Does tempest have the capability of providing the evapotranspiration rate?
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@Gerardv514 according to one of their investor communications, evapotranspiration calculation is coming in a software update.
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What’s the consensus here, is this a good product when compared to other devices on the market?
I am not sure if you are asking about Rachio or Tempest. I presume you are asking about Tempest since this is what the thread is. I do not have one quite yet. It is on order though. I have been eyeing it for a while now. Knowing that it integrates with Rachio put it over the edge to get. I really like the idea of it being high-tech, smart, no moving parts, and not seeming to need to change the batteries every year (or whatever). I am sure once I get it and it is all set up, I will wish for more things. This means I will probably be involved in their community to some degree. From what I see, it seems that most people that have one here really like it. Like everything else, I am sure some do not like it. I am seeing on Amazon that it was given a 4.5 from 759 reviews (77% are a 5). It seems to me that those having issues are the biggest percent to rate. I rarely rate things myself even if having issues as I work with the company or community to resolve.
I’ve had one for about a year and love it. The forecast accuracy is spot on and the lack of moving parts and solar power is a huge plus. In addition the the Rachio integration I also use in with my smart home “Hubitat” for a number of other purposes.
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Does anyone know if you can share this integration between 2 accounts? In other words, if 2 neighbors each had a Rachio and they wanted to split the cost of the Tempest could they each link to the same Tempest?
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@Gerardv514 my only complaint about the Tempest is that it won’t detect long periods of very light / misty rain.
Otherwise, it’s easy to set up, not bad on the eyes, and so far has been much more accurate for my spot than the guesses interpolated from the official stations.
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This isn’t possible in the current version. My next door neighbor has a Rachio as well using my Tempest and I asked the same question to @drew_thayer via PM and this was his response…
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I’ll have to watch for that and see if mine picks it up. I’ve only had thunderstorms since it has been up.
The biggest challenge to get accurate results is installation location. I can’t get good wind readings without a tall pole and that would probably add vibration that would hurt the rain accrucy. I ended up just using the universal mount that they sell. I put it on the fascia in a spot with full sun and used the install option to extend away from the roof to help keep the temperature readings accurate.
Rain is close enough that I don’t need to try and measure with a rain gauge and the rest of the measurements match others in the area. It’s been a lot better than just relying on Rachio to figure out how much it has rained. In the past I’ve had to watch the schedule because of isolated rain dropping a bunch in 1 spot and then it still wanting to water.
I got my code and added it. Will report feedback.
@drew_thayer Everything works great for the integration and don’t have any real issues that break it but here are the small issues I’ve seen.
- Any time I click on the Tempest Weather station, it asks for my location info … android
- Current temp is rounded up if the actual temp has a decimal point, so 87.3 shows as 88, Tempest will round based on .5 and then shows the decimal when you click to view the detailed data
- Wind speed seems to match with the rounding but it changes too much so couldn’t confirm that
- In the schedule view, when you click on the day to view the precipitation amount this no longer is updated throughout the day as it does with the hyper-local. Normally it will show updated rain chance and amount.
- It doesn’t appear that the day / schedule is updated until 12AM, so I know some rachio users that run their schedule at 12AM so it could affect their schedule starting while it updates.
Thanks for the observations.
- We know about the rounding and double-rounding issues resulting in mismatched temp readings, and we’re working with WeatherFlow on solving those.
- I wasn’t aware of the Schedule View issue, so thanks for that! I’m going to investigate.
- You are right about 12AM schedules. This is independent of the addition of Tempest. We should probably strongly advise against 12AM starts, and give the server a few minutes to ingest the new data… folks who want to run at 12AM will have a better experience running at 12:15 for example.
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note on vibrations: I’ve had good success with mine mounted to a 1" (nominal) galvanized pole, it sits ~6’ above my garage roof and is mounted with two, two-screw EMT brackets into the side of the garage (brackets from electrical section of hardware). Both wind and rain seem to be accurate with this setup. Wind accuracy would surely be a little better if the pole were 20 ft tall, but I haven’t put the time in to build that, and most folks probably wont. But it would be pretty sweet.
I’ve got mine mounted on the back fence. Only have few vibration issues with it mounted on an 8’ 1" galvanized pole. One of the issues came from when I noticed the fence post needed some extra support as it was breaking out of the footing, and the other one was from when the local owl thought it would have been a nice place to look for mice for about a week.
Tempest with their rain check normally helps knock out the random vibration issues.
Any update on this shared access feature for tempest? Looking forward to it!
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Perhaps I am missing some sort of special feature with integrating Rachio directly to the Tempest? When I purchased my Rachio, I got a new weather station (Tempest) at the same time because the old one from 15 years finally cracked. At the time, it seemed that if I bought the Tempest from Rachio at the same time, it was an older model. I wanted the newest model Tempest, so I bought it from eBay (cheaper than Amazon). Then I set my two Rachio controllers to get my personal weather info from WeatherUnderground where my Tempest is reporting data. Easy to do.
I just got mine in the mail and will be setting up shortly, but there is a code that needs to be entered into Rachio for the integration. I believe there is a more direct integration, but at this time, it is only when bought through Rachio.
So are you not interested in having the Rachio get your weather information through WeatherUnderground? Maybe I am misunderstanding something.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think with the code, Rachio might directly sync with Tempest. Not 100% sure yet until I get it set up and play with it. I can’t see any other reason for the Rachio/Tempest partnering, or what the code would do…
From Rachio Website
“How does it work? After you purchase your new weather station, we’ll send you an integration code for you to use in your Rachio app. After that, you simply need to set your Tempest as a weather source and you’re good to go.”
That is my understanding is it allows Rachio to directly get information from Tempest. I got my Tempest, but have not got my mounting pole yet.
Ok, yes best to play with it first. I registered my Tempest with WeatherUnderground simply for the purpose that I went into Rachio and told it to get data from my weatherstation. It seems to work great. As for looking at the weather, I use the Tempest app instead of WeatherUnderground. Frankly, I don’t what additional benefit I might get if the Rachio connects directly to Tempest.
Oh and to add, I guess if Rachio / Tempest connect directly then it gets real time information, but since WU updates my station every 3 minutes, I am not sure that is much of a benefit for direct connection. Not sure.