so today we're going to make a comparison of three very popular wireless hygrometers and thermometers
they do exactly what they say test and read the humidity and report back to a base station in
your house so i couldn't make up my mind when i was doing research on these so i decided
i need to get three of them anyway and i'm going to evaluate them all and make comparisons
so i'll show you what models they are i got them all in amazon i paid full price this is not a
sponsored review i am not compensated in any way i keep honeybees and i wanted to put out several
hygrometer and thermometer sensors in my bee yard and my observation hive and in my long langstroth
hive as well so i will know what the temperature and humidity is now you can't just get one brand
and get nine sensors for example so i had to get three different brands to get nine sensors that
would not overlap one another and read incorrectly the first one that we're looking at comes with
its own batteries the other two i'm going to use my own of course energizer lithiums they're the
longest lasting best batteries and look at the temperature parameters minus 40 degrees to 140
degrees fahrenheit 20-year shelf life and they do really well when they're stored each one of these
home base units had a little protective plastic piece over the front of it
and so you just peel that off illumination on all of them they have channels sinking celsius or
fahrenheit readouts only one of them will show you the day but this particular one has magnets on the
back or you can put a screw on the wall since i'm going to use these inside i don't care about the
mounting portion and this base takes two triple a batteries and it'll freeze stand or you can hang
it on your wall these are the batteries that came with it now i want every piece of gear to have the
same footing here so i'm also going to test those batteries to make sure they're nice and strong
they also will mount your sensors on the wall if you want them i'm going to put these inside
feeder shims in beehives so i don't care about the mounting and i really just want to know when
it hits above 50 degrees and if the humidity spikes up there i also have an observation hive
building i'm going to show you that later too so again the back they hold two aaa batteries
and then you can see the channel selector there so channel one two and three and then of course
there's the pairing button there with the tx next to it so i want to make sure the batteries
that came with it who knows how old they are let's test them and make sure we're at 100 here
and we are so we don't have to worry there i am going to use the batteries that were
included with it on the first unit the other two units of course will get those
other batteries so that's how it goes in small unit handy it only displays one channel at a time
of the three and that's the upper portion there the base station readout is at the bottom i'm
also going to show you a comparison of all of them because we're going to have the sensors and the
base units inside in the exact same environment and we're going to find out if they read true
remember these are not scientific they're not super accurate but i would like to find out what
the ballpark accuracy is and there are some things to know so the other thing is on the sensors that
you put out channel 1 channel 2 and channel 3 they're not identified any differently on the
sensor itself so i'm going to write that on the battery cover on the outside there it naturally
selects and cycles through all three of them and you need to put batteries in the sensor first
then put your batteries in the base station and pair it up here by putting pushing these buttons
so this is the second unit of course channel two there don't forget
and remember you can't just buy more sensors it only reads three and if you
got two identical base stations the sensors will overlap they're on identical frequencies
and it wouldn't help you out the other thing is each of the three units and systems that i'm
reviewing here are all on different frequencies and they do not interfere with 2g or 5g networks
so now they're paired and operating we have to leave them for quite a while here
it recommends that you let it sit for half an hour to stabilize and then we'll see if all the sensors
read out the same that one's reading channel three notice the down arrow to the right there
that means humidity if it's straight across to the side it's stable if the arrow goes down humidity
is decreasing if the arrow goes up humidity is increasing this is the wa 54 a mere unit
now these are cool because they're already marked one two and three nothing to do in
fact of the three units that i'm testing here this is the most hands-off easygoing one 433.92
megahertz and that's good because one of the other units is operating on a 300 megahertz cycle
this one holds two aaa batteries in the back and there's no pairing to do
that's right it's easy does it all on its own so then all you need to do is make a log of course
and document which sensors are going in which beehive or storage facility your basement wherever
you want to do it three buttons on the top here minimum and max temps that it records celsius and
fahrenheit button on the back this is of the three the simplest three aaa batteries in the back super
simple no pairing button you just turn it on and it goes but remember you have to put the batteries
in the sensor first and the base station last there's little holes around the parameter this is
considered water resistant so if it got some rain on it probably okay i would not put any of these
out in heavy weather you want them shielded so inside beehive covers is fine for me you
see the little radio signs in the little right corners there flashing that means it's trying
to read the sensors which now have batteries in them it does take a few moments and then they
start showing up channel one is up channel three is up channel two still didn't report
so i had to repeat the cycle i had to take all the batteries out of the base station
put them all back in the sensors and then turn the base station back on by installing batteries
there is no on off button on it also you'll notice this display does not show date and
time and things like that but it does show all three sensors at a time so that's kind of cool
so that's the smallest one most hands-off easiest to set up
and then here is the most expensive of the three this is by accurite 0604 3m model base station
peel that display off and it looked kind of weird here with the liquid crystal display there
you could touch it and all these little weird things are going on turned out not
to be a problem though so we're going to figure that out and we're going to get this one going
again just show the exterior this is the largest of the base station you can click on the top there
it shows the records as long as the batteries are good and running it will store everything all
of these units are made in china as i mentioned before that's accurite very simple controls here
and you have a set button and then up and down to get you through the menu this one uses double a
batteries so and three and this one and of course two double a's in each of the remote sensor units
and there's a reset button there which will clear all of your data and start everything
off again so if your batteries die you're going to be starting from the beginning and
that's pretty much it or you can just zero it out if things are reading wrong
the unique part of this is uh these are calibratable so in other words you can
calibrate it if it's off a little bit and it's the only unit that allows that so here's the model
number again for the receiver which of course is different from the base station they also
offer each of these units with a single sensor so if you don't need multiples you're good to go
and these have of course nice tall large sensors they have alarms on them if you want to set that
again those are all go through the menu and you can set that up
and again there's your channel selector that little black switch a b and c they're 20 year
shelf life again this is the energizer 100 leak proof that just means the batteries won't leak
but here's the key the temperatures minus 40 degrees fahrenheit to 140 degrees fahrenheit
well beyond anything any beehive is going to do so that's well within the parameters that i need
also reminds you to make sure to put your batteries in the sensor before
you put batteries in the base station there's that little switch a b and c
and the cover so i have to write it on there again don't forget to fill out your
logbook or you're not going to know where you're putting these things and what the readouts mean
and so just one two and three i used an indelible ink marker here by big fine point
permanent marker anything will do sharpie you name it and then here's the double a batteries
super exciting and there's the three units it also says on there that the range is 100 meters
i'm going to test the range of all of these so stay with me also while it's running you notice
those little red lights blink periodically there's an audible alarm on the back of the base station
and you program the alarm whether you want to hear it or not and what the parameters are close up of
the reset button and that's pretty much it that's the whole unit like everything is displaying there
notice the uh differences everything should be reading the same but remember we have to give
it a half an hour or more to acclimate before we can really start to get critical about the
readings hit the set button and hold it there and you can go through the day the month the year the
time all that stuff so of course it reads friday 12 to 2 p.m that's incorrect today is wednesday
and i'm doing this at 901 a.m and it's february the 24th so we get these out here and humidity
is interesting to me because i want to know if the humidity is building up inside beehives i'm
not going to put the sensors down inside boxes with active bees because they would just plug
up the holes with parabolas but i would like to know if their feeding stations at the top are
going to get to 50 degrees or higher today they might but everything should be reading the same
because they're all on the same table next to each other and look at the disparity the base units
at 73 degrees 72 72 and 71 for the remote units and look at the humidity readings 35 to 37 to 38
quite a range there this one sensor a b and c 72 72 and 70 and the display is at 72. so 72
was pretty accurate and that sensor c there on the right for accurate we can adjust that
so this just shows you the model numbers this is what i paid for them 32 bucks for the vivo
sun and 3199 and then 59.39 for the acurite so the cheapest one is in the center and
here they are they have been sitting out for more than half an hour so this should be good if
everything were perfect all these readings would be the same for temperature and humidity but they
were off next thing i wanted to do is find out what the range is so i took all the sensors out
put them in my b shed here this is about 85 feet from where the readouts are on the kitchen table
there i'm going to put them all in the same room so guess what if they're in here together they
should read the same right so we get inside now i have a calibrated thermometer there the traceable
thermometer at the bottom 71.8 the display on that acurite was at 72 so within a degree
and then this one's at 73 and the one all the way to the left the base station reading at 73.
so within two degrees that's not terrible remember these are not you're not going to hatch chicken
eggs with these things so i'm just making the comparison the next thing i wanted to know is
how far can i get a signal so i just decided to take a walk through the snow
and i'm going to bring the base stations with me they're all wireless how long do the batteries
last each one of the batteries are supposed to last in each unit 12 months it says and that's
the same for the sensors that are now sitting in that b shed so i'm just taking a walk checking
the signal strength on these one of them said it was good for 100 meters so i'm just going
to keep going i stay for a walk in the snow because look at the outside temperatures here
we are hitting 49 50 51 degrees pretty good considering we've been down in the single digits
recently so i'm already at this point a hundred meters from the shed where the sensors are snow's
a little deep might as well earn the cookies i'm gonna eat a little later when i burn off
these calories but that little bench is what i'm going to set these on here we are this is a good
oh it's well over 100 yards and the signals look at the signal strength on them
pretty darn good and it's still reading outside temp 48 degrees of course by the way
we can see which ones adapt the quickest to the outside temperatures so acurite adjusted itself
pretty quick as we went vivo sun seemed to do pretty good and i think the slowest one
was the amir wa54 so that's one lower left there still it still reads 71 degrees fahrenheit so it
actually does take a long time to acclimate and catch up to what the temperatures are
notice we have quite a range there 48 degrees and that's reading inside so i took averages
what if we put them all together the base unit and the sensors together what did we get temp
72.6 72.3 71.5 so all within a couple degrees of each other and humidity levels 36.5 36.75
33.25 so acurite actually read the lowest humidity unfortunately i didn't have a calibrated humidity
gauge to validate that but what we want to do here is show that they're all pretty much pretty
similar to one another temperature range 67 66 67 all the way to the right the humidity ranges were
okay not super tight and remember acurite can be adjusted so if you can take it to a pharmacist or
somebody that's got a calibrated environment where temperature and humidity are regulated
you can calibrate your acurite right there and then bring it home and know exactly
what's going on but for me it's going to show trends increase humidity increase temperature
50 degrees or above i know that my bees can get up there and start getting some of those
emergency stores in the feeder shim thanks for watching i hope this helped you make a decision
you