Weather@Home Thermo Plus

Weather@Home Thermo Plus allows users to view up-to-the-minute weather updates.

In our part of the country, it’s hard to determine what the weather will be like day-to-day. Our meteorologists do the best they can, but unfortunately, the mid-west is just unpredictable. Nearly every day during the summer has some chance of precipitation or scattered T-storms. And, even if the temperature is 80°F, the humidity can make it feel an unbearable 100°F. So, it’s good to have a weather station placed just outside your door so you know exactly what you are getting into when you leave the house.

Oregon Scientific has a line of weather stations that help with this mid-western weather problem. One of them is the Weather@Home Thermo Plus. Weather@Home Thermo Plus is a Bluetooth enabled thermo-hygro monitor that transmits the weather outside to your weather station indoors. It comes with one weather station unit that sits indoors and one outdoor temperature/humidity sensor. Because it’s Bluetooth enabled, the Weather@Home can display information through the Oregon Scientific app on your smart phone. Some of the main features of the Weather@Home Thermo Plus include:

• A transmission range up to 50 meters
• 12 hour + weather forecast with pressure trends
• Indoor temperature and humidity with trends
• Outdoor temperature and humidity trends w/temperature and humidity sensor
• Ice alert
• LED backlight
• Data logger
• 7-day weather history (viewable from app)
• Additional data available on app

We discovered that the first step in setting your your weather station is to find a good place for the outdoor temperature and humidity sensor. For a couple of days, we simply set it on a plastic lawn chair on our front porch. We were delighted to find that it worked, but with it being in direct sunlight, the temperatures were off the charts. We were getting readings of 118°F when it was only 95°. So, we found a place to mount the sensor above our doorway. This keeps the sensor in a good place where the sunlight will not hit it directly and it is safe from other elements like rain or snow. One thing I do want to point out is that even though the sensor is easy to mount, it did not come with any screws or nails to mount it with. We were lucky enough to have a screw the correct size in our home, but thought this was odd to not include with the package.

That is another thing I want to point out – the package. The packaging is very plain. It comes in that awful plastic packaging that is nearly impossible to open and causes wrap rage. I would love to see the packaging develop into something that appeals more to Apple users or smart phone users in general. That market is used to clean, frustration-free packaging that keeps their products safe, but also allows easy access.

When connecting to Weather@Home Thermo Plus, we’ve had ups and downs. There have been times that the connection happens quickly and we can get the data we’re looking for and be on our way. Other times, it’s very, very slow to connect. So slow in fact, that we end up closing and reopening the app in order to form a solid connection. When we’ve connected to Weather@Home, the app has been helpful and provides the data we are looking for.

Weather@Home provides very accurate readings. We have a Nest Thermostat in our home as well. So, we were able to test the Weather@Home against the readings the Nest had. There were very, very close. If the Nest was reporting an indoor temperature of 75°, the Weather@Home stated it was 74°. There were always within a degree or two of each other. The same is true of the outdoor sensor. We were receiving similar readings to what the meteorologists were reporting on the news during our testing.

One other thing I wanted to point out is the sleek design of the weather station itself. It sits about 4-6 inches tall and has a very slim profile. It doesn’t take up much space at all so it’s great as a desk accessory or on display on a bookcase.

Even though I believe there is some room for improvement, the Weather@Home Thermo Plus is a wonderful addition to any home. It can help you decide on what to wear when leaving for work before you even step out the door. To find out more or to order Visit Weather@home from Oregon Scientific.