Weather Station Log
This is just somewhere I can record station events.... which usually mean equipment failures!!!
Sunday 19th July 2009
Lost a day of recording yesterday..!!!
I'd restarted the server as Vista has done some updates, but I'd forgotten to actually login, so Weather Display hadn't been started.
I happened to look at the website today and noticed the date was wrong, so checked the server and realised that WD wasn't running, so no data had been recorded and the web pages hadn't updated for about 24 hrs. :-(
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Monday 23rd March 2009
Yep, equipment failures..... doncha just love them....
We had a a couple of sharp showers today, and the rain guage didn't record them... I'm sure theres a problem, bad connection or something, with the rain gauge so I went out this evening and tried to sort it. Tried re-crimping the cable and cleaning the contacts in the socket, then tipped the rain gauge a couple of times... nothing. I then noticed that the anenometer had stopped recording!!! It was working fine before I tinkered with the rain gauge cable.
I then jiggled the anenometer cable, and it recorded a gust of 53mph!! I know its been windy today, but not THAT windy!! I had to stop Weather Display, find the log file, delete the spurious gust, then restart WD.... and the anenometer is still not working..!
... I'll have another look at it tomorrow evening...
2hrs later....
Went back and looked on the website and found that while the anenometer isn't working properly, its recording spurious data...saying we'd had an average windspeed of 100mph and a 114 mph gust!! I went out and disconnected the anenometer as I'd rather have no data that spurious data. Took another hour to get the proper all time, yearly and monthly records correct again.
Update 24/2/2009
All sorted now.... looking at the cables in daylight i saw that both the rain gauge and anenometer cables had broken wires where they went into the RJ11 plugs.... I did them when I first got my crimping/cutting pliers, and think I probably nicked them when taking the outer shroud off... and being moved a few times broke them.
Luckily I had 2 spare RJ11 plugs, so I cut the old ones off and (carefully!) put new plugs on... wind speed is now working fine, and I'm hoping the next rain will be recorded!!
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Saturday 14th Feb 2009
Fun and games today..!! I had bought a wireless network card and a USB card to fit in the server that runs this site and all the weather data, so this morning I shut down the server and took the cover off. First I found that the USB card wouldn't fit....it seems there are 2 types of PCI slots, 3.3 volt and 5 volt, and you can't fit the wrong card in the wrong slot (although you can get "universal" cards, which will work in both). Guess what... the server has a 3.3 volt slot and the USB card is designed for 5 volts...!
....so I only fitted the wireless network card, (which has 2 cut-outs, so it should be "universal"), put the cover back on, connected all the cables, turned it on and.... nothing...no fans or drives whirring, no boot up.!!
I though maybe I'd blown the power supply, and tried various things to get it working, then tried taking the wireless network card out... the server booted up fine..! I tried putting the card in the other PCI slot, but the server wouldn't boot again, so I've ended up not being able to use either the USB or the wireless network cards!!
On the good side, today I mounted the Solar sensor and lightning detector on the post at the bottom of the garden... I did wonder what else could go wrong after the PCI cards, but the mounting went well and the sensors worked first time when I reconnected everything. :-))
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Saturday 7th Feb 2009
Following the snow thaw and some sleet last evening, then a hard frost over night, the wind vane froze in position again last night. I had to go out and tap it to get it to move!!.
Over the next week or so I'm planning to move the lightning detector from the loft to the anenometer post at the bottom of the garden, housing it in the same box as the new solar sensor. During this time both of those sensors will be offline periodically. (not that many thunderstorms are likely at this time of year!)
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Wednesday 4th Feb 2009
New Toy....!!
My new solar sensor arrived today all the way from Hobby-Boards in Alabama USA. Spend the evening trying to get it working, and everything seems fine. All I need now is to be at home on a nice sunny day so I can calibrate it, and then decide where in the garden its actually going to be sited. Down at the bottom of the garden is probably the best place, but do I really want to run another cable all the way down the garden?!?!
Once its all calibrated and working properly I'll add a page to this site dedicated to solar levels, hours of sunshine, etc.
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Thursday 1st Jan 2009
Following on from the problem below, which comes and goes but over Xmas and New Year was particularly bad, I've now run a cable from the base station down the garden to the sensor, so now its running wired, not wireless. Hopefully this will solve all the problems!
The cable has only temporarily been laid down the flowerbeds, so once the weather gets warmer I'll protect it with something and bury it.
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Tuesday 2nd December 2008
Weird problem.... the Stevenson screen holds 2 wireless sensors, one that provides the data for this website, and my old sensor which just displays on a console in the kitchen. Yesterday at approx 12:45 BOTH sensors stopped transmitting.... if one had stopped it could have been the batteries gone, or the unit malfunctioned, but both of them?!?! I tried changing the batteries in both the sensors, and the consoles, and resetting them, but nothing I could do would make them work.
Eventually, about 23:00, they both started working again, so I'd lost about 10 hours of data. I've come to the conclusion that it must have been caused by electrical or radio interferance from something nearby.
If it becomes a regular event, I'll have to run a cable down to the sensor, so its not using a wireless link.
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Wednesday 29th Oct 2008
It rained last night, then froze, which caused the wind vane to freeze in one position. Happened to look on the weather website and noticed wind had been blowing from the exact same direction for the last 6 hrs...!! Went out with a pole and tapped it a few times which moved it, but not freely enough for the wind to blow it. Eventually the sun warmed it up enough and it moved freely. No idea why it froze, we've had rain and lower temps before with no problems.
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Sunday 26th Oct 2008
Laid in bed this morning listening to the rain for a couple of hours, then got up and checked to see how much rain we'd had.... station said none..!! Went out in the rain and jiggled the cable from the rain gauge to the transmitter, then waited 30 mins to see in anything registered... nope, so out in the rain again and took the cover off the rain gauge and found the "seesaw" stuck in the middle position. I flicked it up and down a few times to free it, then replaced the cover. Now seems to be working ok.
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Saturday 18th Oct 2008
To replace the cable ties that hold the anenometer mast, (that broke a couple of weeks ago), I cut a 1 inch wide strip of 1mm thick galvanised steel, and bent it to shape around the fence post and anenometer mast, drilled some screw holes in it and screwed it to the post and mast... that shouldn't come down!!
When I have the time/inclination I'll cut another strip for further down the post.
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Tuesday 13th Oct 2008 (still on-going)
Just got back from the business trip and while I was away I bought a 2.0 Megapixel webcam for the website to improve the image. but it seems that Vista doesn't like the new cam and when I try to change a cam setting, it crashes the server!! It also seems that the "auto exposure" on the cam doesn't work very well, so the image is either too dark for most of the day, or the sun washes everything out as soon as it come up, and the image is totally white until sunset!!
I'll keep tinkering, but I think I may have to move the cam to another window that doesn't catch the sun... this means extending the USB cam by cat5 cable to another part of the house.
Also just found that the auto focus feature of the camera means that when it rains, the camera focuses on the rainspots on the window, instead of whats outside the window!!
1/11/08 - went back to the original webcam... it may be low resolution, and occaisionally has a slight colour cast to it, but it works... all the time, with reasonable auto exposure, so its better than these high res cams that don't want to work!!
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Monday 6th Oct 2008
Happened to look out of the window and thought something was missing... then realised the mast with my anenometer on wasn't stood up at the bottom of the garden!! I found that the plastic cable ties that held the mast to the fence post had snapped at some point in the last 12 hours and the mast had fallen into the brambles behind the fence. Luckily this stopped the anenometer touching, and possibly breaking on, the ground.
As I was going away on business that morning I temporarily fixed it back up with cable ties again.
