Weather Station by Netatmo, Rain Gauge, Compatible with Netatmo Weather Station, Wireless, NRG01WW

Let me first start off by saying that I have owned the Netatmo rain gauge along with the weather station (which I also have wrote a review on) for a year now and feel it is time to finally voice my opinion on my experiences.Brief Summary: The rain gauge is very accurate, much more accurate than the other cheaper offering by other companies in this price range. There are some minor gripes with the unit itself and I will touch up on those below, but overall this is a very good unit which stores your data and monitors rainfall accurately.Build: Build quality seems to be good, I have had mine out in the cold winter along with the warm summers and a year later it still looks like the first day I got it. Only gripe is the mount, it's a camera mount, so you have to look for the correct thread to get it to mount. Not a big deal as you can see from my pictures. I made my own base because animals kept tipping it over - now no problems! I also covered it with some screen wire to protect it further from falling debris, there is a protector with small holes to allow water to pass through, but because they are so small and too few holes, they can fill up rather quickly, so this screen has solved this problem.Setup: Pretty simple for the most part, just install the batteries and go onto Netatmo’s website to sync it up with your weather station. Once it’s connected and is displayed in your app and website, you must check to see if it’s calibrated properly, this is where it get highly confusing.CALIIBRATION: VERY INPORTANT! I’m making a separate section for this because there are absolutely no instructions for this part other than, “pour water into the rain gauge and count how many times the teeter totter inside tips”. If you do this your rain gauge will be wrong! The only way to get a proper reading is to put the water into a spray bottle to more accurately portray rainfall, this will ensure that all the water is properly tipping over the teeter totter inside the unit. Even if you pour the water very slowly from a cup it will still not give you the correct reading. The thing that catches the water and tips is very sensitive and the only way to get it to calibrate correctly is to spray the water into it using a spray bottle.Website/App: This is the coolest feature of this unit, being able to store your own data and be able to go back years from now to look at data that you have recorded. It stores all your rain data and you can query the stored data by day, month, or year to check your accumulated rainfall during those time periods. This is such an awesome feature and truly makes this unit priceless. I’m located in the mountains and supposedly Southern California is in a drought, well to an extent. I have recorded a total of 27 inches of rain for my mountain community, our average rainfall is usually around 40 inches, so we are down but nowhere as much as what they say. This is a cool feature because too many people are applying their own biases to the data, so can we trust the data from a new reporter who is trying to fill their own biases? Is there a conflict of interest in this scenario? Anyways, it’s awesome to be able to record your own data and monitor it for yourself.What I want to see!: I want Netatmo to create a function where we could download our data so we can put it into excel and run our own analysis on it. Right now I can eyeball my results but it would be nice to be able to download the data and use it in other programs. That’s all I would add, other than that it’s an awesome unit.

I purchased the Netatmo Smart Rain Gauge (model number NWS02RG) new to go along with my Netatmo Smart Weather Station on July 05, 2019. I have never had an issue with the weather station and thought it would be nice to know actual rainfall totals for my address to help know how much to water my lawn. I liked the integration with the Netatmo app. However, on October 06, 2019 I noticed that the gauge was no longer reporting rainfall. Thinking that the batteries had died I took it down to replace with newly purchased batteries to no avail. At this point the device appears to be non-functional at only 90 days after purchase. Netatmo's website is not straightforward about how to make a warranty claim but I believe I started that process today. Other reviewers have noted that Netatmo is difficult to work with in regards to warranty claims. I will update this review with my experience.Overall, when the gauge worked it seemed to work well but I don't have a way to measure it's accuracy. I've only given one star for "easy to install" since the device does not come with the mounting bracket or other hardware you will need to actually install it. Here's a link to the bracket I ordered: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06W2KYGKW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. If you don't want to use this type of bracket you will need to find some other way to secure the gauge as it only weighs, with batteries, approximately 210 g. Just setting it on a table outdoors in a storm will result in it getting blown away and/or cause interference with measurement accuracy. You would think that a small bucket gauge with a wireless radio that sells for $80 would come with everything needed to actually use the device.At this point I cannot recommend this product due to its failure after only 90 days of use.

As another reviewer stated, My first unit was dead on arrival! No lights, no nothing. Amazon, as usual was great-- they gave me a 30 day return window and put me in for a replacement. Unfortunately there is a wait for this item. The first shipment took almost two months, the second took about 2 weeks. Now it works fine. I have it on a deck table with my bonsai. I was lucky in that the very next day, it rained! It seems to measure in 10 minute increments. It resets at midnight. I will probably mount it in the near future as it is lightweight plastic and no doubt the next windy day will send it flying!There are still questions I have. It's going to take awhile to get answers as there are no places to go for information.1) What about winter? Leave it outside? How does freezing affect it?2) How do i set it to alert me (visibly and audibly) in the event of rain?3) Is there somewhere I can look in the app to find the daily progression of rainfall? Monthly?Overall this is truly a remarkable system. Besides the main unit I also have additional sensors in my cigar humidor and my guitar case. I have heard they are going to have a wind speed unit soon which sounds nice, but what about Carbon Monoxide? I do have the Nest system which monitors CO, but it would be great to have even more sensors available for other parts of the house.