Introduction to Elgato Eve Weather

Having a smart home is nothing without knowing if you need your jacket or your sunglasses before you leave for the day. With Elgato Eve Weather you can know what the weather outside is before you even roll out of bed in the morning. Placing the Eve Weather outside gives you the ability to view current conditions as well as historical data relating to temperature, humidity, and air pressure. Knowing this information is only half the charm of Eve Weather. You can also utilize the Elgato Eve application to create rules to both keep you better informed as well as complete tasks that will keep you more comfortable at home.

Set-Up

Similar to all the Elgato Eve products on the market, Eve Weather is very simple to set up. Elgato’s use of batteries for power and Bluetooth Low Energy for connectivity allows for this ease of installation and pairing. There are no wires to plug in or difficult steps for connecting. Just pop the included batteries in the back of the device and mount using a
nail or screw to any solid surface. Then all you need to do is download the Elgato Eve application and tap to add a device. The application will walk you through the rest of the quick set up that basically asks you the location of the device and what you want to name the sensors.

Use with HomeKit 

Eve Weather tracks three basic weather data stats right from the location you place it. They are air pressure, humidity, and temperature. With the use of Apple’s Siri, you can ask questions about temperature or humidity and get answers verbal answers right from your phone.

Elgato Eve Weather Readings

From within the Elgato Eve application, you can select your Eve Weather accessory and review the data collected by the device. Each sensor provides it’s on graph set and allows you to view the data in multiple ways. Tapping on the accessory allows you to view quick data about each including a 48-hour graph of the data collected. You can collapse each graph to show only the most current readings of the accessory. By tapping the more information button in the bottom corner of each data collection, you can view much more detailed and customizable reports. From this screen, you can drill down the data into Hourly, Daily, Weekly or Monthly reports. You can also toggle the compare button to receive the report data in comparison to the previous time period selected. If you want to get even more detailed data you can select the measurements tab and from there tap in and see each time-stamped measurement that has recorded. Lastly, for your viewing pleasure, Elgato provides a toggle switch enabled feature to smooth your graphical data lines so as to not have jagged data sets plotted which creates a much more eye pleasing graph.

Elgato Eve Automation

The Elgato Eve application not only allows you to dig deeper into statistics but also allows you to create robust automation based on the sensor data. I have said this before,
but just to reiterate, the Elgato Eve application is far superior when creating automation recipes than anything that I have seen on the market today.

As an example, I have set my Philips Hue light-strips to change colors throughout the day to indicate what the current temperature is outside. Any temperature below 70 degrees will set my lights to a cool blue, where as any temperature between 70 and 80 degrees will change the lights to a warm yellow color, and finally, any temperature higher than 80 will change the colors of my lights to a bright red.

Another great way to utilize your Eve Weather data in an automation might be to control your indoor comfort based on the readings. If you know your sun-room gets hot when the outside temperature reaches 90 degrees, you could have a portable air conditioning unit power on by using an Eve Energy smart plug. Your imagination really is the limit in terms of how you can utilize the data provided by the line of Eve products.

Conclusion

My honest opinion of the Eve Weather is that it is certainly a more luxury device. That
being said it works precisely as advertised with a few unexpected bells and whistles.
There may not be many people who want to have their lights color coordinate with the outside temperature or conditions, but I can see the value of how an individual might use this data to automate their smart home. I do believe that sensors are the future of home automation and as our abilities to control accessories based on data collection devices like the Elgato Eve Weather improve our homes reacting for us will become a much more rich experience. Elegato gets two thumbs up for the Eve Weather product as I am very excited to see what HomeKit platform improvements and firmware updates have to offer us in the near future.