Outdoor Living : La Crosse Technology WS-2317 Professional Weather Station

Rating: - Short lived
I purchased this weather station to replace a 12 year old Davis Wizard III whose display was getting dim. I had no trouble setting up the system and everything worked as advertised. I found the display very hard to read and had to eventually lay the unit flat on a table to be able to read it. After a day it began to drop the connection between the remote unit and the base station. It would always reaquire the signal when I pressed the proper key but then the next time I checked it was down again. I decide to use the cable included with the system to hard wire the outdoor and indoor unit. The next day we had a thunderstorm and guess what. Lighting hit the wind sender and followed the cable inside and burnt out everything. I got a grand total of 7 days use out of it. I can't say for sure that the bolt of lighting would not have taken out my old Davis Wizard but it's still going and I guess I'll just stick with it.

---

Rating: - Excellent Product - Very Complete
Those of you who always wanted a Weather Station, but
found the good ones just too expensive, the La Crosse
Technology WS-2317 Professional Weather Station for US$99.99 is just too good to pass-up
I ordered one of these when I was in NJ on vacation last week and installed it in my Caribbean Ham Radio Shack this morning, it is very impressive indeed. It comes very complete, including an interface cable and PC Software for Real-time display, Programmable Alarms, Data Logging and Reporting and Web-Posting. Can be used Wireless (433MHz) or Wired. You won't regret this purchase.
73, Cletus 9Z4CLB

---

Rating: - LaCrose weather station
The station was easy to install and works perfectly. I do question over time if the wiring will hold up outdoors. The communication to the computer works fine but the format is a bit awkward, you have to use text format to extract the data.

---

Rating: - I'm satisfied
I have had the WS-2317 running for a couple months now. My first problem was the barometer. I wasn't getting any readings using the AC adapter. The manual doesn't specify it, but after an email off to Lacrosse, and their next day reply, it was a power problem. I installed some fresh alkaline batteries in the console, (I didn't have any installed) and voila!, problem solved. Supposedly you can remove the batteries, after starting with the AC adapter, but I left them installed.

The console/receiver is on the second floor, of our den, on the street side of the house. The weather station is mounted on my shed near the rear lot line. It is working fine wirelessly approx 150' away, through two walls, using alkaline batteries in the transmitter. I will install lithium batteries before winter.

Let me add that mounting the sensors is the biggest challenge. I bought a 5' antenna mount, and a sidewall mount, for about $15 at my local Men*rds. I ran all the cables under the siding, and gathered all the excess wiring at the corner. I taped it up to stiffen it and shoved it into the vinyl corner. This took all day for me to get done, I have uploaded photo's of the unit mounted.

I'm using the WUHU weather software (freeware),to upload weather data to the Weather Underground. I'm using Tincam for my webcam (trial version) at the moment. There is a freeware FTP Webcam program called Fwink. I haven't tried it, but I plan to soon. My webcam is a Logitech Communicate STX. I can't recommend it as a weather camera.... I'm looking for something better. The auto exposure is poor; I have an old pair of sunglasses on it to make it work in the daylight.

I bought my unit from Amazon, using free shipping, and it arrived in 4 days. IF you want an economical Personal Weather Station, this is a good choice.

---

Rating: - Excellent weather station
After looking at the different weather stations and reading reviews, I had to decide how much money to spend. Since this was going to be used for my knowledge and sometimes for NOAA (as a weather spotter), I wanted something dependable and reasonable in price. So I checked out this unit and compared it to others and read the reviews and decided on this model.
After we got it, we had to decide where we wanted to put it and we had the temperature gauge in a temp position to see how it all works together..Well..let me tell you. I works just fine! (we will be moving the temperature gauge as it is getting radiational heat from the roof below where it is set)I downloaded the CD information and got that set up and bought up the screen and there all my information was! The weather station was already "talking" to my computer! I was amazed! It is easy to set up and the information given was right on target. The atomic clock etc sets itself..don't even have to worry about that. You can also manually change some of the settings. I haven't delved into too much of it yet but from what I am seeing everything is right on target! For the money, I am glad that I went with this unit instead of the more expensive ones. I think this will work just fine for what I want it for. Amazon.com came thru for me again!