Ecowitt VS ws view plus

Ecowitt VS ws view plus

To be “ecowitt” or not to be “WS View Plus”? This is a question.

 

The two APPs are both available for products sold under various brands produced by Fine Offset Electronics.  Both APP can show data on clouds or dashboard nicely, and both can be used to complete the configuration for provisioning the devices to be hooked to the cloud services. However, the two APPs bear a remarkable difference regards their main focus and their design originates.

 

Below is a comparing table to tell the difference between the two APPs.

 

ecowitt app is designed for ecowitt weather service user only, it is easier for device integration to the ecowitt ecosystem as it is more user friendly and easier to complete the device adding process. The ecowitt weather service supports all the various sensors developed.  The more commonly needed services like alert, weather data push notification notice will be possible with this APP.

 

However, with WS View Plus app,  the design is more for compromising customer’s needs in publishing data to services more than ecowitt weather service, like WU. So, the process is not as smart as ecowitt in integrating the whole system on ecowitt.net. However, end user has more control of their raw data: if the APP is connecting to the same Wi-Fi local network, you can view the live data for most of the devices. If you want to have more control on your weather station hardware, you can explore the live data feature with the WS View Plus APP.  

 

A conclusion: if you have more cloud data services needs, you should go with ecowitt APP. If you want to have more control on your weather station hardware, you should go with WS View Plus

 

There is a lot more potential for ecowitt APP if you are willing to explore the products possibility. It is at user’s choice, and we are more than happy in getting any feedbacks from you, especially if you happened to have used both APPs and tell us how you feel about this two apps for their pros and cons, we are happy to make it better.

 

 

First Time Run

login under your account setup on www.ecowitt.net. If you are new user, it will be asked to register on APP or at ecowitt.net website.

no log in needed.

Normal Startup

go to dashboard for the device under your account.

go to one of the  "My devices ": "WU Dashboard" or "Ecowitt Dashboard" as user selectable for this start page.  For user that want to browse data between WU and ecowitt dashboard, this is convenient.

Devices supported

It supports all the devices under user's account on ecowitt. Switch to toggle with the ">" or "<" button at the sun rise and sun set time section of the main UI. The UI works on its own data fetched from ecoiwtt.net, so it is not a simple browser-based dashboard reload.

Only devices under your account can be viewed or managed.

My Devices: it will list all the devices that is connected to your router network, no matter it is under different user account devices or not, it will list all the devices sniffed.
WU Dashboard: it can be added by its device ID. The dashboard is based on API call to WU server for data fetching and re-organized to be displayed.
Ecowitt Dashboard: it can be added with owner's account info, and then this device can be displayed under this APP with its embedded webpage URL call at www.ecowitt.net webpage. So the dashboard can be displayed once with this authentication process. If you want to share the device's dashboard without using the share link from ecowitt.net website, this is a good choice to share with your device with others. The share link on ecowitt.net need to be refreshed every 30 days, and this dashboard doesn't require to renew.

Wi-Fi Provisioning Start Process

If you want to start to configure your weather station to be connected to your home Wi-Fi, you will need to tap 3 times: tap menu button - weather station - Add New Weather Station to start.

There is a direct button "+" to start the configuration for your weather station at the 3 start pages always. So, it is easier for you to start the device provisioning process to get the device connected to your Wi-Fi network.

ecowitt.net device whitelisting

Once you complete the device provisioning, and device will be added automatically under your login account. You don't need to manually add your device or weather station on www.ecowitt.net.

After Wi-Fi provisioning process is completed, the device is showed up at the device list page. But if you need the device to publish data to ecowitt.net, you will manually register this device. There are two types of devices:
Devices capable of displaying live data:  tap at the up-right corner button  "more- weather services" to register on ecowitt.net.
Devices pass data through the Wi-Fi bridge: tap the device will activate the weather services and start the registry on ecowitt.net.

Future Function Support

Since ecowitt app is a dedicated APP for ecowitt ecosystem, so the to be developed functions like notice push, alert reminder etc. can be integrated in this same APP.

The integration function is very little on this APP.

Live data

No live data possible to be displayed. Only ecowitt dashboard.

Live data as well as cloud dashboard can be displayed at user’s choice.

 

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