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Reviews For: Davis Vantage VUE

Category: Weather Stations

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Review Summary For : Davis Vantage VUE
Reviews: 40MSRP: $350
Description:
Davis' wireless Vantage Vue weather station combines Davis' accuracy and durability into a compact station that's easy to set up and use. Perfect for home, school, or business.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.davisnet.com/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00404
WB7VNF Rating: 2013-03-08
Not very good Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I purchased the Davis Vantage Vue Station when we moved into our new home in 2011. I had a very old wired Davis WeatherMonitor II that had been for the most part a good station so decided to upgrade to the wireless model.

Initially, the station appeared to work fine, however, over the course of 17-months, the Integrated Sensor Suite just powered itself down 3 times. Each time it was brought down off of the Rohn 45G tower, put on the workbench, pulled apart and each time it magically started to work again. Davis had NO idea why nor were they interested in doing anything to find out.

Once they (Davis) found out that I was a amateur radio operator that was all that they could say - Brett Lane, Customer Service Manager, even said that just having "antennas" was a problem, albeit that the problems I experienced occurred at times that for the most part the station wasn't even powered up!

After the third "power down", I went ahead and PURCHASED a second complete ISS for $240 - lo and behold when I went to install it on February 3, 2013, it wouldn't transmit! We fooled with it for about 2 hours before disassembling it and just like magic, it started to transmit. Davis blamed this on "RF" but could not explain how it was happening when NOTHING in the amateur radio station was powered up.

The problem doesn't end there, the new unit was NOT measuring rain correctly at all - at least the original ISS had been within a few percent of my manual comparison gauge but this one in the second ISS was so far off that it could NEVER have been calibrated. We had 0.23 inch in the manual gauge and the Davis unit read 0.01. This happened two times.

It took a MASSIVE manual calibration change and a "soft" calibration change of 16% to even get the unit close and we are now in the test phase to see if the manual and software calibration changes will yield more accurate readings.

I have encountered yet another problem that if you change the rain gauge calibration either from the Vantage Vue console OR the WeatherLink software, the console quits receiving the ISS and I have to climb up the tower and reset the ISS. Davis Tech Support claims this doesn't happen either.

Through all of this Davis Customer Support has been "good for Davis" but not necessarily the customer (me).
KB2SMS Rating: 2012-12-27
Great little station! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I bought my Vue in the spring of 2012. So far it's working perfectly. I placed mine 9 feet up on one inch conduit cemented in the ground. Readings from the ISS match other local weather stations nearby. I'm VERY happy with this station! Just ordered the Weatherlink logger from Ambientweather.com Will use Cumulus as the software.
AC9EX Rating: 2012-04-08
Great weather station Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I have had it installed in the Antenna farm 6 months ago now. No problems! Works as advertised. I did although put a Vantage PRO II Readout on it when I purchased it.I thought for the money it was a better display than the standard Vue unit had. I have had no RF problems to date.
73
KB9VUP
K3SUI Rating: 2012-04-02
So far, GREAT ! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I've had this little unit for about 2+ months. So far no issues. I've not run a lot of power near it since I've had antenna issues. Bought it off e-bay for $275. Good prices there if you shop around. Gives a lot of good WX info. I primarly bought it for my flying to get wind data. My wife likes the out door thermometer and humidity. Great little product.
KD2E Rating: 2012-03-22
flawless Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Have had mine up long enough to run down a battery. Went up the tower last weekend, and replaced it...without removing the ISS!! I think it went close to two years on the original cell. The unit is located on my tower, just a few feet away from a KW on 2, a KW on 6, and KW on 10,15,20. I have not had any problems yet. I admit I can't figure out how to put weather data up on a website, but perhaps if I gave it a weekend to study, I could figure it out. Just have not had the time. At first I thought it was way too expensive for a bunch of plastic, but I guess you get what you pay for. Having been flawless in hottest summer, and ice cold winters...and still working like new...that's worth it in my book!
N8ZUZ Rating: 2012-03-20
Update: ISS still giving me fits and Davis could care less. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
After getting some feedback from other Vue owners and hearing from Curtis at Davis, I went to Radio Shack and bought 2 ferrite beads pn 273-105 (which Curtis supplied me the part number). I installed them both onto both ribbon cables nearest the transmitter in the ISS. I have also wrapped aluminum foil around the ribbon cables, and also covered the transmitter and rain gauge circuits by taping foil over the plastic covering these units. Curtis tried helping me.

The other day, again 5w on 2m wipes out the ISS. I just called Davis and asked for Curtis but I was told by Jerry that he is no longer in that department. After explaining to Jerry my situation, he said I have two options. 1. is to move the unit further away from the antennas (which I don't have the room for) or 2. upgrade to a Vantage Pro II (which I'm not going to spend any more money on a company that isn't helping me now with my problem).

Hams, beware! For some this unit works great. For others it needed some work to make it work great. For others like me this thing may be a headache and Davis is not very willing to help you but they'll gladly sell you another unit that may or may not work for you.

In my previous review I gave Davis a 2 because of their customer support which is legendary from everything I have read on the net. Now, I give them a zero. All I have done is spend money to buy this and also to fix it (along with numerous trips on the roof) and still 5w on 2m wipes it out. Jerry really could care less about my problems and that shined through from start to finish.

This unit for me is utterly useless and I wish I would have not purchased it. I really regret having bought it but I can't return it so I'm stuck with it. I didn't have these problems with my $89 Lacrosse unit. I've been supplying weather data to wunderground for years. Unfortunately that's going to stop or my ham activities must stop.

If you think I'm just a sour person, read my other reviews on eham. Most items I've owned have been decent and some exceptional. This one is junk in an RF environment and Davis could care less. It's amazing to me they market their junk to hams and many ham stores sell their junk when they can't handle much of an RF environment. It would be one thing to miss a few data packets but it's another to completely lock up the ISS so you have to remove it from the roof overnight to reset it for a day or two!

CAVEAT EMPTOR!
W0ACE Rating: 2011-12-16
Very Happy Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Fast, easy install. Set-up was fast and smooth following the manual. Works great. Temp matches my home thermostat in my house, and matches the local reported temps. No RFI problems so far, running on 20m, 6m, 2m, 440 very close to it. All in all I'd buy again in a heartbeat! Best weather station I have had so far.
KI6OSH Rating: 2011-09-16
Update.... Time Owned: more than 12 months.
My previous review was before solving my RFI problem. Thanks to N2DY, I followed his advice and installed ferrite chokes on the internal ribbon cables and now the unit works as intended. Hope this helps anybody out there with the RFI problem. Now its a great product, highly recommended.
N6TAU Rating: 2011-09-16
Great weather station, lousy software Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I bought the Vantage Vue Just after Hurricane Irene blew through the area.

Over the labor day weekend, I installed it on the top of my fifty foot tower, just below the antennas.

The next day, it started raining. and raining and raining. Over the next ten days, we got 11.5 inches of rain. At times the rain fell at about nine inches an hour. There was wide scale flooding but we suffered only minor basement flooding (.5 inch at lowest level, got some cardboard boxes.

The vantage vue was a breeze to setup, taking only about five minutes to tighten the Allen screws that hole the vane and anemometer. I bought the VV because it was wireless and solar powered. In the two weeks that I have owned it, I have not experienced any problems whatsoever.

When I bought the station, I also bought the uSB version of Weatherlink. My praise of the the weather station does not pass on to their software, In as few words as possible, 'It sucks!'

First off, the software looks like it was written by a novice programmer. As a professional computer programmer with 36 years of full time programming experience, this looks like something that took a couple of days to throw together and even then only as a demo. I give the software a hard 2.

For the amateurish software, they charge $148, which is the only way to get the dongle that connects your weather station to your PC. When I installed it, Weatherlink could not see the USB port. Davis support was no help at all. No matter what I did, I could not get the Davis software to talk to the Davis hardware.

I installed Virtual Weather Station and it started talking to the the Davis hardware immediately. (turns out that third party developers are forced to use a different means to talk to the hardware.) The fact that the third party tools work better than the proprietary tools suggest they should dump the proprietary method.

With Virtual Weather station, this is a great product. You have to buy the junky Weatherlink to get the hardware dongle but it seems to be a necessary evil. Paying $148 for $15 worth of USB connectivity is overkill, but I guess that's what keeps their programmers employed.

PS: I did eventually get the Weatherlink to work. After installing VWS and running it for awhile, Weatherlink was eventually able to detect the USB port and started working. I can only guess that there was something that got initialized by VWS that weatherLink didn't.
N0YK Rating: 2011-09-07
Nice!!! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Love the new Vue!

I've been an avid weather buff for the last 6 years. Started with a Vantage Pro II, installed the ISS at 6' and the anemometer at 33' and uploaded the data to the internet in real-time. Loved it and readings were very accurate.

However, we moved to the city a year ago and decided to give the Vue a try. I'm very happy with it's accuracy and design. I currently have mine mounted on my garden shed in the back yard and find the readings to be very close to my friends weather station. His is a Davis Vantage Pro II that is about a 1000' away mounted on a tower and has the day-time fan to move air through the chamber. I find the temperature between the two to vary no more that 1 degree and usually less than a 0.5 degree difference. So you can right away tell the consistency in Davis's products. We both report to the usually internet sites in real-time and are using the WxSolutions software which I also find to be top notch. Here is a link to my YouTube video of the Vue installed and working: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=778cK4Ni_uw

Overall, I'm very happy with the unit and would recommend this to others. A+++++++++++