Tag: Weather Stations

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Davis Instruments WeatherLink Live

Davis tells us that the will be supported for the foreseeable future (and at least initially, is needed if you have an AirLink — the WeatherLink Console didn’t ship with support for Davis’ air quality device). And in some places, you can still find it, although rising component costs have made it much more expensive than it was at launch (by about $100). We like the live updating within the app when you’re on the same Wi-Fi network as your WeatherLink Live. It’s a nifty feature, and I’ll admit to watching it intently during some of our stormiest weather. The WeatherLink Console can also do the same thing, by the way. If you’re not sold on the console, the WeatherLink Live is worth considering.

What we like

• Super quick setup
• Live in-app data when on your home network
• Adds expandability to your Davis station
• Ready for the smart home

Keep in mind

• For current Davis users, no way to merge data

Davis WeatherLink Live (6100)View at Cirrusly Weather

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All Davis weather stations suffer from one massive issue: there’s no way to get your weather data on the internet. It seems incredibly odd these days, considering many AcuRite and Ambient Weather stations (among others) do. That’s where Davis’ WeatherLink Live comes in.

Editor’s Note: Davis Instruments has discontinued the WeatherLink Live with the launch of the WeatherLink Console. Read our review.

While Davis offers weather station packages for both the Vantage Vue and Vantage Pro2, including the WeatherLink Live base station, current Davis weather station owners can purchase the device separately to add to their preexisting setup. Once set up, the WeatherLink Live base station offers several great features that bring your setup into the 21st Century with few issues.

For years, Davis relied on a dongle installed in your console to connect your weather station to your network, which also, in turn, required an Ethernet connection to work. That’s no longer the case with WeatherLink Live. The device connects to your network by Wi-Fi, allowing you to place it wherever you need to.

While WeatherLink Live is no cheaper than its predecessor, you get a lot more. Since it handles the communication between your sensor suite and the internet, you can now watch real-time conditions from the WeatherLink smartphone app.

It also makes any Davis station expandable. Previously, only the Davis Vantage Pro2 offered any expandability beyond its core sensors. That’s now changed: as long as the sensor you’re using is compatible with WeatherLink Live, you can add it to your setup.

Setting up the Davis WeatherLink Live

You couldn’t ask for a more straightforward setup than WeatherLink Live offers. The app guides you through the entire process. We set up ours in less than 10 minutes, with the app automatically connecting our Vantage Vue to the WeatherLink Live, and data was streaming to the app only a minute or two later.

We chose Wi-Fi to place the WeatherLink Live in another room, giving us a way to monitor temperature elsewhere in our house since we already had the console. You can still choose to connect via Ethernet cable if you wish. We’d recommend this, especially if you have a smart home full of gadgets that might already be taxing your bandwidth.

Even more impressive is its reception capabilities: Davis Instruments claims that the WeatherLink Live can receive data from sensors 1,000 feet away thanks to frequency-hopping spread spectrum radio technology. While we don’t have a large enough yard to put this to the test, we’ve never had any issues with dropouts or missing data.

The device can handle up to eight Davis devices in any combination, including Vantage Pro2 and Vantage Vue sensor suites, sensor transmitters with up to five sensors each, AirLink, or wireless leaf and soil moisture stations. In theory, you could have over 80 sensors on one WeatherLink device! You’ll never run out of capacity.

Live weather data, all inside the WeatherLink app

One of WeatherLink Live’s best features is its real-time reporting capabilities. If you’re not at home, the device will transmit data to WeatherLink once a minute, which can be viewed either from the WeatherLink website (seen above) or through the WeatherLink app. However, when your phone is on the same Wi-Fi network as WeatherLink Live, the app will stream live data.

You can view historical data in a spreadsheet or chart format on the web version, which we find especially useful during weather events. All your data is stored in the WeatherLink Cloud, which keeps your recorded data safe. With the old dongle system, we’d frequently lose data because the dongle’s memory would fill quickly in a power outage.

Both rainfall and rain rate update every ten seconds on the WeatherLink app; wind speed and direction data update every 2.5 seconds. That’s the fastest reporting weather data rate of any weather station on the market. It’s also neat to watch wind gusts happen, something you can’t do without live weather data or sitting in front of the console.

We earn a commission when you buy through some links on this page. Cirrusly Weather is our sister store, owned by the same people as The Weather Station Experts. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Davis Instruments WeatherLink Live

Davis tells us that the will be supported for the foreseeable future (and at least initially, is needed if you have an AirLink — the WeatherLink Console didn’t ship with support for Davis’ air quality device). And in some places, you can still find it, although rising component costs have made it much more expensive than it was at launch (by about $100). We like the live updating within the app when you’re on the same Wi-Fi network as your WeatherLink Live. It’s a nifty feature, and I’ll admit to watching it intently during some of our stormiest weather. The WeatherLink Console can also do the same thing, by the way. If you’re not sold on the console, the WeatherLink Live is worth considering.

What we like

• Super quick setup
• Live in-app data when on your home network
• Adds expandability to your Davis station
• Ready for the smart home

Keep in mind

• For current Davis users, no way to merge data

Davis WeatherLink Live (6100)View at Cirrusly Weather

View at Amazon

Certain content that appears on this site comes from Amazon. This content is provided “as is” and is subject to change or removal at any time.

If the power goes out, you’re covered. Redundant battery backup and internal auxiliary memory collect data, uploading it to the WeatherLink Cloud when power is restored. We have had several power outages and not a single data loss incident. It also natively supports sharing weather data with third-party services like the Weather Underground, making it super easy to share with the global WeatherLink community and the public.

Another key benefit is that this new platform is smart home-ready. While currently WeatherLink Live only supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, we’re hoping that in the future this might mean Davis station owners could connect to services like IFTTT, which allow you to control other smart home devices.

Ambient Weather’s stations already do this, and it’s one of the key reasons we often recommend a station like the WS-5000 over a Davis station — especially for those potential buyers who might already own a substantial number of smart home devices.

A word of caution for current Davis weather station owners

The Davis WeatherLink Live isn’t without quirks, especially for existing Davis weather station owners. Unfortunately, you’ll need to start fresh if you already own the dongle and didn’t use the desktop software to download your weather data.

Davis stores data from your station to their servers, even if you haven’t signed up for any premium services or downloaded the data from your dongle to your desktop software. Once you install the WeatherLink Live, this data isn’t migrated over, and your records start from the day you installed it.

If you keep the dongle connected, it will still record data to that old dataset. We’re forced to do that ourselves: we had close to four years of data recorded by the dongle and didn’t want to lose it. Davis has offered no solution for this, and nobody’s been able to find a workaround yet.

It’s an annoying quirk that prevented us from giving this a full five stars. We hope that Davis offers some solution in the future, especially if it ends support for the dongle. Davis is known to support even its oldest weather stations long after they have been discontinued, so that could be a while before that happens.

The bottom line

If you’re considering a Davis station, it’s almost foolish not to purchase the WeatherLink Live. Current Davis weather station owners will also benefit from the improved functionality. While the price is high, considering most weather stations these days include internet connectivity by default, we think it’s worth the additional cost.

WeatherLink Live answers many of the criticisms lobbed at Davis over the years, especially the glacial pace in offering new functionality. The old dongle has remained unchanged for nearly two decades, and the WeatherLink Live software looked like something out of the 1990s.

Now completely app and web-based, WeatherLink Live has brought Davis kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. With new sensors like the AirLink being built for the WeatherLink Live platform, owning one will become a necessity if you want to take advantage of the company’s latest and greatest features.

Buy one. You won’t regret it. I know we haven’t.

The WeatherLink Console was a long time coming. Davis’ consoles for the Vantage Vue and Vantage Pro2 have remained the same as when they first launched two decades ago. As a result, Davis fell far behind its competitors.

While WeatherLink Live and AirLink gave Davis weather station owners additional functionality, everything felt stuck in the 1990s otherwise. I have criticized them for this, especially considering Davis’s reputation in the weather community. It felt like they were “resting on their laurels,” as they say. Well, Davis answered these criticisms.

The console completely changes how you interact with your Davis equipment. A bright eight-inch high-quality touchscreen display displays your data and is customizable. It connects to WeatherLink Live and includes over 100 alarms, charting, and historical data. But all of this does not come cheap.

The console at $395 is as much (if not more) than most home weather stations we’ve reviewed. And customers don’t seem to be too happy about it: some reviews online aren’t too kind. We wanted to put the WeatherLink Console to the test ourselves and see if the criticisms of the new console are warranted. While some are legitimate, our experience didn’t find it cheap, just buggy.

Installation and Setup

The directions provided aren’t as good as other Davis products: we recommend downloading the user manual for instructions as it is more detailed. However, you get everything else you need to install, minus any tools. Davis uses a 2A USB for power. An internal battery can provide up to a day’s worth of power and is charged while the console is powered on.

The setup is confusing, especially if you already have a Davis weather station. It asked me whether I wanted to set it up as a new or old console. From how it was worded, it sounded like the data from the old console wouldn’t be brought over and possibly deleted. Since I didn’t want that to happen, I set it up as a new console.

There is no support for the Davis AirLink sensor right now, although Davis tells me it’s on the way. (EDIT: It’s here! – February 2024)

A Modern Display

The WeatherLink Console runs on a customized version of Android, so if you’ve used that platform, navigation is similar (it’s also upgradeable). The display is high-quality and easily readable across the room. The console also has an ambient light sensor and will turn itself off in dark rooms. A high-contrast mode is meant for color blindness. However, I have it set because it looks better in a dark room.

Swiping across the console displays each sensor linked to your account. When the AirLink integration arrives, I assume this is where you’d find it. It also looks expandable. I discovered a memory card slot and an input hidden under a rubber cap on the console’s right side. If this is for what I think it is, it’s nice to see Davis ensuring their newest products are upgradeable.

Pictures of the console do make it seem like Davis is trying to squeeze a lot of data into a small screen, but it’s well laid out in person. You can choose a four-panel (on each side) or six-panel view. But this only displays the data: tapping on it doesn’t bring up historical or graphed data as you’d think.

Instead, a home icon on the top center of the display is what you need to tap to find this data. There are tabs for the “bulletin” (Davis’ standard table-based text view of all your current weather data), graphs, historical data, a map showing conditions at nearby Davis weather stations, and your settings.

Everything here looks great, but the mapping feature uses the dots as WeatherLink does. That felt cluttered on a small screen like this, and I’d rather see the actual data than have to tap through. There are places where Davis makes you tap through too much for something, and in other places miss an opportunity to use the touchscreen more effectively.

The status bar kept displaying the message “resynching” as seen in photos, but the information appeared current. Reaching out to support, I was told this is an issue with the sensor suite not having a good connection. I tried moving around the console, including taking it outside next to the sensors, but that still didn’t make the message disappear.

In late June, a software update was pushed to the console, where the status bar now shows other information, but the resynching message remains. Perhaps Davis has the threshold set too high? I’m not sure.

A Word of Caution for Current Davis Customers

Davis has not yet solved the creation of new data pools every time you add a new device. I now have three pools of weather data: one for the WeatherLink IP (back to September 2016!), one for the WeatherLink Live (2019), and now the WeatherLink Console. There is no way to merge this data in an official capacity.

I’ve turned to an Excel spreadsheet: I know other Davis customers that have turned to third-party options. Not being able to retire old equipment is annoying. I am still running the IP because of all the data stored on Davis’ servers. The WeatherLink Live is still needed to access my AirLink.

The console is the perfect opportunity to bring all this data back together. Since moving from a software-based to a web-based platform, this issue has bedeviled long time Davis customers for too long. Trust me, you don’t want to fight with Excel to do this. I’ve done it. It’s a pain in the you-know-where, to be honest.

The Issue Isn’t the Hardware, It’s the Software

All my issues with the device are solely in how the software works. But with the device setting you back $395, there should be more polish here. I am hopeful for a quick resolution: I’ve witnessed the console restart for updates a few times during the test, which is a good sign.

Davis also has a lot more R&D budget thanks to its new owners, Union Park Capital (they purchased Davis in 2019). So I am expecting much more innovation from Davis in the coming years, something the company has been missing the past decade or two. Bottom line? If you’re new to Davis, you’d be crazy to not pick this up at the same time (and save $50 in the process).

But for current Davis customers, if you can deal with the growing pains, it’s a nice device. But we’d understand if you wanted to wait.

We earn a commission when you buy through some links on this page. Cirrusly Weather is our sister store, owned by the same people as The Weather Station Experts. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

WeatherLink Console by Davis Instruments

The WeatherLink Console is Davis’ brand new way of interacting with your Davis weather station. It replaces the WeatherLink Live and will ship with all Davis packages. While the console’s introduction has resulted in a price increase across the board for most Davis weather station packages, it’s for the best. An additional piece of hardware is no longer needed to connect your station to the internet. The screen, which measures about eight inches diagonally, is viewable from across the room and is touch-enabled. You can set about 100 alarms and view historical and graphed data on the console.

What we like

• Arguably the best-looking console available
• Feature-packed
• It appears to be expandable and upgradeable

Keep in mind

• The touch UI isnt the best
• Its best features are buried
• Expensive for a console

Davis WeatherLink Console (6313)View at Cirrusly Weather

View at Amazon

Certain content that appears on this site comes from Amazon. This content is provided “as is” and is subject to change or removal at any time.