AcuRite temperature and humidity monitors – Manufacturer stops support
A few years ago, I purchased an AcuRite system to monitor the indoor temperature of my house. I bought an AcuRite Smart Hub, which sits on a desk and is plugged into a wall outlet and a wireless router, along with a temperature monitor that hangs from a wall.
The nice thing about this system is that the company provided customers with a web address to allow monitoring of the sensor from anywhere where internet access is available. There was no subscription fee — the web access was free.
Yesterday I got an email from AcuRite saying that the company is no longer supporting the AcuRite Smart Hub, starting today. No more web access, so my equipment is now worthless. Of course, I can buy new equipment if I want ($125) — a new generation of equipment that the company will support (until the day when AcuRite decides to stop supporting the next generation of their equipment).
This seems like a short-sighted decision by AcuRite. I feel burned, and it’s going to be hard to trust the company in the future.
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This seems to happen a lot unfortunately.
Not really a solution, we have an ambient weather WS-2902, that I love. It has online monitoring, and a small offline screen for when the power is out. It does indoor temperature and humidity along with the weather station stuff. I did buy an analog hygrometer that helped confirm the weather station. Ours is 2 years old, never an issue and still running off the 2 lithium batteries I put in when new. Being linked up to weather underground is a lot of fun too, you can compare your weather to what is going on around town.
Nathan,
Do you have to pay a subscription fee for the online monitoring?
This is certainly a cautionary, if typical, tale of the Internet of Things. You can spend all you want on fancy and useful technology but when its operation depends on the support or even the existence of the manufacturer and manufacturer's website, you're always looking at end-of-life issues, sometimes now, sometimes later. I still use my grandfather's stationary tools in my workshop, built in the 1930's. With occasional repairs and rebuilding, they'll be good forever. I'd like to see any internet-connected device pull off that trick.
Manufacturers have discovered that there is no money in manufacturing. Profits for many corporations now come from subscriptions -- regular monthly enrollment fees, ideally deducted automatically from a customer's bank account.
No one wants to sell computers -- everyone wants to sell "cloud services" for X dollars a month.
The ambient weather dashboard is free, which can also be accessed from my iphone app.
They store you data for 1 year, which is free and easy to download.
I only have positive things to say about my experience, but who knows what the future holds.
This was in response to Martin's question #3, oops.
Martin, I have the same acurite system you likely have. I remember the first time they tried to drop support for the smart hub last year they got a HUGE backlash. They ended up publishing an apology letter, extending the deadline for support (which must have just passed), and giving existing customers a voucher for the new acurite access hub for $40 (not $40 off, but to buy it for $40. I’m pretty sure I’m remembering that number correctly). The new acutite access hub is still supported and I just used mine to see what our low was last night (-4.4F brrr).
My guess is if you called them up and be a squeaky wheel they’ll extend that voucher too you, especially given your position with GBA. If they pretend it never happened I’d be happy to dig up the emailed letter I received from them last year and forward it to you so that you can stick it in their faces.
I agree it’s not a good thing they did. I understand eventually ending support, but in this case it was probably just an attempt to force users to upgrade. I much prefer how Cisco systems handles support for old gear, which is usually supported for decades: they almost seem to feel bad when they finally end support, they give at least a years notice, and they give the reason (which is usually that they can’t get some of the parts anymore). They also give detail about replacement products.
Bill
Won't it still work locally via the wireless router?
Trevor,
My understanding is that AcuRite is shutting down the web site where I can see the temperature of the sensor. Today is the last day. I just checked the web site -- it's still up. I assume that it won't exist on March 1.
HI Martin -
You have probably already seen this but: https://www.acurite.com/blog/extending-end-of-service-and-support-for-acurite-smarthub.html.
I would be curious to know the model number(s) of the Acurite sensors you have Martin. I have had quite a few clients of late who have paid no small sum for systems that include sensors that list on the website -/+ 5% accuracy and then in the specs state -/+ 10%. And don't cite a standard for the accuracy.
Peter
Peter, the accuracy of the acurite sensors (and those of just about any of the systems that aren’t full professional units) is directly dependent on the accuracy of the actual sensor element in use. The sensor is typically a temperature or temperature/humidity sensor chip which is calibrated on the silicon wafer at the semiconductor fabrication facilit (it’s a process called “trimming”). Acurite uses an “sht21” temperature/humidity sensing chip (https://www.sensirion.com/en/environmental-sensors/humidity-sensors/humidity-temperature-sensor-sht2x-digital-i2c-accurate/). That link has a graph showing that between 0 and 60 *C, the chip is specified to be accurate to +/- 0.2 *C (an error band of just under 1 degree F). Outside of that 0-60*C range the accuracy degrades rapidly.
A bigger contributor to temperature error is usually solar radiation. Acurite offers a “pro” version of the 5-in-1 sensor that basically adds an extra solar panel to run the fan more. The fan helps to keep the inteternal temperature of the unit (where the sensing chip is) closer to ambient temperature. If you see overly high outdoor temperatures when the sun is out, it may be worth upgrading to the “pro” version of that sensor, or checking to make sure the internal fan hasn’t either failed or become clogged with spider webs.
For any other weather station, the data sheet for the actual chip doing the sensing is likely to give better info as to accuracy than the weather station manufacturer will. Placement and design of the weather station is also important to get good readings. Solar radiation shields are probably the best way to ensure reliable outdoor temperature readings.
Bill
Same happened to me - I had two of those hubs and because I already had so many sensors setup to work with them, I felt forced to buy two of the new hubs, which I did. Since then, they've essentially stopped all customer support. They no longer have any phone support. They claim to have live chat available during certain hours, but I've waited in the queue several different days for hours (during their "open" hours) and nobody has ever chatted with me. The only way I've been able to contact their support team has been through email and I've only received responses about 10 days after my first email and two or three follow ups. I'll never but anything from them again.