ECOWITT Weather Stations with Outdoor Sensor HP2561, 7 in 1
ECOWITT Weather Stations with Outdoor Sensor HP2561, 7 in 1 WiFI Solar Powered Weather Station with Remote Monitoring System, Weather Forecast 7 inch TFT Screen for Garden Home 868 MHZ
Straightforward to set up, good console display and good wireless range. Very pleased with it and have bought a lightning detector as well. Mystified at first by a pack of bits and pins than came with it but with no instructions. That turned out to be an anti-bird perching kit.
Despite waffle below, I’m more than happy with this weather station.
The sensor array is sited to give maximum clearance above roof ridge. The main downside for me is that the array, despite a wireless connection to the console, has to be taken down from our gable end to upgrade its firmware, to press its reset button if necessary (not needed so far) and to change the back-up battery, which does not recharge via solar power.
This is not straightforward ladder work for me and is hampered by the need to run a cable up the pole for the heater power in winter. The connector for this cable has to be unplugged to get the pole down but it is so short that it is almost at the top of the pole, in free space 2.5m higher up!
I’ve had to leave a load of heater cable looped up and taped to the bracket at the base of the mast to give some leeway to get the pole and array down. It would be a lot easier if a short extension were to be supplied (say 2m to 3m) so that the heater cable could be disconnected near the pole mounting bracket and allow the array and pole to be removed in one go with no entangling cable.
5.0 out of 5 stars Works well and initial set up is easy
Interesting. Can track wind, solar energy, temperature, pressure, rainfall and humidity.
If you like knowing what the weather is like right next to you this does it great. What it doesn’t do is forecast what will happen next. That said if you compare some stuff with a professional weather station you can see if it’s worth driving a few miles. Especially useful with our North sea fret. The graphs are handy and the app is very useful. You can even share the device with other users so they can see what the weather is doing near you. Well made. Attaches to a pole. Luckily I had one. Display font/colour is basic but you can spend more and get a better one with same weather station. It is fully featured display though.
I have had it some months now, no faults at all.
Data sensor readings all as expected.
Outdoor sensor battery yet to change, built in solar cell might be good.
Works fine on the home network, WiFi is fine no dropouts or missing data no nothing.
The display console handles internet and power grid cuts well, catches up data to the internet services it seems.
Doesn’t consume much power, even on backup battery
The display console can be a little hard to read, you have to be specifically positioned and the console buttons can be a little funny but may just need wearing in it weeks, not a bother really most when most interaction is by the android app.
It makes a good night light.
Rain counter maintenance is due, will update if any problems.
Seems to be working so far. Setup took some fathoming out just needs patience whilst not resorting to use a Birmingham screw driver (hammer) to it. More late night reading required
Purchased back in January & finally got round to installing in April.
Packaged securely. The sensor array was easy to construct (just the wind vane & annometer to position.) Mounted on a pole outside & turned on.
Followed the instructions from the manual & downloaded the software onto my phone which gave a step by step guide on how to connect to the Internet & now, within an hour it’s all up & running
Very easy to setup and upload data to Weather Underground, Met Office WOW, and Weather Cloud.
Out of the box this kit covers
Temp-In+Out/Pressure/Wind/Rain/Solar/UV and includes a display console which acts as a gateway to upload to internet websites – Pre configured for WU, WOW, and Weather Cloud and Ecowitt’s own cloud storage service.
Before buying the Ecowitt kit I looked at all the other major players.
Some of the products available are clearly aimed at professional level installations with costs starting at 900 just for Temp/Pressure/Wind/Rain measurements with an add-on UV sensor costing more than the Ecowitt kit in total.
Without going to yet another even higher cost level, if one wanted non mechanical wind measurements for long term maintenance free observations, the competitors costs are well over 1500 for the same set of features that the Ecowitt equipment offers while including a Sonic Anemometer.
Clearly this is not true professional equipment, but the build quality and thought that has gone into this kit is very high. For home observations I cannot rate it highly enough.
I started mounting the rain gauge and main sensor array at a low level to check everything worked as expected. I did find a bug that meant that you couldn’t offset the North orientation of the main array. With a couple of emails to Customer Support in HK it was sorted by updating to the latest Firmware. I would suggest that a Firmware update is probably a good idea even if you don’t intend to mount in a non standard orientation, just in case.
Also supplied in the box is a cable with a waterproof plug and bare ends that is for connecting the heater element built into the array for cold weather measurements of wind when ice may affect the sonar. This is ideally attached to a 12V supply which is available from Ecowitt and a UK supplier of Weather Spares, but can be attached to a 5V USB supply (cheap) if only needing protection down to about -10C.
I have now mounted the main array much higher for more consistent wind readings and added anti-bird spikes to the rain gauge !
The main array has a solar cell with a super capacitor that provides most if not all of the needed power. This is backed up by 2x AA cells which are supposed to be Lithium type for greatest life span and cold weather performance, but I am currently using Eneloop NiMH and they are working well.
In order to avoid having to lower the main array (and climb a ladder) to change the battery backup cells I have bought a spare battery compartment cover and a remote battery pack case and dummy cells, made by Ecowitt for another of their models (available from Ecowitt or the Weather Spares company).
Adaptation was a simple matter of a couple of holes in the cover and passing the wires through new holes in the ends of the dummy cells and soldering the 2 wires back together having been passed through said holes. Picture hopefully explains all. Small amounts of super glue were used to seal the holes in the cover.
I have also added an Ecowitt lightning sensor which looks really nifty in its case mounted to the rain gauge stand. Not really needed, but maybe fun to see what it shows ?
If you want to save quite a bit of money, or maybe just prefer a mobile phone to a console for viewing your observations, then the GW1100 is a marvellous (tiny) piece of kit that can be purchased with the sensor array and will constantly upload data to the same weather websites. Comes with an extension USB cable for use with an existing USB phone charger / 5V supply.
Overall – Great kit at a great price.
Added screenshots of the Ecowitt cloud website that show the neat graphs available for selectable time periods.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great kit - Just as good if not better than those at a much higher cost.
This was purchased to replace my old weather station that had been running for the past 17 years. Good piece of kit for the money, more functions than my old station and very good that it links to the internet – very useful for looking at trends.
Installing the station (And lightning protector) was very easy, nothing more than switching on. No need to pair. Connecting to the typical weatherstation data providers cant be more easy either. The only reservation I have is the accuracy of the rain gauge. It is under reporting. The gauge is installed level, and next to an old fashioned gauge. The ecowitt reports 16% too little. I compensated for that in the Ecowitt setup. It still leaves doubt. The reported level seem to depend on how heavy the rain actually is. This is the reason I gave it 4 stars. The other sensors are spot on, including the extra lightning detector. Only one storm so far detected, spot on when compared to the lightning radar available from websites
Took a while looking at different stations but glad I chose this one. Pretty easy to set up and use and the option to view the data on your phone via app or website is great. Doesn’t come with a mounting pole.
This was simple to setup and get operating and is weatherproof . My only issue was tha the lightning detector isnt compatable as per the sellers answer so I am returning it and buying a 3500 . Even so – for the basic functions ( rain wind temp hunidity etc) it is excellent and super simple – I would use the web interphase rather than the app . Took 10 minutes to setup and was then fully functional NB there is an arrow on the weather vane that needs to point west – looking at others near me 90% of people havn’t noticed this ( it uses it for windf direction so all local ones are showing wrong wind direction )
We bought this because a succession of outdoor sensors for weather stations kept failing, so we thought we’d invest in something more robust and more informative.
We are really happy with it because it provides far more information than our previous weather stations and it syncs with a web based server giving us access on our phones/computers along with historical data for analysis. We intend to use the info to decide on whether or not solar panels and/or a small wind turbine would be beneficial.
Installation and setup was a piece of cake. The instructions are very detailed, and every single step is fully explained in the setup procedure. Further, all of the functions are explained in sufficient detail for somebody who has never used one before to understand how it works. The strength of signal between the sensor unit and the base station is strong even though it is further away than our previous sensors which struggled to maintain contact over that distance and wall thickness.
The base unit is good, but we could live without the display as it is easier to use an iPhone.
The readings can be calibrated but we have not done this as the results it is giving are very similar to the readings of other weather stations in our area. So, we are confident it is close enough for what we need to know.
If I was to recommend any changes to the design, it would be to put the bubble for levelling and direction indicator on the underside of the sensor unit so that it can be levelled and aimed from below when being sited high up. Otherwise you need to get it level on the pole with the pole set up plumb on the ground, then carry it up a ladder pre assembled.
The station is easy to assemble and to set up. Connection to Wi-Fi was straight forward and the console is easy to read. I connected to the Ecowitt website easily enough but the Wunderground connection has what appears to be an insurmountable flaw in as much as transmission to the Wunderground network could not be achieved due to the workstation model not being listed in the setup instructions and the Easy weather app is not used by the Ecowitt software. Apart from that though I think the station is good value for the price paid.
Konfiguracja prosta. Zero problemw. Moliwo przegldania wykresw na konsoli, na telefonie (aplikacja Ecowitt) i na stronie internetowej. Stacja podaje gdy kocz si baterie, podaje moc zasigu czujnika. Moliwo rozbudowy o dodatkowe czujniki. Jasny wywietlacz – ale z moliwoci regulacji. Same plusy. Przydaoby si jedynie, eby historyczne wykresy na konsoli mona byo oglda z datami i godzinami na osi x, a nie tylko liczb godzin wstecz.
My mother is a weather enthusiastic so I’ve decided to buy her a weather station as a gift.
Reading the reviews here, i was a bit worried that the setup process will be complicated, but was positively surprised that it was quite straight forward to setup and link with the different online platforms.
Beyond being able to track the different weather stats, my mother loves the option to link it to the weather underground platform and track everything remotely and share her station with other weather enthusiasts.
Good decent value for money home weather station,
My outdoor unit went faulty after 7mths, and I emailed support @ecowitt.. I was eagerly waiting for a reply email.. to buy the faulty part, and a brand new unit arrived at my door Wow 10/10 customer service.. well done ECOWITT
Its important to note, this product is days old, and I do wonder if Ecowitt care about failures after 12 months. Why is there no extended warranty available from the manufacturer?
Accurate readings compared with other industrial grade sensors at my site.
Suggest set rain gauge to 0.01 inch, as metric option (0.1mm) is clearly wrong. The tipping amount of the raingauge cannot be altered. I have ascertained 0.01″ is correct. The conversion to mm is 0.254mm. Clearly 0.1mm is wrong.
Ecowitt please address.
This weather station is very good for the money.I would definitely recommend it.only down side the uv over Read’s.I have the lightning detector as well.got the weather station on May 30th and the lightning detector on August 13th.all in all very happy.
Straightforward to set up, good console display and good wireless range. Very pleased with it and have bought a lightning detector as well. Mystified at first by a pack of bits and pins than came with it but with no instructions. That turned out to be an anti-bird perching kit.
Despite waffle below, I’m more than happy with this weather station.
The sensor array is sited to give maximum clearance above roof ridge. The main downside for me is that the array, despite a wireless connection to the console, has to be taken down from our gable end to upgrade its firmware, to press its reset button if necessary (not needed so far) and to change the back-up battery, which does not recharge via solar power.
This is not straightforward ladder work for me and is hampered by the need to run a cable up the pole for the heater power in winter. The connector for this cable has to be unplugged to get the pole down but it is so short that it is almost at the top of the pole, in free space 2.5m higher up!
I’ve had to leave a load of heater cable looped up and taped to the bracket at the base of the mast to give some leeway to get the pole and array down. It would be a lot easier if a short extension were to be supplied (say 2m to 3m) so that the heater cable could be disconnected near the pole mounting bracket and allow the array and pole to be removed in one go with no entangling cable.
Interesting. Can track wind, solar energy, temperature, pressure, rainfall and humidity.
If you like knowing what the weather is like right next to you this does it great. What it doesn’t do is forecast what will happen next. That said if you compare some stuff with a professional weather station you can see if it’s worth driving a few miles. Especially useful with our North sea fret. The graphs are handy and the app is very useful. You can even share the device with other users so they can see what the weather is doing near you. Well made. Attaches to a pole. Luckily I had one. Display font/colour is basic but you can spend more and get a better one with same weather station. It is fully featured display though.
Using the ecowitt web software. Scaling was odd until I updated to 5.1 software, fine now.
Excellent weather station very accurate really pleased with it and once connected to wunderground even bette
I have had it some months now, no faults at all.
Data sensor readings all as expected.
Outdoor sensor battery yet to change, built in solar cell might be good.
Works fine on the home network, WiFi is fine no dropouts or missing data no nothing.
The display console handles internet and power grid cuts well, catches up data to the internet services it seems.
Doesn’t consume much power, even on backup battery
The display console can be a little hard to read, you have to be specifically positioned and the console buttons can be a little funny but may just need wearing in it weeks, not a bother really most when most interaction is by the android app.
It makes a good night light.
Rain counter maintenance is due, will update if any problems.
Great to set up. Easy to use and monitor via the websites and apps.
Seems to be working so far. Setup took some fathoming out just needs patience whilst not resorting to use a Birmingham screw driver (hammer) to it. More late night reading required
Purchased back in January & finally got round to installing in April.
Packaged securely. The sensor array was easy to construct (just the wind vane & annometer to position.) Mounted on a pole outside & turned on.
Followed the instructions from the manual & downloaded the software onto my phone which gave a step by step guide on how to connect to the Internet & now, within an hour it’s all up & running
Very happy with this purchase
Very easy to setup and upload data to Weather Underground, Met Office WOW, and Weather Cloud.
Out of the box this kit covers
Temp-In+Out/Pressure/Wind/Rain/Solar/UV and includes a display console which acts as a gateway to upload to internet websites – Pre configured for WU, WOW, and Weather Cloud and Ecowitt’s own cloud storage service.
Before buying the Ecowitt kit I looked at all the other major players.
Some of the products available are clearly aimed at professional level installations with costs starting at 900 just for Temp/Pressure/Wind/Rain measurements with an add-on UV sensor costing more than the Ecowitt kit in total.
Without going to yet another even higher cost level, if one wanted non mechanical wind measurements for long term maintenance free observations, the competitors costs are well over 1500 for the same set of features that the Ecowitt equipment offers while including a Sonic Anemometer.
Clearly this is not true professional equipment, but the build quality and thought that has gone into this kit is very high. For home observations I cannot rate it highly enough.
I started mounting the rain gauge and main sensor array at a low level to check everything worked as expected. I did find a bug that meant that you couldn’t offset the North orientation of the main array. With a couple of emails to Customer Support in HK it was sorted by updating to the latest Firmware. I would suggest that a Firmware update is probably a good idea even if you don’t intend to mount in a non standard orientation, just in case.
Also supplied in the box is a cable with a waterproof plug and bare ends that is for connecting the heater element built into the array for cold weather measurements of wind when ice may affect the sonar. This is ideally attached to a 12V supply which is available from Ecowitt and a UK supplier of Weather Spares, but can be attached to a 5V USB supply (cheap) if only needing protection down to about -10C.
I have now mounted the main array much higher for more consistent wind readings and added anti-bird spikes to the rain gauge !
The main array has a solar cell with a super capacitor that provides most if not all of the needed power. This is backed up by 2x AA cells which are supposed to be Lithium type for greatest life span and cold weather performance, but I am currently using Eneloop NiMH and they are working well.
In order to avoid having to lower the main array (and climb a ladder) to change the battery backup cells I have bought a spare battery compartment cover and a remote battery pack case and dummy cells, made by Ecowitt for another of their models (available from Ecowitt or the Weather Spares company).
Adaptation was a simple matter of a couple of holes in the cover and passing the wires through new holes in the ends of the dummy cells and soldering the 2 wires back together having been passed through said holes. Picture hopefully explains all. Small amounts of super glue were used to seal the holes in the cover.
I have also added an Ecowitt lightning sensor which looks really nifty in its case mounted to the rain gauge stand. Not really needed, but maybe fun to see what it shows ?
If you want to save quite a bit of money, or maybe just prefer a mobile phone to a console for viewing your observations, then the GW1100 is a marvellous (tiny) piece of kit that can be purchased with the sensor array and will constantly upload data to the same weather websites. Comes with an extension USB cable for use with an existing USB phone charger / 5V supply.
Overall – Great kit at a great price.
Added screenshots of the Ecowitt cloud website that show the neat graphs available for selectable time periods.
This was purchased to replace my old weather station that had been running for the past 17 years. Good piece of kit for the money, more functions than my old station and very good that it links to the internet – very useful for looking at trends.
Installing the station (And lightning protector) was very easy, nothing more than switching on. No need to pair. Connecting to the typical weatherstation data providers cant be more easy either. The only reservation I have is the accuracy of the rain gauge. It is under reporting. The gauge is installed level, and next to an old fashioned gauge. The ecowitt reports 16% too little. I compensated for that in the Ecowitt setup. It still leaves doubt. The reported level seem to depend on how heavy the rain actually is. This is the reason I gave it 4 stars. The other sensors are spot on, including the extra lightning detector. Only one storm so far detected, spot on when compared to the lightning radar available from websites
Took a while looking at different stations but glad I chose this one. Pretty easy to set up and use and the option to view the data on your phone via app or website is great. Doesn’t come with a mounting pole.
This was simple to setup and get operating and is weatherproof . My only issue was tha the lightning detector isnt compatable as per the sellers answer so I am returning it and buying a 3500 . Even so – for the basic functions ( rain wind temp hunidity etc) it is excellent and super simple – I would use the web interphase rather than the app . Took 10 minutes to setup and was then fully functional NB there is an arrow on the weather vane that needs to point west – looking at others near me 90% of people havn’t noticed this ( it uses it for windf direction so all local ones are showing wrong wind direction )
We bought this because a succession of outdoor sensors for weather stations kept failing, so we thought we’d invest in something more robust and more informative.
We are really happy with it because it provides far more information than our previous weather stations and it syncs with a web based server giving us access on our phones/computers along with historical data for analysis. We intend to use the info to decide on whether or not solar panels and/or a small wind turbine would be beneficial.
Installation and setup was a piece of cake. The instructions are very detailed, and every single step is fully explained in the setup procedure. Further, all of the functions are explained in sufficient detail for somebody who has never used one before to understand how it works. The strength of signal between the sensor unit and the base station is strong even though it is further away than our previous sensors which struggled to maintain contact over that distance and wall thickness.
The base unit is good, but we could live without the display as it is easier to use an iPhone.
The readings can be calibrated but we have not done this as the results it is giving are very similar to the readings of other weather stations in our area. So, we are confident it is close enough for what we need to know.
If I was to recommend any changes to the design, it would be to put the bubble for levelling and direction indicator on the underside of the sensor unit so that it can be levelled and aimed from below when being sited high up. Otherwise you need to get it level on the pole with the pole set up plumb on the ground, then carry it up a ladder pre assembled.
Einfach zu installieren und echt bersichtliches Display. Sehr vorteilhaft, dass man diese Station auch erweitern kann. Gute Qualitt.
The station is easy to assemble and to set up. Connection to Wi-Fi was straight forward and the console is easy to read. I connected to the Ecowitt website easily enough but the Wunderground connection has what appears to be an insurmountable flaw in as much as transmission to the Wunderground network could not be achieved due to the workstation model not being listed in the setup instructions and the Easy weather app is not used by the Ecowitt software. Apart from that though I think the station is good value for the price paid.
Konfiguracja prosta. Zero problemw. Moliwo przegldania wykresw na konsoli, na telefonie (aplikacja Ecowitt) i na stronie internetowej. Stacja podaje gdy kocz si baterie, podaje moc zasigu czujnika. Moliwo rozbudowy o dodatkowe czujniki. Jasny wywietlacz – ale z moliwoci regulacji. Same plusy. Przydaoby si jedynie, eby historyczne wykresy na konsoli mona byo oglda z datami i godzinami na osi x, a nie tylko liczb godzin wstecz.
Reading the reviews here, i was a bit worried that the setup process will be complicated, but was positively surprised that it was quite straight forward to setup and link with the different online platforms.
Beyond being able to track the different weather stats, my mother loves the option to link it to the weather underground platform and track everything remotely and share her station with other weather enthusiasts.
Great product.
My outdoor unit went faulty after 7mths, and I emailed support @ecowitt.. I was eagerly waiting for a reply email.. to buy the faulty part, and a brand new unit arrived at my door Wow 10/10 customer service.. well done ECOWITT
Its important to note, this product is days old, and I do wonder if Ecowitt care about failures after 12 months. Why is there no extended warranty available from the manufacturer?
Accurate readings compared with other industrial grade sensors at my site.
Suggest set rain gauge to 0.01 inch, as metric option (0.1mm) is clearly wrong. The tipping amount of the raingauge cannot be altered. I have ascertained 0.01″ is correct. The conversion to mm is 0.254mm. Clearly 0.1mm is wrong.
Ecowitt please address.