Hello Jorgen and List,
I posted a couple of messages regarding a new indoor/outdoor weather station from Netatmo and the problems I am having to get it to connect to my WiFi. In his reply Jorgen said he also purchased this device and he was able to successfully connect it. What follows is an update, it’s a bit lengthy, but anybody who is even remotely interested in this should read it and monitor the list for additional posts from me or write to me directly because I can only say good things about the company despite the connection issues I am having. They have been awesome and deserve our support. The connection issue I have seems to be a problem specific to my router/WiFi setup although Netatmo agrees that this seems to be software related and that it is something they need to fix and I’d like to point out that I never had problems connecting anything else to my WiFi from my Radio Thermostats to my iPhone and an HP wireless printer. I use identical VPN (virtual private networking) routers from Netgear both at home and at my business. These routers are about 10 or 11 years old and the only reason why I have not replaced them yet with newer routers that are capable of Gigabit speeds is because I really need that VPN tunnel as I sometimes work from home and while it’s a bit slower, this allows me to work as if I was on one of my computers at my store. I then have an Airport Express connected physically to each router both at work and at home. It is set to bridge mode which means it creates a WiFi network, but does not act as a DHCP client and it does no NAT (network address translation) as the router does that. Yesterday I took the weather station to our local store that sells Apple products, the sales person there plugged the USB cable into one of their Mac computers, we ran the wizard and it connected instantly and without any problem whatsoever to their WiFi—the entire process took 2 minutes. They are running an Airport Extreme, so also an Apple product, but it’s a WiFi capable router so no need for 2 separate devices. I think most people do have single unit WiFi capable routers these days and use an Airport Express at best to extend the network or use it for Airplay. I have actually now ordered 2 new Netgear FVS318N WiFi VPN routers which will still give me the VPN functionality, but also include 8 Gigabit ports and are WiFi capable. Netatmo is currently testing my setup with a separate router and Airport Express as WiFi access point to see if they can come up with an explanation why it won’t connect. Next I’d like to point out again that the setup wizard both on the computer and on the iPhone (you can use either one to connect the station to your WiFi) is inaccessible at t his point. But once it’s connected the app does work even though as Jorgen pointed out in his post it’s a bit cluttered and you can’t yet access minimum and maximum temperature readings. I do say “not yet” because after I emailed their support with my findings yesterday about the connection issue, I had an email back this morning which I would like to share here. I want to say that from day 1 they have replied always promptly, I asked some questions prior to ordering it regarding their return policy (it is 7 days) and each time I received an almost immediate reply except when it was a weekend. In my last email I emphasised the importance of accessibility again, offered to help if I could with regards to testing new releases if they would be willing to make Voiceover specific improvements and asked if a senior person in management or development could contact me and let me know if they would consider making accessibility improvements. Here is the reply I received this morning: From: Netatmo Support [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2012 6:05 AM To: [email protected] Cc: 'Laura | Netatmo'; 'Carlos Raventos' Subject: RE: WiFi connection problem Hi, Thanks again for your patience. We now understand better your network configuration. We are currently setting up a similar setting here (with the device acting as a router separated from the wifi access point) to reproduce the issue. As your try at the Apple store shows, the issue looks software so if we can manage to reproduce it, we will fix it. As far as the 7 days return period is concerned, we agree to extend it to any necessary time that we will need to find & fix this Wifi interworking issue. The issue clearly seems to lay on our side so that’s the least we can do… Concerning the accessibility of our App, we have discussed internally and have decided to enhance our support of voiceover by adding within the App what’s necessary to have a good voiceover user experience. Those enhancement will probably not be in the next release of our App but in the one after (probably in a month or so). Carlos, here in copy, will send you a “testflightapp” invitation. By creating an account in “testflightapp”, you will be able to run on your iPhone or iPad previews of our application before they are actually released on the App Store. This could allow us to have your feedback on the voiceover implementation before we make the formal submission of the app on the Apple Store. To allow multiple devices to run our preview applications, the “testflighapp” procedure shall be run individually on each test device (for instance, on an iPhone and on an iPad). If you have time for this we would appreciate to have your feedback on our first implementations as they arrive in the next few weeks. Thanks a lot for your patience. I’ll come back to you as soon as possible with a feedback on the Wifi setting issue once we have reproduced it here… fred 10 minutes later I received a separate message from Carlos, one of their software engineers, with instructions on how to setup a TestFlight account so I can become a Beta Tester. Needless to say, I am very happy about the level of support I am getting and Netatmo’s willingness to make Voiceover improvements. This stands in stark contrast with Neil’s recent post about Sonos who has been asked for years by Neil, myself and a few other users to make a few minor improvements to their app like labeling some buttons and who can’t be bothered despite promises and the fact that in other ways they seem to be a good company with a definitely excellent product. The Netatmo weather station consists of an indoor module and an outdoor module. The indoor module is what connects to the WiFi and the outdoor module connects to the indoor module by I think 2.4 Ghz radio frequency which means it can be placed a considerable distance away. It should be kept out of the rain and direct sunlight and I was already told that Netatmo is working on coming up with an anemometer (a sensor that measures windspeed) and a gauge for measuring rainfall amounts. All Netatmo stations report their data back to Netatmo as well and it is their goal to create a super network of everybody’s Netatmo weather station so that anybody can see the data from stations that maybe near them because especially in very large cities micro climates often form and an official government station 5 miles away may not report conditions correctly. Both units are made from aluminum and are in the shape of a tube approx. 2 inches thick, the indoor module is maybe 6 inches long, the outdoor module maybe 4 inches. The outdoor unit is run by 4 Triple A batteries and the indoor unit can be plugged into an outlet with a micro USB cable and a USB wall adapter (both included). It can use 4 Double A batteries as backup in the case of a power outage. I should mention that apart from indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity the weather station also measures CO2 levels in your house as well as noise levels both indoors and outdoors and you can set up alerts for various events like when certain temperatures are reached, the CO2 level is too high etc. The Netatmo weather station can be ordered on their website for $179 and more information is available at www.Netatmo.com. For other Canadians who maybe interested, shipping to me here in British Columbia was $19 and I paid $31 to Canada Post when it arrived, approx. $22 was HST and $8 or 9 for the brokerage). This makes it a moderately expensive gadget, but if you enjoy having access to accurate weather information inside and directly outside your house this should work well and will probably work even better in 4 to 6 weeks when the promised Voiceover improvements hopefully become reality. Best regards, Sieghard From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jørgen Skov Nielsen Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 6:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Netatmo Indoor/Outdoor Weather Station Hello Sieghard I have also bought a netatmo weather station. I have no sighted help, but Using the OCR feature in the jaws and several hours of attempts, I got Netatmo weather station set up. After that i can use my netatmo weatherstation on my Iphone, I can read out the humidity and temperature, as well as other measurements such as weather station measures, but the interface is a little cluttered on the iPhone with VoiceOver. It is not possible to read the graph with the highest and lowest temperature. Best regards Jørgen Nov 11, 2012, at 7:58 AM, Sieghard Weitzel <[email protected]> wrote: Hello List, A couple of weeks ago I briefly mentioned that I found a weather station which is designed to work with the iPhone. The company is called Netatmo and their website is <http://www.Netatmo.com> www.Netatmo.com for those who want to read more about it. The basic idea is that you get a wireless weather station which consists of 2 sensors, one for indoors and one for outdoors. The outdoor sensor connects to the indoor unit and the indoor unit connects to your WiFi. You then use the free Netatmo app to access the information provided by the sensors which includes outdoor temperature and humidity, indoor temperature, humidity and carbon monoxide levels as well as indoor and outdoor noise levels which is a bit unusual for weather stations, but I guess it could be interesting if you live in a big city and are curious as to how much noise there really is. Currently the station does not measure windspeed and precipitation, but I was told that they are working on that and I assume this may be added later in the form of additional sensors you can buy. The 2 sensor units consist of a perfectly round tube which is made from aluminum, both are exactly the same diameter (about 2 inches), the outdoor unit is maybe 4 inches long and the indoor unit is maybe 6 inches long. Each unit has a plastic lid on one end with a large slot you can use ith a coin and this is where you put the batteries (it’s almost identical to the battery cover on the Apple Wireless Keyboard except that it’s a lot bigger. The outdoor unit takes 4 Triple A batteries (included), the indoor unit takes 4 Double A batteries (not included). Normally it is recommended that the indoor unit is plugged into a power outlet, it has a micro USB port and comes with a standard USB cable and a wall adapter, batteries are optional and meant for backup in case of a power failure. In addition to the Micro USB port the indoor unit also has a USB port like that on a computer which allows you to plug in the iPhone cable. Initial setup is done either by plugging your iPhone directly into the unit while it is also plugged into a power outlet, you then open the app and can connect the unit to your home WiFi (this is just necessary once just like when you connect, for example, a WiFi Thermostat. You can also do this initial setup by connecting the unit to your computer and then use a Network Setup Wizard which you can download from the Netatmo website. OK, all of this sounds very good and straight forward. However, now comes the problem. Both the Network Wizard as well as the setup screen on the Netatmo app are entirely graphical, neither Jaws nor Voiceover reads anything whatsoever except for the title of the Window “Netatmo Setup Wizard” or something like that. I used the Convenient OCR feature in Jaws and was able to read the welcome screen which basically says Thanks for buying the weather station and there is a next button which I was able to click. Then the OCR gave me a list of available networks and I tried to click my WiFi which was there, but I did not get into the edit field where I could enter my password or maybe I did and Jaws didn’t say it because when I repeated the procedure with sighted help Jaws said nothing like “edit field” but my friend told me I could type the password. So I finally typed in my password with sighted help and was looking forward to getting this connected to see if the app would give me information Voiceover could read, but the Wizard then told me the station could not be connected to my network and to manually enter static Ip information. I tried everything I could think of and I’m not exactly a beginner when it comes to technology and networking, but no luck. I then took the unit to work and we tried to connect it to my work WiFi both using the PC wizard as well as the app always with the same result; it could not connect. I am using Apple Airport Express WiFi access points and rarely have a problem with other devices, my Radio Thermostats both at work and at home connected just fine. At this point I can only conclude that the particular unit I received has a faulty WiFi radio or that the product which has only been released very recently is the equivalent of the waste a male member of the bovine species produces. The sensors actually do have the feel and look of a very well-made product and are packed beautifully, but I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean much. I am quite disappointed of course because I have been searching for a weather station that talks to my iPhone for at least a year or more and was excited to find this. At $180 it’s also a pretty expensive weather station especially considering that most wireless weather stations with an LCD display which are fine for a sighted person also measure windspeed and precipitation and that at a lower or equal price. I should mention that communication with the company so far has been good, I receive very prompt replies to my emails and was assured that they offer a 7-day money back guaranty, not super long, but I wasn’t worried because I knew I could easily find out within a week whether this would work or not. I should also mention that the app has a “demo mode” and when I tried that I was able to get information from the official government weather station with Voiceover. If you own a Netatmo Weather Station you have access to its data as well as that from the nearest official weather station. OK, thought I post this preliminary review or account of my experience in trying to set this up. I am at this point resigned to having to send it back, but before I do so I will try one more thing and that is to go to our local store that sells Apple products and I’ll ask them if they can maybe try to set it up on their WiFi to see if they can get it to work. If I do send it back I think I may not get a replacement unit right away, but wait a bit until they worked out the glitches especially since I still don’t know 100% sure if the app will work with Voiceover once the station is connected and let me review all the information. Best regards, Sieghard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/> http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at <http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en> http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.
