The second try, reviewing the WMR100N Weather Station.

After returning the WMR88 two days after purchasing it, I had to choose choose another option. The next in line was the WMR100N, which though had more capacity, 10 instead of 3 additional channels, as well as also coming with  all the necessary mounting equipment, it also came for 20 dollars less, for a total of AUD 249.00.

This was a bargain then... well again with some excitement, though not as much as the first time, I went back home with the expectation of now having a weather station that would work adequately.

Contents of the box, looking very nice and complete.

Again, I put in all the batteries in the sensors, pressed the reset buttons, put the batteries in the base station and pressed the reset button. Voila... things looked as if they were working better, it picked up the outside temp/hygro sensor, the anemometer and I tipped the precipitation sensor and it also registered!! Things could not be better at this stage.

I set up the mounting pole outside and installed the two sensors.

We can see the wind vane/anemometer and the mushroom looking thing is the temperature/hygromoter. I know that the location for the anemometer is not the ideal one, but is the best I have within comfort, and I really did not want to go to the effort of going on the roof after the failed attempt of getting readings with the WMR88.

So here we can see the display showing the information we are looking for, except well ... for the anemometer, no reading from that.

Over the next few hours and days I would continue to get intermittent data from the external sensors, and from the precipitation, none at all.

The data from the station was registered using the Weather Station Data Logger software, that is stored in a CSV format file. I have uploaded it to Google docs.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArEwIvQBUPQzdGJqYmhicTJZakhNbmZaa0RXdWpSWGc&hl=en_GB&authkey=CIiJk7wL

Screen capture showing temperature data, though not any info from the precipitation sensor in spite of it raining that same day. Also from 13:00 till 20:00 it only registered 4 noticeable temperature readings from outside.

I would discard the problem of intermittent data from the peripheral sensors, because even when one tries to disconnect the base station from the computer it does not affect the reception of data on the base station. I had thought that it might be a problem of low variation of temperatures or low wind speed, but I don't think that is the case. I would at this stage put it too defective telecommunications between the sensors and the base station. What about the distance? The sensors are located at about 15 meters, much closer than the 100 meters, stipulated in the manual.

Talking about the manual, this has no comments in relation to the intermittent reception.

Every so often I pressed the "search" button on the base station when it loses reception, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't do anything. Sometimes without pressing the "search" button it starts receiving again. It seems to have a mind of it's own.

So far I would say that I am semi satisfied, more on the unsatisfied side.

The evaluation I have to make now is if the data that this unit will be logging will be sufficient and adequate for the purposes of the research that I am doing. For now it seems a bit flaky.

Tomorrow I am going to call Oregon Scientific Technical Support in Australia to see what sort of service I will get. After reading the comments of the reviews on Amazon.com I don't have very high expectations.