again - very nice construction for the price. Anemometer build is great too. Amazing when you consider how much you're getting for the money.
6) When using the anemometer - be sure to set it to read "Gust". Other settings appear to be doing some averaging, and probably are partly the cause of problems experienced by other reviewers. I got a peak gust of 13.6 mph when mounted on a pole at a height slightly below the roof peak, and below the trees (but still reasonably high up and in the clear). By comparison, the local airport was reporting peak-gust at 20 mph. This seems reasonable given my obstructions.
7) The barometer also seems pretty accurate. I adjusted to match the airport (which is at a density altitude of 1200 ft), and the corresponding altitude on the base unit read 1352 ft - only 150 ft off. Like I said, pretty good.
8) I did have one sensor lose signal when I moved the unit to a location which required the signal to go through several walls in my house - but that's what radio does.....
All in all, this unit gets (and deserves) 5 stars from me. Hope you have similar experiences. I am very happy with the value the company has provided !

I bought this item a weak ago and its an amazing units.

Setup

Realtively easy to setup except for so many screws but they are actually there for a reason since the units will be outdoors mainly, they act as a potective mechanism. The anemometer was the hardest to setup while the thermohydrometers were the easiest.

Build

Most of the units are well built and seem sturdy. Both range guage and anemomters are about 16 m away and are still communiticating with the receiver. The thermohydromter is nearer ( about a meter away).

Accuracy

A very accurate unit indeed and for those who say the anemomter is inaccurate try setting the wind reading to gust and you'll see. If the anemometer is set to wind speed it will record the wind speed over a 10 minute avegage. The rain guage is also accurate, the thermohydromters are extremely accurate.

PC Interface

Premature program but I dont really care since the data is being uploaded to weather underground.

Overall a great unit for the price and I give this 5 stars.

Not very impressed with this product. Several functions do not work properly and numerous attempts to obtain customer support from Honeywell resulted in no returned calls. I wish I would have passed on this one.

I've been wanting to track weather conditions at my home and see current conditions on my website. So when I saw that this one could be connected to your PC at not a bad price I was excited - until I connected it to my PC.

First, the software that you get is very limited. You can dowload the "Advanced version" but that isn't much better. The quickest you can retrieve the data is every 2 minutes. Under normal conditions that may be adequate but when you first load it up it takes 2 minutes to even get the initial data. If you have a storm you might miss out on the one strongest wind gust.

You can set it up to save the current conditions every 2 minutes into a text file. And that is the only way you can get it to work with a website. You must have it on a PC with the interface running all the time and you will need to read the text file. There is no direct access to the unit itself. Or I should say, apparently, Honeywell will not give it out - according to Weather32 com. What I did is remote access into my server (I connected the unit to it) and ran the interface. A hokey way of doing it, preferring to run a background service. However, I did recently check it and found it had stopped for some unknown reason. So that is not a realiable solution.

In reality, it is just your basic bookshelf weather station. I have had it lose connection to all of the devices. I had to remove the batteries and then it reconnected to all of them. I have no idea of the accuracy except for the temperatures are close enough for home use.

Since the PC interface was misleading I don't recommend this product if that is what you expect to use it for.

This unit is a piece of junk. It is not accurate and does not feed into my computer. Now the wind alarm goes off every hour day and night. I called Honeywell twice all they did was read the owners malual to me. Offered no help to fix this problem. It is going in the junk pile, would not recomened this to anyone. Going to buy Oregon Scientific they always have had great customer service and there stations are accurate. We have one in our 5th wheel when we are on the road.

I bought the Honeywell TE831W-2 weather station at Christmas time 2009. I got it installed right away and it was easy to setup. Just follow the simple instructions and the manual leads you to the "promise land." I liked the system immediately all of the components function well and communicate constantly with the main console. However, I did not really like the "Weather Capture" software that came included with the system - too simplistic. I tried several commercial weather monitoring softwares, but was not really happy with them either. Recently, I happened upon the Honeywell Weather Station website and downloaded a FREE upgrade to the "Weather Capture" software. Wow, I was blown away. THIS SOFTWARE NOW IS AWESOME! Just what I had been looking for. Now, not only do I have a great weather monitoring system. I also have a great software package and tracking system to go with it and the software was FREE. (Double bonus!)
I use this system to monitor three areas: the outdoors (of course), the indoors (of course - of course) and my greenhouse (this is what I really bought it for.) Now I can track and wirelessly monitor all areas "realtime." The main console attaches to my computer via USB and the software presents a cool display that shows me all of the info I want to see on one simple screen. I can see graphs for selected time periods for all zones and data tracked: temp (min,max), humidity, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, wind, dewpoint, whatever. The system even stores archive data in an Excel file that it regularly updates for tracking historical data. This system is everything I had hoped for in a wireless weather monitoring station. I am VERY glad I bought it.

Other reviewers have said this is a good value for the price, and I'll just agree with them.

The range between the senders and the receiver is quite limited, particularly if you have aluminum siding like me. I needed to try out several locations around the house before I could find a place where all 4 sensors were "visible" to the base. In my case, putting the base near a window with a view of most of the outside units was helpful. The temp sensors work well. Can't comment on the rain gauge yet, no liquid precipitation since installing it.

Then there's the wind chill. Another reviewer found it to be wildly inaccurate. And he's right, at least on a sunny day. The base unit calculates wind chill from wind speed and temperature measured at the anemometer. I didn't realize there was a thermometer in there. But this callout from the "Wind Window" section of the manual implies just that: "Wind Chill Temperature/Temp at Wind Sensor" referring to the temperature in that window. So wind chill would only be close to accurate at night or under a _very_ heavy overcast. I see why they did that: so you don't have to choose which temp sensor is used to calculate wind chill. After all, they could be located indoors or in a garage or barn/shed. They might not even be installed.

Despite whatever the "logic" was that resulted in this design feature, it was a bad call. The anemometer must be located in the open to function properly. But because it's out in the open, it's subject to sun heating, and you see something like: outside temperature, 32F; wind chill, 47F! The only workaround I can see is to compute the wind chill yourself (or with your own software) from the wind speed and the temp at a properly placed thermo-sender.

I couldn't have found a better gift. I gave it to a man who's side interest is weather. He said it set up and worked out of the box. Who needs Al Roker now!