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Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Discussion specific to Fine Offset and similar rebadged weather stations
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jensdk
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Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by jensdk »

Hi Steve
I would be very grateful if you would take a look at the pressure grahp at my website. It happens maybe once a month, and all I need to do to correct it is to restart Cumulus - but why does it happen? The time of day that it happens is random.

thanks in advance :)
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by jensdk »

Here it is :?
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by hills »

I have had exactly the same problem, see this thread for Steve's suggecstion: https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2807

I didn't do anything though as it hasn't done it again since I have replaced the batteries in the xmitter, so I don't know if it could be related to that.
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by WestOz »

Hi folks

I had a similar thing happen recently.

Mine was caused by a battery in my sensor failing. I use NiMH rechargeables and one of the four in the sensor is now completely dead and won't recharge. But as it was slowly failing the pressure reading was fluctuating wildly as you can see from the graph. Even after replacing the batteries it took almost an hour to steady.

Also once I inadvertantly mixed rechargeables with ordinary bateries :bash: that caused a few problems too!
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jensdk
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by jensdk »

Thx for your answers. ;) I have thought of the batteries too, but I didn't want to do anything before Steve had a look at the diag-files.
The no. 008 looks very odd to me around 19:30 the 29th. But I'm not able to read anything useful out of it. So I guess I'll just have to wait for Steve to "return to base" :)
Charlie
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by Charlie »

WestOz wrote:Hi folks

Mine was caused by a battery in my sensor failing. I use NiMH rechargeables and one of the four in the sensor is now completely dead and won't recharge. But as it was slowly failing the pressure reading was fluctuating wildly as you can see from the graph. Even after replacing the batteries it took almost an hour to steady.
I thought the sensor unit only physically holds 2 batteries? Also you may not be aware that NiMH are possibly the worst choice for this application because they self discharge about 5% - 10% per week when sitting on the shelf, which is pretty much what this application is. They are a fantastic solution for high drain applications like digital cameras and GPS units, but very poor for low drain long charge holding applications like remote controls and weather station sensors :)

Even if you've managed to find some with the new chemistry that significantly improves self discharge, the fact that they cost about 10X alkalines, need to be replaced (charged) much sooner, and have poorer thermal performance, means they make no sense to use here - unless you have completely redesigned the sensor unit and included a solar panel to recharge them or something.
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by Gina »

And NiMH being only 1.2v rather than 1.5 are already near to the voltage where the transmitter fails means the working life between charges will be very short.
Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.
WestOz
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by WestOz »

Charlie wrote:I thought the sensor unit only physically holds 2 batteries? Also you may not be aware that NiMH are possibly the worst choice for this application because they self discharge about 5% - 10% per week when sitting on the shelf, which is pretty much what this application is. They are a fantastic solution for high drain applications like digital cameras and GPS units, but very poor for low drain long charge holding applications like remote controls and weather station sensors :)
Hi Charlie and Gina

Many thanks for the tip about the NiMH batteries. My indoor sensor (non-solar, of course) on my Oregon WMR-918 has 4 x AAA batteries. Would you use NiCDs or Alkelines?

Ian
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by jensdk »

thx very much Charlie and Gina. :clap:
Very informative. - Getting wiser all the time :idea:
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by gemini06720 »

WestOz wrote:My indoor sensor (non-solar, of course) on my Oregon WMR-918 has 4 x AAA batteries. Would you use NiCDs or Alkelines?
Ian, unless one has a weather station with a solar panel (such as is available with the Davis Instruments weather stations), I would strongly recommend that one uses good quality alkaline batteries (such as Duracell or Energizer or whichever brand is available in your country) in both the ISS (the external instrument sensor suite) and in the console (the internal sensor and display unit).
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by tjaliwalpa »

Had a weird pressure drop (phantom) registered by Cumulus today. My computer shuts down Cumulus and restarts itself every 8 hours to solve a problem I have where my Internet connection is lost.

Anyway, at 12:05pm when the computer restarted and Cumulus reloaded as a scheduled task that starts automatically at startup, their a drop of approximately 12.4 mb. I shutdown Cumulus, disconnected the USB, reconnected and restarted Cumulus and everything is back to normal.

INTERESTING!

Bob
Bob
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by DrMD »

IF you look at the pics for the fine offsets https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2685/ or here https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=640 you`ll see that the pressure sensor is in the consul not the transmitter.
When the consul is attached to the USB port the consul is powered from the USB port. Is your computer shutting down or going into sleep mode when this problem occurs. If so then I would change the batteries in the consul.
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by werribee_au »

Hello Jens, I have been reading the following wiki entry thanks to Phil's thread suggestion.
http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#Cumul ... et_console

I had a look at the diag files and noticed the following.

In cumulus.008 diag file the offset of -3.6
29-06-2010 20:12:55.578 : EWUSB: Read pressure values: rel=1001,5 abs=1005,1 offset =-3,6

Both cumulus.007 & .009 report an offset of 9.2
29-06-2010 15:02:14.265 : EWUSB: Read pressure values: rel=1013,4 abs=1004,2 offset =9,2
30-06-2010 10:43:57.157 : EWUSB: Read pressure values: rel=1015,7 abs=1006,5 offset =9,2

Your graph shows a drop at about 1930 but the diag file shows it set an offset of -3.6 at 2012, that I don't understand.

Ah, I think I have worked that one out. Cumulus was shut down at 1930. It started up at 2012, it read the console and set an offset of -3.6 (for some odd reason), downloaded data from the data logger and retrospectively applied the -3.6 offset and continued to use it until cumulus was shut down at 1040 and restarted at 1043. Then, the correct offset of 9.2 was set and used.

To correct the errors I'd probably reset the today.ini time stamp back to before 1930 on the 29th, edit out the data from that point forward in the Jun10log.txt,

Wait, I don't think this would be such a good idea without further instruction from Steve as we would be going from June to July here, there probably needs to be more files deleted or modified to do that. I'd wait for Steve.

But I would try adding the EWpressureoffset=9.2 entry to the cumulus.ini to prevent this from possible happening again.

Only my 2 bob's worth.
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jensdk
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by jensdk »

Hi Gerard
Thanks for your effort it's much appreciated :)

I can see what you mean, and it makes absolute sense, allthough I don't remember having Cumulus shut down for 30 min, but on the other hand I can't say for sure I didn't :?
I think I'll wait for Steve to have a look too before I do anything.

I'm not planning to correct the bad readings, as they don't affect all time records, but I would very much like to prevent it from happening again.
tjaliwalpa
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Re: Sudden drop in pressure values - help needed

Post by tjaliwalpa »

werribee_au wrote:Hello Jens, I have been reading the following wiki entry thanks to Phil's thread suggestion.
http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#Cumul ... et_console

I had a look at the diag files and noticed the following.

In cumulus.008 diag file the offset of -3.6
29-06-2010 20:12:55.578 : EWUSB: Read pressure values: rel=1001,5 abs=1005,1 offset =-3,6

Both cumulus.007 & .009 report an offset of 9.2
29-06-2010 15:02:14.265 : EWUSB: Read pressure values: rel=1013,4 abs=1004,2 offset =9,2
30-06-2010 10:43:57.157 : EWUSB: Read pressure values: rel=1015,7 abs=1006,5 offset =9,2

Your graph shows a drop at about 1930 but the diag file shows it set an offset of -3.6 at 2012, that I don't understand.

Ah, I think I have worked that one out. Cumulus was shut down at 1930. It started up at 2012, it read the console and set an offset of -3.6 (for some odd reason), downloaded data from the data logger and retrospectively applied the -3.6 offset and continued to use it until cumulus was shut down at 1040 and restarted at 1043. Then, the correct offset of 9.2 was set and used.

To correct the errors I'd probably reset the today.ini time stamp back to before 1930 on the 29th, edit out the data from that point forward in the Jun10log.txt,

Wait, I don't think this would be such a good idea without further instruction from Steve as we would be going from June to July here, there probably needs to be more files deleted or modified to do that. I'd wait for Steve.

But I would try adding the EWpressureoffset=9.2 entry to the cumulus.ini to prevent this from possible happening again.

Only my 2 bob's worth.
Thought I would try what you suggested as my error occured in Jul10 (not spanning two months). I have posted the old and new pressure graphs. It has worked a treat and all data is intact.

Thanks
Bob
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