My Workaround for AcuRite Wi-Fi Connection Issues
I've been dealing with intermittent Wi-Fi connection problems with my AcuRite Iris High-Definition Direct-to-Wi-Fi Display 06102M for about four years. The display will occasionally drop its connection to my home Wi-Fi network, and when that happens, my weather data stops being uploaded to Weather Underground.
I originally contacted AcuRite while the display was still under warranty. They replaced it, but the replacement unit has exactly the same exact problem as the original. We have about 20 other wireless devices in the house, and none of them have similar Wi-Fi issues.
My background is in embedded software engineering, so I have a fair amount of experience troubleshooting problems like this. Over the years, I've tried a number of things to isolate or fix the problem, including different Wi-Fi networks, different routers, and a dedicated Wi-Fi access point. Based on those tests, I've become fairly convinced that the problem is somewhere in the AcuRite display's hardware or firmware rather than in my home network.
Since I can't fix the AcuRite design itself, I came up with a workaround: automatically cycle power to the display if it has been offline for an extended period. In my experience, a power cycle almost always restores the Wi-Fi connection.
To do this, I bought a Shelly Plug US Gen4 smart plug and wrote a JavaScript monitor that runs directly inside the Shelly plug. The AcuRite display is powered through the Shelly plug.
The Shelly plug checks my Weather Underground station once a minute and looks at the timestamp of the latest observation. If the most recent WU data is more than 30 minutes old, the Shelly considers the data stale. If the Shelly detects stale data on three consecutive checks, it treats that as a confirmed failure and automatically:
- turns power off to the AcuRite display for 30 seconds
- restores power to the AcuRite display
- gives the display a 5-minute grace period to reboot, reconnect to Wi-Fi, and resume uploading
- prevents repeated power cycles for the same failure
- sends me an email when power is turned off and another when it is restored
I also use the Shelly's LED as a quick status indicator:
- Green = WU data less than 5 minutes old
- Yellow = 5–15 minutes old
- Orange = 15–30 minutes old
- Red = over 30 minutes old
- Purple = confirmed failure / power cycle
- Blue = post-reboot recovery period
- White = startup / status not yet established
One important part of the design is that Weather Underground/API communication errors are handled separately. A temporary Internet problem or Weather Underground outage by itself will not cause the AcuRite display to be power-cycled.
I tested the complete sequence by deliberately stopping the AcuRite from sending data. The Shelly plug correctly detected the stale data, power-cycled the display, restored power after 30 seconds, sent both email notifications, and then detected when fresh Weather Underground observations resumed.
I've now been using this workaround for about a month, and so far it has worked well. During that time, the Shelly plug has automatically power-cycled the display twice. In both cases, the display reconnected to my home Wi-Fi network after the power cycle and resumed uploading data to Weather Underground.
If anyone else is having similar AcuRite Wi-Fi problems and is interested, I'd be happy to share the Shelly JavaScript and details about the small PHP email-notification script I use with it.