Netatmo Update

The Wind Gauge for The Weather Station died last October and while replacing it I moved to to the same pole the Davis station is on using Netatmo Mount, for Netatmo Rain Gauge and Wind Gauge - Retail Packaging - Black  which seemed to work well at the time. I noticed wind had knocked the gauge off vertical today though.  Problem is when I went to rotate the gauge back clockwise it loosened the fitting and if I tried to tighten it, the nut hit the bottom of the gauge before it would tighten enough to stay in place. The wings on the nut are just too big. As you can see in this picture, the nut must be turned so the wings are far from vertical to allow the gauge to be positioned vertically.

Fortunately there is a workaround. You just loosen the nut, turn the gauge counter clockwise till it is about horizontal, tighten the nut fairly tight and then rotate the gauge back. The wing should now be on the other side of the gauge so that if the wind blows hard enough to move the gauge it again it will tighten the nut if it moves at all.

Moved Netatmo outdoor module

The module seems to be REAL sensitive to sun light. I had it on the east side of the house at the top of the doorway trim.

This morning for example it was showing 100 when it was actually 75 out. The shadow from the overhang was down to just above the door. If you look at the graph for June 5 2017 for outdoor temperature  you can see when I moved it to the north side of the house to get it out of the sun about 10 AM.

In fact going back and looking at the last week the peak temp recorded by this station is always in the period right before the shadow makes it down the wall to shade the module.

Looking back at the data this appears to have been this way for months. I just did not notice till the high temp alarms started triggering.

The downside of moving it to the north side is the WiFi signal dropped from 5 bars to 2 so I'll need to keep an eye on it to make sure it stays connected. (Actually Homeseer will do this for me.) I'm not too worried since the Wind sensor has been running fine at just 2 bars for awhile now.

Wind gauge added to Netatmo station plus gotchas.

Wind Gauge for The Netatmo Weather Station
I mounted it to the top of the pole where the Davis station used to be with a camera mount. Not sure I like the mount or the location though.

I'll probably end up getting the Netatmo Mount, for Netatmo Rain Gauge and Wind Gauge to mount it despite the price once I sort out where I want to put it permanently. I've been having issues with the outdoor module loosing connection. I had it attached to a bird feeder hanger and the metal in that seems to really messed with it after awhile. Putting fresh batteries in helped for about 24 hours. Then I moved the indoor module into the living room to remove an intervening wall. Finally I mounted it to the side of the house and that jumped the signal back from 2 bars to 5!

Even putting the wind gauge atop that pole looks to have messed with it a good bit. Sitting in the yard on a block to test signal it was getting 4 bars near the pole. But on the pole is has dropped top to 2 bars. Seems like things are pretty iffy below 3 bars. Fortunately with the Homeseer plugin I get an alert if any of the sensors do not connect to the hub at least once in an hour so monitoring it is simple.

Connected my Netatmo station to home automation

UltraNetatmo3 HSPI is a great plugin for Homeseer that lets you add local weather sensors to your Homeseer home automation. Not only can you make you home aware of things like rain or CO2 levels but it monitors the WiFi, battery and last updated status so can be alerted in your favorite way that there is a problem without having to monitor your site page. This is especially useful as there seems to be no native or IFTTT notification for these. The above link has screen shots and a link to the 6 page user manual.

Rain gauge added to Netatmo station

NETATMO Rain Gauge for Netatmo Weather Station

Netatmo sent out an email with a 20% off promo code so I checked on Amazon and found they have marked them down to 26% off so I added one to my station. The wind gauge was not marked down so I ordered it direct from Netatmo to get the 20% off. Should be here soon.
This is how I mounted it.