technoline MA 10410 Weather Station - White

Easy to set up and has been well behaved so far. Barometer and max/min display is just what I wanted.

I purchased this item to (hopefully) replace a Vion weather forecaster that after 17 years of service has failed (insofar as the external sensor is "stuck" on 52% RH and the base station repeatedly fails to read the external sensor). Notwithstanding, the Vion does seem to provide a decent forecast.The MA10410 base unit has a nice clear display with the ability to adjust its contrast. It connected to the German time signal promptly and was easy to set the time zone to UK time. It didn't revert back to European time - although I didn't have it when the UK reverted to BST.The top section of the display shows indoor temperature & humidity along with the current time (and day of the week). Although the time displayed is quite large, it is not as "in your face" as some other stations that give you, additionally, the date, month and year. If I wanted a sophisticated clock, I'd have purchased one!The bottom section of the display shows the sensor (outside) temperature and humidity (actually labelled temperature & humidity to avoid confusion! - a trifle unnecessary, but whatever). It also displays the (resettable) minimum and maximum sensor values.The middle section displays a "forecast"/trend and a 12 hour pressure history graph, but no actual pressure reading.The sensor is a fairly lightweight unit that is not in any way weather resistant and would need to be housed in a "proper" external sensor housing to stand any chance of surviving outside. The external sensors are, in my opinion, often going to be the weak link in the chain and I additionally purchased a second sensor to have as a spare. The "spare" is pretty much identical to the supplied sensor except that it has an LCD screen that alternates between temperature and humidity - this proved handy for testing purposes.Once set up, the two sensors, base unit, my Vion (base) unit and a mercury thermometer were co-located on an internal table and left for 18 hours to "settle down".I tested and recorded various data, pretty much hourly during waking hours, for the next 3 days.All four RH values were different and varied from each other by as much as 9%. The Vion value remained pretty static but the new set up seemed to waver about a bit randomly and often in different directions from each other.The temperature readings were also a little "off" and inconsistent but generally not by a more that 1.5/2.0c in either direction.The pressure graph pretty much tracked the Vion (which has a 24 hour history) but there were a couple of occasional inconsistencies.None of the above was necessarily a deal-breaker.However, the "forecast"/trend, made no obvious sense at all! It neither showed what the weather was doing, nor what the weather ended up doing. If there was any consistency, it rather vaguely tracked what the weather had done - but even then, there were significant erroneous "forecasts"/trends.I moved the two sensors outside into a much cooler and damper timber and glass "conservatory" and left it for 12 hours to "acclimatise". Further readings over 3 days revealed the same general inconsistencies but with a somewhat greater degree of inconsistency (if that makes sense) and the "forecast"/trend remained as useful as a chocolate teapot earring no resemblance to reality.At this point, I reached for the returns button. As a forecaster, this unit fails completely.I had hoped that in the (more than) decade and a half since purchasing the Vion, technology would have moved on sufficiently to bring a reasonably accurate weather station to the home market.It looks to me that the vast majority of such units are little more that glorified clocks and technology has stagnated in lieu of the ability to get a far more accurate forecaster as a mobile phone app.The MA10410 is a component of the wider "Mobile Alerts" (MA) suite. Whilst I did not buy it to embrace the larger suite, it gave me the ability to do so if required.If registered with the MA Gateway, the MA10410 will have its data available within the MA app. However, it is only the data. The "forecast"/trend (for what its worth) is not displayed and there is no pressure graph. I would really question the point of going this route. Overall, this a a great shame because there would have been an opportunity to design the app to take the data (along with the likes of the wind direction/speed unit) and put forward a forecast based on the historical data and rate/speed of change of that data.Data is fine, but it is information I want.

Excellent weather at station, easy to read, radio set clock, connects with my other sensors and hub for data access anywhere with Internet.