Oregon Scientific Wireless Talking Weather Station
December 22, 2009 by Wireless Thermometer
Filed under Wireless Thermometer Reviews
- Crescendo alarm with snooze function
- Remote sensors have up to 230 feet transmission range
- Illuminated with HiGlo™ electro-luminescent backlight
- 3 levels of pressure, temperature and humidity trend indicators: Rising, Steady or Falling
- 12 to 24 hour weather forecasts with graphical icons
Product Description
Crescendo alarm with snooze function Remote sensors have up to 325 feet transmission range Illuminated with HiGlo TM electro-luminescent backlight 3 levels of pressure trend indicators: Rising, Steady, or Falling 12 to 24 hour weather forecasts with graphical icons Ultraviolet measurement available with optional ultraviolet sensor Moon phase indicator User selectable auto-announcement of the time, temperature, humidity, & weather forecast data Monitors and dislplays… More >>
Oregon Scientific Wireless Talking Weather Station
This product has been discontinued and is being sold on clearance at this time.
After spending several hours playing with this, I can understand why it’s no longer a part of Oregon Scientific’s family of products.
In addition to the earlier review, which I agree with (especially in getting the base unit to recognize the remote sensor), I’d actually go further in criticizing this product for its completely unintuitive operation. Eight(!) buttons on the side of the base station control the unit’s functions, but several important programming sequences require two keys to be held in tandem. There is absolutely no way anyone is going to be able to use this product without tethering the terrible user manual to the base station. You’ll need to refer to it constantly.
The base station is virtually unreadable from across the room. When running from the power cord, this unit desperately needs the option of leaving the backlight on continuously. No such option.
Other instructions in the manual don’t seem to correlate with the actual unit either. Certain product features are given a passing mention in the manual, but without any significant details (changing languages, understanding “zones” when setting up the unit, etc.)
The unit sets the clock from a longwave radio signal from WWVB, transmitting from Ft. Collins, Colorado. Unfortunately, those of us on the east coast tend to experience weak signals and considerable interference owing to all of the electronic devices we tend to run in our homes these days. Even when placing the remote sensor outside, it can take 24 hours or more to “lock” onto the time signal station.
The “talking” feature is nominally useful. The female voice is very clear and natural sounding, but she only announces the time, temperature, relative humidity, and “forecast.” No barometric pressure is vocalized, and the “forecast” in a best guess based on the trend in barometric pressure, and is more of a general guess than anything useful.
For these reasons and those from the earlier review, I am returning the product to Amazon. Nobody wants to wade through a manual to operate one of these things, and with the unit being difficult to read, and the voice feature more gimmick than useful, you’d do better looking elsewhere.
Rating: 1 / 5
The silver station shown is the base. It plugs into the wall (if you want the voice feature), and can display information about itself and up to 5 remote sensors (that you can place outside). It comes with one small, white, remote sensor. And batteries
It does exactly what it says; talks and shows the weather. Pressing the top of the base station for two seconds will make the slighly tinny female voice say the time, temperature, humidity, and forecast (presumably based on barometer).
However, I had a dickens of a time trying te set it up (it didn’t recognize the remote sensor because I turned it on AFTER turning on the base station), but once I turned them on in the correct order, it was fine. The manual is very obtuse. That lost it one star, but if you’re reading this review, you probably won’t have that problem, eh?
Second lost star was for the LCD dispay. It has a terrible viewing angle. If you hold the base station and tilt it toward you, the text is nice and dark. But from straight on, the sides, or from the bottom, it’s very faded out. I know it has a talking feature, but I’d like to read it without tilting it all over the place. I probably wouldn’t have taken this star away had the item been under 85 bucks.
Otherwise, my dad is thrilled with it.
Rating: 3 / 5
After looking over a lot of weather stations I settled on this model. It is a very good looking unit. It is not intuitive to set up so you need to read the instruction manual. The main unit made the connection to the sensor very quickly. The model does talk – but the voice alarm only gives the time and not the weather forecast. On the up side, you can set a weather alert to wake you up prior to the normal alarm time if the temperature drops below freezing in the event of a storm. The only issue I have with this model is that even with the blue backlight, the unit is hard to read. It would have been better if the display gave more of a contrast so it was more visible.
Rating: 4 / 5