The Tempest (Score: 6/10) is a current entry to the scene, and like Netatmo it goals to provide you lots of info with a restricted footprint. Although the {hardware} is bigger than Netatmo’s, it’s extra discreet than AcuRite and Ambient’s, wanting a bit like a fowl feeder and supposed to be mounted on a pole (not included) someplace in your yard or in your roof. The system additionally requires an indoor module that relays knowledge from the sensor to your Wi-Fi community, however that module doesn’t present any indoor local weather info. Setup is pretty painless, no less than compared to most different climate stations in the marketplace.
Tempest gives fairly a bit of knowledge, together with temperature, humidity, barometric stress, wind pace/path, lighting strike information, and UV knowledge. The system additionally measures rain exercise, however it does so with no conventional rain-catching funnel. As an alternative, Tempest makes use of a haptic rain sensor, primarily measuring when and the way forcefully water droplets hit the highest of the gadget. It’s surprisingly correct and quite a bit much less messy than the standard rain sensor—and it doesn’t must be cleaned periodically.
Tempest’s temperature readings are likely to run somewhat excessive, and its climate forecasts have been the worst on this roundup, lacking on common by 5.2 levels. Tempest’s forecasts are typically fairly wild, together with one which guessed the excessive could be 9 levels decrease than Netatmo and one other that forecast a 30 p.c probability of “wintry combine” precipitation on a day when there was no rain and we had a 40-degree low. That’s odd as a result of forecasting is meant to be Tempest’s forte, utilizing machine studying to “considerably enhance the forecast over time,” per the corporate. I’ve been testing the gadget for a number of months and nonetheless see some fairly out-there predictions on in any other case unremarkable days.
My different criticism with Tempest is that its app isn’t as helpful because it might be. The true-time and forecast views on the principle web page are intuitive, however if you wish to delve into historical past, you might be introduced solely with a numeric knowledge sheet of every day’s climate. Going again in time means flipping via web page after web page, sooner or later at a time, till you discover the day that pursuits you, with no long-term charts or graphs to be discovered.
Total, I do like Tempest regardless of its faults, specifically due to the {hardware}, however $329 is asking an terrible lot for the package. With an up to date app and a few fine-tuning to the AI, I could also be inclined to revise my score upward down the road.