TECH SPOTLIGHT

Weather station, NFL case set you up for fall

Special to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette - The Oregon Scientific Weather@Home weather station and the NFL series Defender case from Otter Box are sure to have you ready for the fall.
Special to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette - The Oregon Scientific Weather@Home weather station and the NFL series Defender case from Otter Box are sure to have you ready for the fall.

Two of my favorite things are approaching -- fall and football season.

I have a couple of products to prepare for one of the best times of the year. The first will help you figure out when to unpack those sweaters. The second will show off true team devotion.

Oregon Scientific recently introduced Weather @ Home, a weather station that combines an outside sensor, an indoor station and a smartphone app to keep up with the latest weather conditions.

The station includes one outdoor sensor, though you can add up to five to the main weather station. The sensor runs on a single AA battery and should be mounted outside away from water. (Mine is in the inside corner of the porch.) The main station runs on three AA batteries. The app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store for iPhones or Google Play store for Android phones.

The key is the main weather station. It works via Bluetooth with the sensor, so it needs to sit 98 feet or less from the outside sensor. The station doubles as the indoor sensor, so it tracks the temperature and humidity in the home. It also has a clock at the bottom with the time, date and day. The clock can be synched with the smartphone to set automatically.

The top half of the station provides information from the latest weather forecasts and the outside sensor. It displays the outdoor temperature, forecast for the next 24 hours, humidity and moon phase. The weather station will display any wind, heat, storm, fog or frost alerts, as well as an ice alert.

Connecting the sensor to the station was very easy. Holding the Mode and up keys set it into seek mode, and it connected quickly to the sensor. Had I wanted, I could have just hit the down button and gone to the next channel, and I could have set up another sensor as well. It was easy to set the clock as well, once the app was downloaded. A button in Settings tells the app to sync the clock with the weather station, which it did almost instantly.

The app offers a lot of great data. No only will it show the station's information, but it will provide alerts on the phone, as well as past data, such as temperature, humidity and barometric pressure. It's free and easy to download and set up.

I like that the app allows you to check the latest readings, but I wish it worked via Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth. That way, the conditions could be checked away from home. The Bluetooth-only connection means the phone has to be in proximity to the weather station to work. It would be nice if it was able to check weather conditions away from home as well. I have another weather sensor that does that, and I find myself using it more often than I thought.

Wish list aside, the Weather@Home station works well and provides a ton of information. I have another weather sensor, and its data was nearly identical to that of the Oregon Scientific weather station. That tells me they're pretty accurate, which is good to know.

I have another random item to toss out. It's a new product that isn't really new, but given the time of year, it's definitely worth a mention.

Otter Box recently introduced a new line of cases. The cases are in the Defender series, which features some of Otter Box's toughest protection. It also features a logo on the back -- a logo of a favorite NFL team.

The NFL Defender series is the same as the company's regular Defender series. A hard, interior shell is covered by a tough silicone exterior, and both fit into an included holster. In this case, a decal is stuck onto the back of the soft case -- literally. I can see the edge where it has been cut to fit around the camera opening on the back on the case sent to me.

I received a Dallas Cowboys case. It's a nice-looking logo, though not my first choice (Sorry, Dallas fans). The logo appears to be a fairly durable material that resisted the scratches I attempted to make. It would have to be gouged pretty strongly to mess it up.

As for the case, well, it's an Otter Box. They have a reputation as some of the best cases on the market, and the NFL cases are no different. The case resisted shocks and protected the phone well. The iPhone 5S/5C case is designed with the protective plastic on the front coming all the way to the bottom. A hole is cut out for the Home button, allowing access to the fingerprint reader.

It's a great case, though it will cost you about $5 more than a regular case. Still, that's likely a small price to pay for devotion, especially with football season nearly upon us.

Football and fall. It doesn't get much better than that.

Melissa L. Jones can be reached via email at [email protected].

where it's @

The Oregon Scientific Weather@Home station requires a smartphone with a Bluetooth connection, AA batteries and the Weather@Home smartphone app, which is free from the App Store or Google Play. The product retails for $59.95. More information is available at www.oregonscientific.com. The Otter Box NFL Defender case requires and iPhone 5 or later or a Samsung Galaxy 4 or 5. The product retails for $64.95. More information is available at otterbox.com.

SundayMonday Business on 08/11/2014

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