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I have some questions before I buy the Ambient Weather Beacon.
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I have some questions about the Beacon's behavior.
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Okay, it worked for awhile but now:
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If I buy this, will it work in my ZIP code?
Well, you can check areas down to street level by going over to our Coverage Map. Simply enter in either your ZIP code or your
full street address and click "Check Your Coverage." Areas highlighted in purple are very likely to get
signal; areas without highlighting do not get signal.
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If it won't work in my location, will it work if I enroll in the
"Premium Service"?
Nope! Upgrading to Premium will only allow you to customize it; it can't improve
your Beacon's ability to receive signal.
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If I buy this, will it show me anything other than the weather?
Yes! There are a number of other free channels that your Beacon can display: The Dow, the NASDAQ, and more!
Additionally, the Premium Channel allows you to customize your Beacon in more or less
any way you like—it can read just about any XML feed you concoct! See our Developer Page for further details.
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If I buy this, will it work outside of the United States?
Nope! Sorry, at present we only send data to towers within the United
States.
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I plugged it in. What should I expect it to do?
Here's what will happen, and why:
The Beacon will flash pink/red or white/red—this means the Beacon is listening but hasn't heard a signal yet.
The Beacon color-cycles—this means the Beacon has heard traffic on our frequency, but has not yet received an update from Ambient Devices.
The Beacon will settle on a color—this means the Beacon has received an update and is now listening to the weather forecast(or whatever channel you've set it to display).
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What does the yellow button on the bottom do?
That's the brightness control. If your Beacon is keeping you up at night or needs to be brighter, click this button to toggle through the three modes: Night-light, Regular, and SuperBright.
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My temperature is different from what the device is saying!
The Beacon doesn't have a thermometer in it...it just receives a signal
we send using information from Accuweather.com. Consequently, the temperature right outside your front door in the
Houston suburbs might be a few degrees off of the meteorological information we get for the city of Houston proper. For
most people, the difference will be negligible.
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My local area isn't one of the five cities available? What now?
You should try out our free trial of the Premium Channel! It allows you to add the weather information for any ZIP code
in the United States or one of about a thousand international locations.
Alternately, you could experiment with the weather information from a city
nearby...many people find that the weather in an "upstream" city will often give them an accurate picture of
what weather to expect in the next few hours or days.
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It used to work fine here, and now it doesn't!
If you haven't moved your Beacon but it suddenly stops receiving updates,
one of two things could be happening:
- Your device's signal receiver has conked out
- A transmitter in your area is down
There's not much we can do on our end to tell which one of these two things has happened,
but you can help! Would you please take the device with you on your next trip into town? You can make sure you're
travelling to an area with good signal by checking our map.
By traveling to another area and watching to see if your device picks up a signal (it may
take up to 40 minutes), we'll be able to tell if the receiver is bad, or if it's the
transmitter.
- If your device begins working again in the new location, it's possible that the transmitter that serves your
old location is out of order. In that case, please reply to this email with your street address, your device's serial
number, and the date you noticed signal had degraded. We'll write our wireless provider and ask them to have a
look.
- If you've travelled to an area that should have good signal and waited an hour with no data appearing, your device's receiver may be at cause—you should contact your retailer to arrange for a replacement unit if it is still under warranty.
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I want to show off the rainbow effect—can I make it just color-cycle?
Sure! Just unplug your Beacon and then plug it in again while pressing the yellow button. To return your Beacon to normal functinoality, unplug it and plug it back in again.
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While almost all questions are answered in the above pages, if you still have a question
you're always welcome to call or write our Tech Support team:
