La Crosse weather station overview
Every time we intend to leave the house, we look out the window and at the thermometer in order to know what the weather is like, how to dress and whether there is a need to take an umbrella with us. Wanting to know the upcoming weather, we listen to forecasts on television or look on the Internet. Currently, modern technologies already allow you to have your own personal meteorological center, which is often able to predict the weather in your area better and more accurately than forecasters who compose a generalized forecast for large territories. For this reason, in our time, a home weather station is becoming a completely familiar home device, like a TV or computer. At the moment, a large number of various equipment of this direction from various brands is offered on the Ukrainian market. All these devices differ both in the number of functions and data output, and in the degree of convenience of their use and the level of reliability of the weather forecast.
The subject of our review will be the weather station of the French trade mark LaCrosse Technology, well-known and popular in this market, model WS9040.
More details:
The characteristics of this station can serve as a good guide for everyone who wants to buy a device of this kind. However, let's not get ahead of ourselves and start in order. To begin with, let's turn our attention to the box in which the station is delivered, and to its contents.
The station is packed in a small robust, colorfully illustrated blue box-case measuring 280x360x70 mm. The total weight of the box is 740 g.
Inside it is the station itself, which consists of a radio sensor (transmitter) of temperature and humidity with a special mounting bracket and instructions in Ukrainian. The station itself is relatively small, its dimensions are 179x101x28.5 mm, and its weight is 240 g (with batteries). The size of the sensor is 128.3x38.2x21.2 mm, and the weight is 125g. (with batteries).
The design of the meteorological station and the sensor allows them to be installed both in a tabletop (horizontal) position and placed on a wall. For power supply of the station and the sensor, two AA (LR6) 1.5 V cells are required, the compartments for which are located on the rear panels of the station and the sensor.
Enclosures Details:
La Crosse WS9040
More details:
stations and sensors are made of high quality plastic, very ergonomic steel-silver color so that they fit organically into the interior of a modern home.
Technical parameters of the station and data presentation formats.
Indoor air temperature:
- Unit of measurement: ° C or ° F.
- Measurement range: -9.9 ° C to + 59.9 ° C.
- Accuracy: +/- 0.1 ° C.
- Measurement frequency: every 15 seconds.
Outdoor air temperature:
- Unit of measurement: ° C or ° F.
- Range: - 29.9 ° C to + 69.9 ° C.
- Accuracy: +/- 0.1 ° C.
- Measurement frequency: every 4 seconds.
Indoor and outdoor humidity:
- Unit of measurement:% RH.
- Measurement range: 1% to 99%.
- Accuracy: 1%.
- Measurement error: +/- 3% at temperatures> - 10 ° C and <+ 40 ° C and +/- 5% outside the values
- Measurement frequency: every 20 seconds (indoors), every 4 seconds (outdoors).
Atmosphere pressure:
- Measurement of atmospheric pressure. Measurement unit: hPa or inHg.
The procedure for turning on the station and sensor is very simple. First, insert the batteries into the sensor, and then within 2 minutes, then do the same with the weather station. This is necessary so that the station, when switched on, instantly detects and connects the sensor to itself. If this does not happen within the next 2 minutes, then remove the batteries and repeat the entire procedure again after at least one minute. I would like to immediately make a reservation that this weather station has the ability to connect via radio channel, simultaneously to 3 external sensors, displaying information from them in turn. With this connection, the batteries must be inserted into the second and third sensors within 45 seconds from the moment the first sensor is connected to the station.Data transmission from sensors to the station occurs at a frequency of 868 MHz, while the distance between the sensors and the station can be up to 100m (in case of line of sight).
An external sensor transmits a signal to a weather station using "IT +" - a new modern wireless data transmission technology, which was developed and introduced into production by LaCrosseTechnology. This technology has several important advantages of using, among them: high data update rate, noise immunity, increased distance of reliable signal reception, economical power consumption.
The very first practical experiments with the sensor showed that it quickly and without any problems connects to the station, and even three brick walls that accidentally happened to be between them do not become an insurmountable obstacle. Only in one case did the station lose the sensor signal when an attempt was made to locate it underground in a basement room. After the sensor was raised back to the surface, the station detected it within 2 minutes and data transmission continued. The option of connecting several sensors at once will be especially interesting for owners of suburban areas and private houses, because using three sensors, you can see not only data on temperature and humidity outside, but also similar indicators from, for example, a greenhouse, a barn and a garage. In order to increase the degree of reliability of the data, it is necessary to locate the sensor for reading the external temperature and humidity at a distance of several meters from the walls of the building and outside the zone of direct sunlight.
The sensor has a built-in 23x9mm display, on which temperature and humidity data are displayed alternately at intervals of 3 seconds.
One of the extremely useful implemented functions of this station is the automatic synchronization of the readings of the built-in clock, which is carried out with the clock standard. The standard is accurate to 1 second per million years. The reference signal of the exact time is transmitted from the suburb of Meinflingen, which is 30 km from the city of Frankfurt (Germany). The so-called DCF signal is transmitted at a frequency of 77.5 kHz and can be received within a radius of more than 1500 km. The signal is transmitted twice a day - at 2 and 3 am, which allows you to maintain the exceptional accuracy of your station's clock. The transition to winter and summer time is carried out automatically. When you turn on the station for the first time, the signal reception icon starts blinking in the upper left corner, indicating the presence of a signal and should start to be displayed constantly the next morning after night synchronization. This will allow you to judge the successful setting of the clock. Reception of this signal is available throughout Ukraine, and if the station failed to synchronize, then, most likely, the reason for this may be local electromagnetic interference or bulky reinforced concrete structures. In these cases, it is strongly recommended to position the station away from these obstacles by placing it closer to a window on the west side of the building. To display the time correctly, set the value of the time zone for Ukraine equal to 1.
The display of the station is 120x60 mm in size, has a sufficient margin of image contrast, easy-to-read digital and symbol values. Perhaps its only drawback is the lack of night illumination.
Visually, the entire display plane is divided into 4 areas.
The first one displays all the information related to the current time and date, and also clearly shows the phase of the moon.
The second area displays the room temperature and relative humidity. There is also a battery indicator and a comfort icon. Let's talk about it in more detail. The pictogram is made in the form of emoticons popular on the Internet: funny and sad.If the temperature in the room is between 20 and 25.9 ° C and the humidity is between 45 and 65%, then such conditions are considered comfortable, and a funny smiley appears on the display, otherwise you will see a sad smiley.
The third, largest, display area contains a weather trend indicator in the form of weather forecast icons, relative atmospheric pressure data, and a bar graph showing the development of relative atmospheric pressure over the last 24 hours. The weather trend indicator with weather forecast icons can show three states: clear, partly cloudy, overcast. It is very important to remember that moving the station in height, for example, from one floor of a building to another, will lead to a significant change in the barometric pressure readings. As a consequence, the accuracy of forecasting and the reliability of the display of data on the barometric pressure development chart will decrease within 24 hours after such a movement.
The fourth area of the display shows the air temperature and its relative humidity outside. In addition, there is also an indicator for receiving external sensors and icons for their connection.
The station is controlled using four functional buttons located under the display. The buttons are comfortable and responsive.
The controls are simple and intuitive. Let's pay tribute to the suppliers, thanks to the detailed and well-written instructions, we did not have any problems with setting up the weather station.
I would also like to note a number of station functions that draw attention to themselves, this is the automatic registration of the minimum and maximum values of temperature and humidity with an indication of the time and date of registration.
For greater accuracy in forecasting weather conditions, the value of the degree of sensitivity of the station to weather changes should be set individually, empirically. The sensitivity indicator is located in the third area of the display when adjusting the station parameters. A correctly tuned station will provide a forecast confidence level of 75%.
Let's summarize the results of almost a month of testing the station in our laboratory: we can say with confidence that the weather station La Crosse WS9040
More: proved to be worthy both from the point of view of the convenience of handling it, and in the degree of reliability of the data displayed by it. Weather forecasting was overwhelmingly accurate. This convenient and reliable station can be recommended by us for everyday household use. It will become a reliable helper for your family and will always keep you informed of the weather conditions.
