Ambient Weather Network Reviews

by JibblyJomes

I think I’m on the third time that I only get a white screen. I have deleted and reloaded and that would fix the issue for awhile then back to the white screen.

by Gill/2345

Even after release 4.0.0 still getting only a White screen. Completely worthless

by MacwhizNY

AmbientWeatherNetwork is basically a custom web browser that does nothing but show the AmbientWeather web site.

AmbientWeatherNetwork shows exactly the same view as the website, and I do mean exactly, right down to the rendering bugs. There’s no additional functionality provided. You don’t get an iOS look-and-feel. You don’t get an Apple Watch complication. You don’t get Siri Shortcuts. You don’t get anything that the web page doesn’t give you.

That extends to usability. For example, on a computer, you can use the mouse to select part of the weather graph to see numerical data for that date and time. It doesn’t really work for touch screens; it’s mouse-centric. You can tap, but you can’t drag to find the data point you want; doing so starts a text selection. The iOS app behaves the same way. It’s clear that AmbientWeatherNetwork is a wrapper around a web view.

Other problems with the website also extend to AmbientWeatherNetwork : slow loading of graph data, graph data not loading, seeing the login screen every time it loads even when you’ve set the site to remember-me mode...

I appreciate that AmbientWeather wants to provide an app. But this is literally the least effort possible in an app. I suspect that it was developed using a cross-platform “easy app development via HTML” toolkit. The only reason to use it is to avoid opening a new Safari tab.

by Zappastjun

Must-have app for owners of Ambient weather stations as it allows you to access your local weather data and history from anywhere- much easier to use than the physical screen. However I subtract 2 points for ongoing issues with updates. If you leave AmbientWeatherNetwork open on your iPhone it won’t update automatically the next time you check it. Even the reload button doesn’t work consistently- you have to toggle between panels and graphs to get the latter to update. And half of the time you are greeted by the white screen of death - nothing on it and even if you wait forever it won’t update. Only remedy is closing and reopening AmbientWeatherNetwork .

UPDATE 3/31: now AmbientWeatherNetwork is completely broken- it won’t allow me to select my own weather station

by 349392

I’m a farmer, and what is important to me is the forecast. I want to see hourly forecast for rain, wind and temperature. The forecast tile only shows today’s high and low temp, and a cartoon of the conditions. How much rain??! How much wind??! Weatherunderground has a much nicer forecast that’s easy to read! I use them instead of AmbientWeatherNetwork, but their PWS naming system won’t show the actual station’s name like AmbientWeatherNetwork and instead shows only the closest town name, so it gets confusing to make sure I’m on the correct PWS. Now I end up checking AmbientWeatherNetwork because I know it’s my station, THEN checking Wunderground because their info is way better than this crappy thing.

by Forester66

I have the Ambient weather app. The dashboard works great and also the graphs are interesting to check out. Problem I am having is when you go to map, it doesn’t seem to remember your location or triangulate. I even helped it out to my location by entering the city/state and it still thinks. I really would like to be able to see what is happening around me. I think it is a glitch that wouldn’t take much to fix- due to the fact most smart phones has gps on them. I know that the weather channel app picks up my location rather quickly. Please fix.

by Rdhdcowgirl

It used to easily show rainfall totals of day, week, year, month. One of the updates changed it to just like day totals and I can’t figure out how to change it back. Like I need to know monthly/weekly rain totals for crops. It’s probably there somewhere but not intuitive on iPad. The other thing is one update kicked me out of the data reporting so I see my own device on my device list but it looks like it may be reporting data from another users open account 10 miles away?

Otherwise I love the concept of checking basic info on the spot.

by Ender21

AmbientWeatherNetwork seems pretty good. It’s been solid for me so far, but I really prefer 4-tiles across. Sometimes upon launch it gives me 2 giant tiles instead. I don’t need them so giant. A toggle switch for one or the other would be great, and even better, letting us drag and drop the tiles in any way we choose would be good too! Thanks!

by Mtbadger

Weather station is still transmitting to the module but AmbientWeatherNetwork no o get works on my devices. Tried reinstalling, still nothing.

by Bos31337

AmbientWeatherNetwork is quite nice to use and navigate. It presents plenty of data in tile form and as graphs, and allows you to look at data published by other stations.

While overall I like it, it has a rather annoying bug, where every day or two it spontaneously loses the plot and drops into a “something went wrong” screen. Restarting AmbientWeatherNetwork and logging back in clears the error, but it is not at all obvious that this is how to restore service.

by Kemlyn56

I have been using AmbientWeatherNetwork a little over 2 months and it was fine. Then suddenly it no longer shows my weather station dashboard when I tap AmbientWeatherNetwork link. It seems to login and shows a white screen w a gray line at the base w no dashboard data. I sent a question to Ambient to see if they could assist. This is only happening on my iPhone my iPad shows the dashboard perfectly. I tried deleting AmbientWeatherNetwork and reinstalling on the iPhone nothing seems to work. 🙁

😊UPDATE: reloaded app for the 4h time today and unbelievably this time AmbientWeatherNetwork is working again. Having invested 100’s of dollars and not having access with my iPhone was extremely frustrating. Seems to be working normally now as when I originally upgraded the weather station.
Thanks again for resolving this issue.

by Fla Weather Nut

Looking at wind speed and todays peak, no where can I find the speed that the peak mph is showing. Looking at the graph max gust is about 8 mph for the day but the data on main page shows a peak of 11.4???
Also us there any help page that shows what all the plus , minus and squiggly lines give you?
Other than that I like AmbientWeatherNetwork .

To the developer. Thank you for the response. Also i did not see the help link at the bottom of AmbientWeatherNetwork until you told me about it. My bad. Thanks.

by JCinWoodside

Overall, a well-designed user interface that allows quick access to PWS data and an overview of other readings in the area of interest. And no advertisements! In comparison, the latest version of the Wunderground app feels cluttered, information-light, and advertisement-punctuated. The “search location” function doesn’t appear to be working (the website version does) but based on previous reviews, Ambient Weather has been actively trying to improve/fix AmbientWeatherNetwork .

by DIY'r52

I don’t know about other devices but I’ve used AmbientWeatherNetwork successfully on an iPhone SE (2020), an iPhone 12 and an iPhone 13 Pro Max. The trick to logging in to your account on the iPhone 12 & 13 Pro Max is to turn the screen to the landscape position and this will let you select the drop-down menu for logging in. Once logged in AmbientWeatherNetwork has consistently opened displaying my weather station parameters. Everything’s still there like the charts and if you want more detail on a certain parameter, just tap the “ + “ at the bottom of the parameter tile. To me, the social tab just takes up screen space, as an enhancement, I recommend adding a setting to toggle it off for those that don’t want to see/use it.

by Richard__

A recent update changed it so that you can only see granular historic data for a single day. If you select more than a day it only shows daily aggregates. Bring back the higher granularity views, or at least let me select that as an option in the drop down where you select date range.

UPDATE: They fixed the chart granularity so I’m increasing my score. Or ally is probably rate this 3 stars but they get a plus 1 for listening to customer feedback.

by Coultrt

This is an excellent weather station app even if you don’t own a weather station. One of the best things for me is that once you lock into your selected station, AmbientWeatherNetwork gives you the data for that station regardless of what is going on with other stations in the area. Other apps will begin eliminating access to a station because its data doesn’t conform to what their software algorithm says is reasonable.

I have one gripe though…

The rainfall accumulation is automatically reset for event, day, week, and month but not for the year. After month is “total” which is the accumulated rain since the weather station came on line. What kind of continuing metric is that? It would be nice if AmbientWeatherNetwork had the option to reset the total manually so that if someone wanted a “from the beginning of time” reading they could have it but the rest of us could see what has happened this year.

by LyleJames

5 stars and 2 snaps in a circle

by Rollins121

AmbientWeatherNetwork has everything. Exceeded my expectations.

by JVD Jr

Great for viewing neighborhood-level weather. I can see what’s happening right at my house rather than general forecasts which don’t always prove accurate for my location.

by Christian_Troy

Update: responsive staff and resolved the issue.

A version or two ago, AmbientWeatherNetwork does nothing. Just opens to a white screen. Have to visit the website through Safari to see any real-time data.

by Pmichelsen

AmbientWeatherNetwork is awful. Minimal effort went into it and it’s poorly designed. It’s the website but in one long list, complete waste of space. For a weather company as advanced as this, they have put zero effort into their mobile app.

Update: app is slow to load and freezes once loaded.

by 1surfer11

I’ve been a WU user for several years and thought it would be cool to utilize Ambient’s app as WU’s GUI has changed and I don’t like it. Found there’s no instructions or support for connecting my weather station to their network aside from entering a MAC address and physical address in AmbientWeatherNetwork .... did it and couldn’t get AmbientWeatherNetwork to function. Good thing it was free. Deleted AmbientWeatherNetwork and I’ll continue to use WU.

by Iphonereviewer#2

I found AmbientWeatherNetwork in advance of purchasing a $300+ on a weather station from this company. Reading these reviews given me reason to put that purchase on hold. If their support for AmbientWeatherNetwork is so bad I worry about their hardware support. I’ll keep AmbientWeatherNetwork on my phone for now to watch what happens, but unless their support for AmbientWeatherNetwork improves I know where I WON’T be spending my money.

by Grinch 2011

I am beyond disappointed with AmbientWeatherNetwork. For the cost of a high-end station your “access” is in essence, a webpage. I am used to the accurite display which is FAR beyond the Ambient for general information and display. Ambient provides more information but it's not immediately accessible, not to mention you have yo manually refresh any data once you open AmbientWeatherNetwork . At a minimum, AmbientWeatherNetwork should automatically update upon opening. If I hadn’t already mounted the system, I would return it for another accurite system.

by Matt-1979

You’re better off just creating a shortcut to the webpage on your home screen. It takes a solid 20 seconds before everything loads and you can scroll down without AmbientWeatherNetwork glitching and hanging. If you want to change the date/filter range of the graphs, or interact with them using the slider bar, the interface becomes unresponsive. If you want to refresh, be prepared to wait another 30 seconds. Hopefully future releases address the speed...until then I’ll be using the webpage.

by Zenman!

The most recent update, 1.4, now includes a bug that makes AmbientWeatherNetwork get stuck on the opening screen (update/confirm your time zone). AmbientWeatherNetwork worked fine until this update. Now it’s just a useless piece of storage space. Wish this developer would get his act together

by Bern3D

Has great potential but fails on the intuitive side of things. Cannot see any way to rearrange the widgets on the Dashboard, there are no instructions, very slow loading the graph data and I always have to re login every time I open AmbientWeatherNetwork making it very inconvenient.

by WeatherSam

AmbientWeatherNetwork itself is great in terms of layout and usability. But it freezes every time I open it and crashes sometimes. Very buggy and needs to be fixed

by Goldengod503.org

App displays a decent replication of the web.

That said.. my hot take on what could be improved. It’s not clear what buttons do, and unclear how / if cards can be rearranged. Focus areas when scrolling could use some tuning.

by ChrispyT2

Expanding the different sections causes AmbientWeatherNetwork to freeze.

by Dpen

Previous versions forced a log in every time AmbientWeatherNetwork was launched and sometimes, the login would fail. So far, this new version logs in consistently and updates weather info automatically. I was about to give up on AmbientWeatherNetwork but, now, I find it very useful. Keep it up Ambient Weather!

by Wiser Guy

Thanks for making this! Don’t have to wait on browser anymore. Looks same as website, but nice to have just a click away. Can get rid of the clunkier PWS Monitor app now. Thanks again!

by PWong1999

If you do not see data from your weather station, check that your ObserverIP firmware version is at least 4.0. No data was shown for mine for over an hour until I tracked down that my ObserverIP receiver firmware version was at v3.0.3. After updating to the latest, data was available immediately. It is nice to have AmbientWeatherNetwork option for viewing data in addition to Weather Underground.

by BigPlayaZ

I’m really happy they finally released a mobile app. It works really well. Looking forward to see where it goes from here.