Wireless Weather Station for Travel Trailers
We’ve wanted an indoor/outdoor thermometer for our Scamp 13’ for a long time. We’ve been on many trips over the past several years where knowing the outside temperature before opening the Scamp’s door would have been extremely helpful. Seeing the outdoor temperature on a big digital readout inside our Scamp 13’ helps us to assess if it will be necessary to turn on our furnace, what clothing / jackets to wear, as well as predict when to remove a fresh water connection due to extended freezing temperatures. Having a hygrometer (humidity gage) is also very helpful in determining when the Scamp’s fan should be turned on (too much humidity can trigger a false alarm with the carbon monoxide – CO- detector). CO detector false alarms can be extremely unnerving when they happen in the middle of the night!
After spending a lot of time researching many different weather stations, we decided on this one made by UNNI. There’s also a different version which is capable of showing data from 4 sensors (3 outdoor and the inside unit). Though, we’ve found one sensor to be enough for using with a travel trailer. Although it is inexpensive, this weather station has received excellent reviews from thousands of customers. We were also impressed that the unit is advertised as using a Swiss made high-precision sensirion sensor. The claimed temperature accuracy is +/-0.5 degrees F and humidity accuracy is +/- 2%. The unit is also capable of displaying the heat index, the dew point index, and the mold index at each sensor location (one at a time). We leave the heat index showing – which is what the temperature feels like when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature. Additionally, the weather station provides a pictorial daily weather forecast (shows clouds / sun / rain / snow) based on the unit’s barometric weather sensor (it is said to be around 75% accurate – hence, we don’t rely on this device for weather forecasts). The UNNI manual can be found here.
The key to getting good readings on this weather station is proper placement of the outdoor sensor. The outdoor sensor is rated to connect to the weather station if it is within a few hundred feet, so there should be plenty of good mounting options when using it for a travel trailer. We used double sided Scotch Extreme Fastener tape to mount the sensor under one of our propane tanks. This way, the weather sensor doesn’t get direct sunlight or wet (which can not only make the temperature readings inaccurate but also potentially ruin the sensor). In order to protect the outdoor sensor from damage when travelling, we place it under the propane tank when we arrive at the campground and move it inside our Scamp when we are driving. This keeps the outdoor sensor from getting destroyed by road debris (including wetness) as well as falling off while driving. The entire system is wireless (powered by 3 AAA indoor weather station batteries and 2AA outdoor sensor batteries). The battery life appears to be excellent.
We have been using this weather station for a couple months now and it seems to be very accurate (when compared to internet weather websites). We really like all the great features as described above, which make our trips more comfortable and fun. One last feature which we utilize is the light (which goes on simply by swiping a finger over the light bulb icon at the top of the display). Having the light makes it really easy to see the temperature / humidity even when it is pitch dark inside the Scamp 13’. So, the next time you are out in nature, give one of these weather stations a try so you don’t ever have to guess or walk outside your travel trailer in your pajamas trying to figure out what to wear!
“Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot; whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not, we’ll weather the weather whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.”
Disclaimer: You will get the same great Amazon price by clicking on the links here compared to buying directly on Amazon, but by buying here you will also be supporting the continuation of this website as we get a small commission from each sale. These are products and procedures we use for our own Scamp that we selected and developed from our own research and experiences. However, we do not endorse any specific product and cannot guarantee that the products we use are exemplary and the procedures we use are complete, accurate, detail the correct recommended procedures, or apply to your model small travel trailer. It’s always best to double check with your manufacturer or operation manuals to ensure you are doing everything correctly.
