NetatmoWeatherStation
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AtmoBar brings Netatmo weather data to the Mac
A few years back I reviewed Netatmo, a personal weather station that delivers information on both inside and outside temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide level, and other bits of information about your home's comfort. The device syncs to an iOS app, so you're never more than a tap away from current data and history regarding your personal comfort. Recently I heard about an OS X app that places the Netatmo information in your Mac's menu bar. AtmoBar (US$2.99) is in the Mac App Store now, and it's a very slick way of looking at your weather data with a click. As you'd expect, AtmoBar installs easily from the Mac App Store. Once it is launched, there's just one thing you have to do -- log into your Netatmo account. Once that's done, you see the current outdoor and indoor temperatures in your menu bar. With a click, a dropdown appears with detailed information, including the outdoor and indoor temperatures, barometric pressure indoors, outdoor and indoor humidity, and the indoor sound and CO2 levels. The outdoor and indoor temperatures are also graphed from midnight to the current time. Click disclosure triangles on the dropdown, and you're greeted with more graphs for all of the items that are not graphed by default. Unfortunately, the popup graphs need a little work. For example, some of the graphs had no scale on the vertical axis (see humidity outdoor graph image in the slideshow), or had metric values where they should have been imperial values (see pressure indoor graph image in the slideshow). Still, it's a good start for an app and a wonderful companion app for Mac users who happen to have the Netatmo weather station in their homes. With a few fixes, this app will become indispensable for Netatmo users.
Win a Netatmo weather station for Father's Day
Does your dad -- or do you -- have a fascination with the weather? Is he always checking his iPad for local weather conditions, sending precipitation reports to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or obsessively watching storm chaser videos on the Weather Channel app? If that's the case, or if you'd just like to win something really cool for Father's Day, then we have the giveaway for you. TUAW and Netatmo are giving away a Netatmo Weather Station valued at $179. As featured in our review from last year, the Netatmo Weather Station includes both outdoor and indoor air quality sensors and also tracks temperature, humidity, and noise levels, all of which is available with a glance at your iPhone or iPad. Your information is stored for future reference, and the company recently introduced a web app to make looking at long-term trends much easier (see image below). So, here's your chance to win one of these in time for Father's Day on June 16, 2013. Here are the rules for the giveaway: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older. To enter, fill out the form below completely and click or tap the Submit button. The entry must be made before June 11, 2013 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. One winner will be selected and will receive a Netatmo Weather Station valued at $179.00 Click Here for complete Official Rules. Loading...
Netatmo: The first iPhone-compatible personal weather station
Have you ever been frustrated with the readings from your local weather station, knowing that conditions at your home or office are different because of the specific microclimate you're located in? For example, one of the nearest weather stations to my house is just about 10 miles away as the crow flies, but often shows warmer temperatures year-round due to its lower elevation. Now Netatmo is shipping a personal weather station that works with your iPhone to monitor various weather factors both inside and outside of your home or office. Hardware The Netatmo Weather Station ($179.00) is made up of two parts -- a cylindrical USB-powered indoor sensor that can sit anywhere in your home that's within reach of your Wi-Fi network, and a smaller battery-powered cylinder that sits outside in a protected area. The two devices chat via Bluetooth, and then send data to Netatmo for redistribution to your iPhone. Features First, let's set some expectations. If your idea of a weather station includes an anemometer, a rain gauge, and something to measure the UV Index with, then you're looking at the wrong device. Netatmo markets this as an urban environment monitor, meaning that it tracks temperature, humidity, indoor CO2, air pressure and sound levels. From the temperature and humidity, it can calculate a "feels like" temperature that explains why you feel so incredibly miserable even when the temperature isn't that high. %Gallery-163379% The indoor and outdoor readings are mixed with local weather data from a nearby station that provides precipitation information and a forecast. What's fascinating is that Netatmo is using your data to create the Urban Weather program, a project in which a hopefully huge number of Netatmo sensors will generate a worldwide database of weather and air quality information. You can opt out of the Urban Weather program if you don't want that information shared. Setup of the devices is a piece of cake. Upon opening the box, you attach the indoor sensor to your Mac or PC using an included USB cable, then go to a Netatmo website to get setup software. About the only thing you really need to do is make sure that the indoor sensor has your Wi-Fi password, and then you can unplug it and place it elsewhere in your house. The outdoor sensor runs off of four AAA batteries (included), and does not require setup. All of the information gathered by the sensors is visible to you in an iPhone app. The Netatmo website shows what appears to be a universal version of the app running on an iPad, but as of the time this review was being written, the app only ran in 2X mode on the iPad and didn't look that great on an iPad Retina display. As for the iPhone app, it looks amazing. You have your choice of three views, chosen by swiping up and down the screen. The first view is an overview of existing inside and outside conditions. An icon shows the current weather outside, with readings for temperature and humidity, and a calculated "feels like" temperature. There's also an indication of outside air quality. If you wish to see what's causing your air quality to be less than perfect, a tap on the "car" icon brings up a listing from a local pollution monitor. In the case you see here, ozone pollution was apparently an issue, although that monitor is most likely in downtown Denver 16 miles away. At our elevation about 500 feet above downtown, there usually isn't as much of an ozone problem. One of the other views shows only the inside readings, complete with a reading of the existing CO2 levels in the house or office and an indication of just how noisy it is in your place. That green "fuzzball" indicates that things are rather nice in my office -- the temperature is reasonable, the CO2 level isn't toxic, and it's fairly quiet. If I was in an air conditioned office in a smoggy town with a lot of traffic noise, that ball might be yellow or red. The final view shows outdoor weather conditions, those taken from both the outdoor sensor and a local weather station. As for location of the sensors, I put the indoor sensor on a table near my "iPad charging station" and the outdoor sensor was installed in a protected location on a wall where it's out of direct sun and rain. I'd love to test the Netatmo outdoor sensor over a long period of time to see how it survives the cold temperatures of winter. Accuracy How's the accuracy? That's something I'm really not sure about, since the readings were not what I expected for humidity. Colorado is a very dry environment, and it's not unusual for us to see humidity in the range of 20% or less most of the year. Today there was a chance of rain, and a local weather station showed 40% humidity. The indoor monitor showed 54% humidity, quite a bit higher. That might be accurate due to the proximity to things like a bathroom, kitchen, and laundry room. After a few days of following the readings, I noticed that the humidity never seemed to drop below about 40%, while the National Weather Service readings showed about 31%. That pointed out something to me -- the impact that my lawn and trees have on raising the humidity at my house. You'll also want to make sure you wait an hour or two for the readings to settle down. Initially, the barometric reading was showing 24.04 inHg, which is ridiculously low. It stayed there for a while, then suddenly popped up to a more reasonable -- and completely accurate -- 30.05 inHg. Looking at historical data using the app is quite simple; you just tip the iPhone over into landscape mode and a chart appears. You can select from temperature, humidity, pressure, CO2 level, and sound meter readings from the inside sensor, and temperature and humidity from the outside sensor. Scrolling the data back and forth over a read line tells you what the specific reading was for a particular time, and you can pinch or reverse-pinch to see less or more detail. Conclusion While it's not a traditional weather station, I think a lot of iPhone owners will find the Netatmo personal weather station to be right for them. It's easy to set up, and provides information to you on your personal comfort that you may not otherwise think about. Pros Easy to set up Attractive and not out of place in any modern household Captures both indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity; provides readings of CO2 and sound levels for indoor Relatively inexpensive compared to more sophisticated weather stations available from Oregon Scientific and similar companies iPhone app provides comfort level readings at a glance Cons Doesn't provide outdoor wind velocity or precipitation readings, which may be important to some potential buyers App is not universal; runs in 2X mode on iPad Who is it for? Anyone who wants to keep track of weather at their location but doesn't want to install and manage a complicated weather station.
