I bought an inexpensive all-in-one wireless weather station years ago. The manufacturer claimed range of 300 feet, so I mounted it on a fence post about 200 feet from the house. No signal. So I moved it 50 feet closer. Still no signal. Now to the back yard 40 feet away. Still no signal. Finally, on the deck about a free-throw’s distance from the console inside, it worked. Of course, with the wind blocked by the house and swirling around, the anemometer was useless. The only thing it could tell me with certainty was “It’s windy.” Heck, I can tell that by looking out the window at the trees. Putting it on the roof was not an attractive option as the tall oaks and hickories all around still would have affected it, and at 60-something I wasn’t wild about climbing up there every time the batteries needed changing.Then last summer the thing started eating said batteries with budget-busting frequency. I had been researching weather stations off and on for years, but reviewers invariably complained about lousy range. Then I stumbled onto Ecowitt on Amazon. I liked that it was a modular system so I could buy just the components I wanted, and each could be installed in an optimum location. I started with the GW1000 gateway (an amazing little thing not much bigger than a matchbook), a WH31 indoor sensor, a WH32 outdoor sensor, and a WH30 rainfall sensor. To have any hope of accurate wind data, an anemometer would have to be down in the field away from the woods, so no point in getting one until I saw how these things performed range-wise.Setup was a breeze. I wanted the extra WH31 indoor sensor (the gateway has temp and humidity sensors built into it) for my shop – about 100 feet from the house – so I could know when to turn the heat on to keep pipes from freezing. It’s a metal building, so common sense told me to hang the sensor in a window that faces the house. To my surprise the gateway picked it up immediately. So I moved the sensor to a location in the shop that was more convenient, but where the signal had to pass through two layers of steel siding, and of course the wall of the house as before. It hasn’t missed a beat.Encouraged by that, I ordered the WS68 anemometer. After installing the battery I decided to test its range before choosing a final location. Farther and farther, still connected. Before long I was standing next to the creek, about 200 yards from the house, and the GW1000 was still picking it up. I could turn the vane by hand and watch the wind direction change on my phone. I didn’t want to get my feet wet, so the test ended there.The anemometer and rain gauge now live atop 1-1/2” diameter Schedule 40 PVC pipes that slip over T fence posts driven into the ground in the middle of the field about 350 feet from the house. I cross-drilled the pipes and installed 5/16” PTO shaft pins to keep them from rotating. This isn’t really necessary for the rain collector, but it keeps the anemometer oriented correctly for wind direction. To change the WS68’s battery I can take the pin out and slide the 10-foot pipe off the post. The WH32 outdoor temperature and humidity sensor lives inside an RS-00001 solar radiation shield on the outside of the shop. It’s a north-facing wall, so the sun never hits it, but I figure the shield will prolong the sensor’s life by keeping rain off and preventing birds from pecking and pooping on it. Speaking of which, I need to get bird spikes for the rain gauge. Apparently a rain collector funnel is bird language for “Public Restroom.”My plan to use my wife’s retired iPad 2 as a display did not work out because the iPad is acting a little flakey in its old age, so I ordered the HP2551-C display. This is a fabulous complement to these instruments, although I wish I had known that it performs the functions of the GW1000, making that unit redundant. No worries: these components are so reasonably priced it doesn’t matter much. Ideally the screen of the HP2551-C would be a bit larger, but it’s nice and sharp so that even my aging eyes can easily read it without putting on the cheaters.If you suspect that any of the sensors is off a bit, it’s easy to tweak it by applying an offset to the data being reported by the GW1000. The HP2551-C can do the same thing, but there you enter the reading that you believe to be reality instead of entering an offset value. With the help of an old aircraft altimeter and the Ecowitt instructions I’ve been able to get my pressure to agree with our local airport within 0.02 inHg most of the time.My only (very mild) criticism of Ecowitt is about their website. They don’t have all their products on Amazon, so I had to order the solar shield and the display unit on their site for shipment directly from China. The site looks nice and describes the products well, but for ordering, it is functionally very confusing and unresponsive. The orders for both of those items, which are in use on my property in the US of A as I write this, still say “Unshipped” when I log in to my account. You earn “points” each time you buy something, and even just for logging in, but redemption is confusing, although it turns out you have to do nothing: it applies the discount automatically the next time you check out. Ecowitt needs to hire a few more sharp e-commerce folks and a good copy editor. Better yet, put everything on Amazon.But any consternation about the website will melt away the first time you experience the rapid and thorough support that Ecowitt delivers. It is other-worldly. I could write another dozen paragraphs praising it but will stop here. I’ve been looking for better weather station hardware for many years, and it looks like I’ve found it. Ecowitt products are crazy good and crazy cheap. At $12 for the multi-channel indoor sensors, I’m tempted to get the full complement of eight (the maximum that the GW1000 and HP2551-C can support), but I’m not sure where I’d put them all. I did get one more to put in the moisture-proof box that I keep my 3D printing filament in. I’ve set an alarm on ecowitt.net so it will send me an email alert when the desiccant dehumidifier needs recharging and the humidity in the box begins to rise.