The weather fascinates me as I am very sensitive to changes in temperature. I seem to feel the cold more than Craigy, and I’m useless in the extreme heat. The opportunity to get up close and personal with the Netatmo wireless urban weather station was therefore one I couldn’t pass up. To put it at its most simplistic, Netatmo compromises of two very sleek cylindrical sensors (one for outdoors, one for indoors) that sends highly accurate weather and pollutant data to your iPhone, iPad or Android device. This video showcases all its main features better than I can:

Setting it up was easy. You simply download the free app from the itunes store, connect the sensors to your iPhone to sychronise, then off you go.

Clicking onto the app, the home screen gives you a snapshot of the outside weather, temperature (indoor and out), CO2 concentration (ppm), % humidity, and acoustic comfort. A green bar will then turn these metrics into a poor to excellent rating so you know you’re in safe parameters inside your home.

I began this trial wanting to get a more accurate understanding of Dexter’s nursery as it is by far the warmest room in the house. Quite unintentionally, we have 3 temperature gauges in there; a Gro-egg (we use it as a nightlight), a Brother Max Ray Room and Bath Thermometer, and a BT Digital Baby Monitor and Pacifier. Each of them regularly display different temperatures despite being within 3ft of each other. I had originally hoped that we could better understand what actions to take to cool the nursery down (and when) by tracking it over the course of a week. Upon setting up the Netatmo however, it was quickly evident you would get more usable and relevant data by keeping it in the most frequently used room in the house, the living room.

The Netatmo should most definitely come with a product warning - it’s highly addictive. As this summers heatwave took hold I was forever glancing at my iPhone to check the humidity reading inside our home, and look for little dips in outside temperature in which to take Dex for a short walk.

There’s also a handy alert feature to let you know when any of the measurements drop or creep above the recommended level. In the case of CO2, this was really useful as it let us know when to fling open the back door and get some natural air in the room.

The best feature by far with this device, is the ability to track the environment within your home over time. A summary screen allows you to view weekly, or monthly activity across all key measurements. Of course, when viewing on an iPhone you can flip the device onto its side to better view the graphs. The trends are really interesting (if a little predictable) and we used them to work out when the plants needed a second watering (during the hottest part of the day), when the house was coolest to put Dexter down for nap, and various other daily activities.

The only limitation to the tracking is that if you move the weather station from room to room the readings will invariably change. There’s always one room in your house that is warmer than the others, your living spaces will naturally be noisier than your bedrooms (unless you’re my next door neighbour! > Less said!) and some rooms may have limited ventilation. This meant we decided to leave it where it was and we didn’t have an opportunity to track Dexter’s nursery. If we’d had the chance, it would have been really interesting to see how his room compared to the rest of the house.

I will say that the noise pollution feature strikes me as entirely irrelevant. The patterns were as you’d expect - when we were watching television the graph spiked, at night it plummeted. I’m guessing this would be more useful in built-up city areas where road noise is a factor, but it wasn’t very insightful in our little terrace.

In summary, the aluminium sensors themselves are very stylish and unobtrusive (they wouldn’t have looked out-of-place in a Bose showroom), and as they are wireless, you can pop them just about anywhere. The range of each of the measurements is very impressive too. For example, CO2 could be measured to a max of 5000 ppm with an accuracy to the nearest 50 ppm (between 2000-5000 you would typically experience headaches, sleepiness, poor concentration, nausea, and increased heart rate). For tech geeks and weather fanatics, it’s a must-have piece of kit

At £139 this certainly isn’t an impulse buy and might seem like an extravagance in these hard times. You’ll be pleased to discover the app is free, and the fact it’s wireless means the initial outlay is the only one you’ll have to make. I know I thoroughly enjoyed trialling it and might consider getting one of my own when we move to Australia - adjusting to the change in air quality and climate there will be one huge test for us as a family.

“What’s fascinating is that Netatmo is using your data to create the Urban Weather program, a project in which a hopefully huge number of Netatmo sensors will generate a worldwide database of weather and air quality information.” TUAW

For more information, head to www.netatmo.com, or check them out on Facebook.

DISCLAIMER: I was sent the Netatmo for the purposes of this review. This was on a trial basis only and I did not keep the item.