PERSONAL WEATHER STATIONS: Queries and Advice

JCX BXC · 04-02-2018 11:36pm

George Sunsnow wrote: »

Is it a vue?
Just a battery issue?

Yes and yes

I

Danno · 04-02-2018 11:39pm

JCX BXC wrote: »

Weather station seems to have come back to life with all the sun over the past few days, no backup battery in it though as it's completely dead and I'm fairly sure there's a supercap issue so I've no intention of putting one in until I get to Davis.

Davis support has been underwhelming so far, got an email reply after a week informing me that I have to ring them to organise a repair, they don't have an Irish number, but have a British and American number. Tried to call the British number, but they're only open 8am-4:30pm MON-THURS and 8am-1:30 on Friday, so they're fairly hard to find time to call. I'll ring when I get a chance.

Working for the moment anyway, while there's relatively sunny conditions.

Mr Price has the battery for €3 that goes in under the station (CR123 battery) They should be replaced yearly ideally in all Davis stations.

George Sunsnow · 04-02-2018 11:41pm

I don’t know mr price has them but most camera stores would have them

JCX BXC · 04-02-2018 11:42pm

Danno wrote: »

Mr Price has the battery for €3 that goes in under the station (CR123 battery) They should be replaced yearly ideally in all Davis stations.

Oh I'm aware, I've discussed it two pages back. Bought a battery when it died assuming it was a normal issue, but the battery died 3 days later. After much troubleshooting I've came to the conclusion that it's the common supercap issue, and when the battery is in the station that it won't use the solar panel and will simply just drain the battery.

byhookorbycrook · 04-02-2018 11:47pm

Looking for suggestions for a station for a primary school , please.

George Sunsnow · 04-02-2018 11:50pm

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Looking for suggestions for a station for a primary school , please.

What’s your budget?

George Sunsnow · 04-02-2018 11:51pm

JCX BXC wrote: »

Oh I'm aware, I've discussed it two pages back. Bought a battery when it died assuming it was a normal issue, but the battery died 3 days later. After much troubleshooting I've came to the conclusion that it's the common supercap issue, and when the battery is in the station that it won't use the solar panel and will simply just drain the battery.

Can you use a UK Davis agent? Sending it there for repair?
There’s one in Cork actually,I’ve lost the details but I’ll look

George Sunsnow · 04-02-2018 11:59pm

Ch marine in cork

http://www.chmarine.com/acatalog/davis-vantage-vue.html

JCX BXC · 05-02-2018 12:03am

Will look into it, CH are probably the vendor Infact!

George Sunsnow · 05-02-2018 12:08am

They’d probably have to send it away
I think the weather shop I deal with in England do their own credited repairs but I haven’t any experience of that yet

What you could also do is try you tube for DIY repair videos

There’s a rake of them

https://youtu.be/2oT8fpdPshI

JCX BXC · 05-02-2018 12:13am

I've no intention on paying for a repair, the weather station is not old and shouldn't really be failing this soon!

byhookorbycrook · 05-02-2018 12:25am

George Sunsnow wrote: »

What’s your budget?

I really have no idea , I’m looking for something sturdy and low maintenance , but have no clue what a reasonable budget for that is . As a primary school , the budget won’t be huge !

George Sunsnow · 05-02-2018 12:26am

JCX BXC wrote: »

I've no intention on paying for a repair, the weather station is not old and shouldn't really be failing this soon!

The Davis’s tend to last over a decade but if a part goes,it’s unlikely you’ll get joy after 18 months or so
That said,how old is it,it’s outdoor equipment so should be ‘fit for purpose’
Agree’ing how many years that is could be a problem
I had to replace the transmitter board on my vantage pro 2 but it was well over a decade

George Sunsnow · 05-02-2018 12:31am

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

I really have no idea , I’m looking for something sturdy and low maintenance , but have no clue what a reasonable budget for that is . As a primary school , the budget won’t be huge !

About €400 would get you a good station
Davis is the best brand
I’ve a new Oregon scientific wmr300 which you can get for about that money
It so far seems every bit as good as the vantage pro 2 it’s competing with for half the price
The more basic vantage vue from Davis is about that price also but doesn’t have the capacity to add extra sensors and has a built in anemometer so you cannot put one on a pole

There are ways around that but it involves more money

JCX BXC · 05-02-2018 12:37am

George Sunsnow wrote: »

The Davis’s tend to last over a decade but if a part goes,it’s unlikely you’ll get joy after 18 months or so
That said,how old is it,it’s outdoor equipment so should be ‘fit for purpose’
Agree’ing how many years that is could be a problem
I had to replace the transmitter board on my vantage pro 2 but it was well over a decade

If it was over 2 years I probably wouldn't have a problem, however it failed after 13 months. Not exactly fit for purpose!

Would probably be a good idea to get onto the retailer, however time is a limiting factor! Will get around to it soon though. Working for the moment at least!

George Sunsnow · 05-02-2018 12:43am

Oh 13 months is definitely a sale of goods act EC consumer protection windowable complaint in my opinion

Don’t leave it,you may action it now because obviously proving it wasn’t working for a few months prior to arguing the toss with the sellers will be a problem
You will have to go to where you bought it first

JCX BXC · 05-02-2018 12:49am

I know the consumer law like the back of my hand

Normally I would go straight to the retailer however Davis did appear to have a good support front so I said I'd try them first. Won't get around to it this week but next week I should definitely do so.

Thanks for the advice

KAGY · 05-02-2018 12:53am

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

I really have no idea , I’m looking for something sturdy and low maintenance , but have no clue what a reasonable budget for that is . As a primary school , the budget won’t be huge !

Cheaper type in Maplin: €110 https://www.maplin.ie/p/wireless-weather-station-n25fr
Not as good but will do for educational purposes.

JCX BXC · 05-02-2018 9:22am

Died at 5am this morning, will buy a battery today to tie me over if I get to the shop.

Fun

JCX BXC · 11-02-2018 9:08pm

JCX BXC wrote: »

Died at 5am this morning, will buy a battery today to tie me over if I get to the shop.

Fun

6 days on and the batteries still going, (was only 3 days last time), lets hope the issue resolved itself!

On a different note, my davis has been slowly dripping all the snow and slush into the rain gauge, so it generally says it's raining for an hour after the last precip!

joujoujou · 05-08-2018 9:59am

Despite my very efforts, including (but not limited to) countless climbs up the roof yesterday, both wind speed and wind direction sensors refused to operate. Set of spare ones won't work either. However, tipping rain gauge plugged into a "wind" socket shows some wind on a display, so more than likely transmitter's okay.

Anyway, I am tired of endless problems with FineOffset (and their clones) stations, so will leave it as it is, until it dies.

The conclusion - if you want a trouble, buy yourself FineOffset or it's rebranded clone station! Lots of swearing guaranteed!

KAGY · 07-08-2018 12:30am

I had a similar problem with the wind anemometer, turned out it was the copper contacts ininthe socket of the wind vane corroding.
Bought a new one for 17e on Ali and all's good so far

1 PCS OF Spare part for weather station to test the wind direction, WH-SP-WD
http://s.aliexpress.com/B7jqeABJ

joujoujou · 07-08-2018 2:46pm

I've 2 sets of wind gauges (2 anemometers + 2 wind direction gauges), plugs and sockets cleaned regularly. None of them work anymore. I think is time to bin the whole thing.

mickmackey1 · 06-10-2018 11:10pm

If we look at the yearly high temp and windspeed from this Limerick PWS on WU:

https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=ILIMERIC7#history/s20171005/e20181006/myear

we see figures of 35c and 234 km/h... Not sure what is the point of uploading wrong information and also would question WU's quality control.

07-10-2018 12:36am

mickmackey1 wrote: »

If we look at the yearly high temp and windspeed from this Limerick PWS on WU:

https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=ILIMERIC7#history/s20171005/e20181006/myear

we see figures of 35c and 234 km/h... Not sure what is the point of uploading wrong information and also would question WU's quality control.

looking at the data, it appears to be just a few bad data points the station owner can easily edit out the duff data. WU don't validate the data at all.

mickmackey1 · 07-10-2018 11:12am

Deleted User wrote: »

looking at the data, it appears to be just a few bad data points the station owner can easily edit out the duff data. WU don't validate the data at all.

mmm I suspected that WU don't verify anything alright, although I think it wouldn't be too difficult to include a few algorithms that could call out suspicious data. Looks like the owner isn't going to sort it out at this stage anyway.

joujoujou · 07-10-2018 11:27am

PWS software usually's equipped with sort of "remove peaks" features, just need to be set appropriately. Sadly I wasn't aware of that years ago when started running my own station. Now, I am too lazy to go through all the data and do the proper cleanup.

KAGY · 08-10-2018 4:31pm

joujoujou wrote: »

Now, I am too lazy to go through all the data and do the proper cleanup.

Same, I have limits set, albeit a little high, but occasionally a blip gets recorded as a max. As I have to manually delete rows with SQL it gets out on the long finger :-)

RobertKK · 13-10-2018 5:27pm

I have given in and ordered a new temperature/humidity sensor for my Davis Vantage Pro 2. The humidity sensor was working very patchy, sometimes working, other times not, and for the last few days it has been the not variety.
Heading towards winter and I want my dew points

Rhineshark · 14-10-2018 7:33am

KAGY wrote: »

Same, I have limits set, albeit a little high, but occasionally a blip gets recorded as a max. As I have to manually delete rows with SQL it gets out on the long finger :-)

Can you import such data into anything basic like Excel? I've found excel very useful for dealing with climate and lab data, especially sorting out anomalies, but don't recall doing it from a back garden weather station.

KAGY · 14-10-2018 8:45am

I could, but then I'd have to reimport it back to the db for the website, graphs and sharing with wunderground and wow.met

It's not difficult, it's just that I suffer from chronic apathy :-)

KAGY · 14-10-2018 11:38pm

Finally got around to it, at least for the wind values. I'm going to miss that 168kph spike in the graph.
New graph:
6034073

slayer91 · 16-10-2018 9:11pm

Hi,

In the same boat with the Davis Vantage humidity sensor, can I ask you where you got a new one??

Regs

Liam K

RobertKK · 16-10-2018 9:35pm

slayer91 wrote: »

Hi,

In the same boat with the Davis Vantage humidity sensor, can I ask you where you got a new one??

Regs

Liam K

I had trouble finding where a replacement was listed as being sold, and ended up at https://www.skyview.co.uk/collections/davis-spares-accessories/products/davis-instruments-temperature-humidity-digital-sensor-board-for-vantage-pro2-dav-7346-166

They charge a lot for postage...

rolion · 27-10-2018 11:39am

Hello,

Thanks for sharing info.

I'm looking for a PWS that does all the basic things but needs to have wind and UV sensor reports.
Reporting / uploading to online site nice feature too.
Rechargeable batteries nice one but I can run a cable and get a AC adapter.
A webcam incorporated or added as a second feature will be nice.

Found a nice Acurite Atlas station, does all the things I want...
Main issue that I found so far is that the wireless frequency is not approved for use in EU but rather only US.
Someone said that is illegal and it could affect some GSM band devices.

Their website is not accessible from EU either so I found some video :

What options do I have, please !?
No budget set in my mind, quite flexible here..

Thanks

joujoujou · 31-10-2018 2:42pm

WS-2902 maybe, but I'm struggling to find them outside the US (so more than likely radio frequency issues as well).

tonc76 · 17-05-2019 12:51pm

Hi,

I'm interested in dipping my toe into PWS and am considering buying this one to see how I get on: https://www.froggit.de/product_info.php?info=p287_froggit-wh3000-se-wifi-internet-app-weather-station.html

I want to link up with Weather Underground and then see if I can link the output to a nest thermostat through IFTTT.

Any thoughts on this system and what I am hoping to achieve?

Thanks

17-05-2019 5:27pm

tonc76 wrote: »

Hi,

I'm interested in dipping my toe into PWS and am considering buying this one to see how I get on: https://www.froggit.de/product_info....r-station.html

I want to link up with Weather Underground and then see if I can link the output to a nest thermostat through IFTTT.

Any thoughts on this system and what I am hoping to achieve?

Thanks

The url is broken, we can't see the station.

tonc76 · 17-05-2019 5:34pm

Deleted User wrote: »

The url is broken, we can't see the station.

fixed in my original post now

joujoujou · 18-05-2019 8:46am

Don't know if you'll achieve what you want, have no experience with nest at all.

Just FYI: these are all FineOffset stations, with disputable reliability. Additionally that particular one has integrated sensor unit, so if you install it high enough to have proper wind readings, temperature and rain likely won't be reallistic, and maintenance/battery replacement will be difficult. If placed lower (say 2 metres above the ground level) wind readings will be compromised.

And here's the link to the same item, in English, by the way:

https://www.froggit.de/product_info.php?language=en&info=p287_froggit-wh3000-se-wifi-internet-app-weather-station.html

18-05-2019 10:24am

joujoujou wrote: »

Don't know if you'll achieve what you want, have no experience with nest at all.

Just FYI: these are all FineOffset stations, with disputable reliability. Additionally that particular one has integrated sensor unit, so if you install it high enough to have proper wind readings, temperature and rain likely won't be reallistic, and maintenance/battery replacement will be difficult. If placed lower (say 2 metres above the ground level) wind readings will be compromised.

And here's the link to the same item, in English, by the way:

https://www.froggit.de/product_info.php?language=en&info=p287_froggit-wh3000-se-wifi-internet-app-weather-station.html

Yes, I also have one of those integrated sensor stations and I have experienced the same issues, to get rain measurements that are anyway realistic the wind measurements are well down due to the sheltered location. I will get a system with separate sensors next time, I expect this one will be programmed to self destruct soon.

tonc76 · 19-05-2019 9:04am

joujoujou wrote: »

Don't know if you'll achieve what you want, have no experience with nest at all.

Just FYI: these are all FineOffset stations, with disputable reliability. Additionally that particular one has integrated sensor unit, so if you install it high enough to have proper wind readings, temperature and rain likely won't be reallistic, and maintenance/battery replacement will be difficult. If placed lower (say 2 metres above the ground level) wind readings will be compromised.

And here's the link to the same item, in English, by the way:

https://www.froggit.de/product_info.php?language=en&info=p287_froggit-wh3000-se-wifi-internet-app-weather-station.html

Thanks for that. Any recommendations for a PWS suitable for a beginner that can link to wunderground?

KAGY · 19-05-2019 9:09am

The fine offset ones are good for beginners, I've had one for 4 1/2 years and only had to replace one component due to corrosion of the contacts.

I could separate the components of my station but I've settled for a compromise , 3.5m off the ground and 13m away from the house. I can live with this as I'm more interested in comparing records and overall trends than getting the same as met eireann. I can just download ME's data anyway :-P

Don't know about nest, but I'd make sure that the one you can be connected up locally to a PC/RPi etc so you can script some of the stuff yourself, of at least have a local copy of your records

joujoujou · 19-05-2019 9:18am

I'm pretty sure it's not the station that would (or not) limit wunderground capability, it's the software it uses.

Take a look what stations Cumulus will support, what your needs are, what budget and ask.

KAGY · 19-05-2019 9:45am

joujoujou wrote: »

I'm pretty sure it's not the station that would (or not) limit wunderground capability, it's the software it uses.

Take a look what stations Cumulus will support, what your needs are, what budget and ask.

That's what I was trying to get at, but I hadn't had my coffee :-)
That station uploads to wunderground directly through a WiFi connection. If there was a USB connection the op had the possibility of using other software like weewx that uploads to wundergriund, wow.met.UK, your own website, and others.

joujoujou · 19-05-2019 12:32pm

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather avoid stations you have no control over what it uploads and where.

19-05-2019 1:15pm

joujoujou wrote: »

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather avoid stations you have no control over what it uploads and where.

In the settings menu of station, I can choose where to send the data, after all you do need to add your Wunderground account to upload to it.

Whether or not it is also uploading to another site "incognito" I do not know, but given the way Chinese electronics work, it's possible( but very unlikely).

ZeRoY · 17-06-2019 12:39pm

Hi guys,

Im finally going to be buying a small weather station (limited budget) and after researching a bit I found 2 potential candidate and wanted to know if any one had experience on those and which is best?

Aercus Instruments WS1093
Aercus Instruments WS2083

Both I believe use EasyWeather which means Cumulus should also work...

Thanks in advance!

ZeRoY · 18-06-2019 12:59am

Take it no one has those?

Mortelaro · 18-06-2019 8:50am

They’ll do the job for you
Spend the extra tenner
The rain gauge will only record each 0.3mm as opposed to 0.2mm on the more expensive ones
The thermometer and housing will be more sensitive to island heating in a back garden than a more expensive unit,so make sure you place it in as airy and exposed place as you have available
Wind speed and probably direction data will be useless if your garden is very enclosed as again you’ll have a manufactured climate there but the mid level Davis vue would have the same problem at 3 times the price

The negative reviews on both of your weather stations could be wrote about an expensive Davis
I don’t know of any weather station console that wirelessly transmits to a pc for example

There’s a dedicated weather station thread here so maybe you could post how you get on in that or the mods could merge this one into it.

PERSONAL WEATHER STATIONS: Queries and Advice

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