Cumulus Support

Early this year my 3 year old vantage vue was indicating the dreaded "low battery transmitter 1", The ISS is mounted on a pole and wall bracket at about 14ft, I took it down, replaced the battery and put it back up but was very surprised that the battery warning persisted.
Internet research seemed to indicate that this was a common problem with many different solutions some of which suggested an expensive transmitter module replacement, I quickly decided I could live with it as long as it still worked.
When the sunny weather returned the battery warning went off but returned with a vengeance at the beginning of November with loss of data during the night so down it came again. I checked the battery voltage at 2.97 volts so definitely not flat, I looked at the battery terminals in the ISS and to my eyes they looked a little oxidised so using a tungsten carbide scribe I removed the oxide from the spring negative terminal and its base plate and put a drop of conductive silver paint at the joint, (I have a little bottle of "Comma" silver loaded conductive paint that must be at least 20 yrs old and was sold for the repair of vehicle rear screen heaters but has been invaluable for many electronic repairs where soldering was impossible.). I also cleaned the face of the spring and the positive contact and put a blob of the paint on each, I put a fresh (3.23 volts) battery in being careful not wipe off the paint, I also stuck a self adhesive rubber pad to the underside of the battery cover to ensure that the battery is firmly held in place. It took a day and a half for the "low battery transmitter 1" to go but the station has been working at 100% since despite the weather being dark and overcast.
I surmise from this is that the indication is not the battery voltage but the voltage on the supercap within the ISS transmitter, I live in hope that my "cure" is permanent.

I am having same issue.
I replaced battery 3 times in last 15 days.
I was thinking that new batteries might be dead so got new and still same issue.
During night it stops data transmission.

Then i checked battery voltage and all were very good.
So now i think i have same issue as you are saying.

I think i need to clean all the contacts inside and lets see how that works.

Maybe this? Supercap fault.

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=3238.0

That thread is for VP2 supercap failures, I do not believe Vue's suffer from Supercap failures.

duke wrote:I do not believe Vue's suffer from Supercap failures.

They can do I'm afraid. The difference is that the supercap is not accessible in the Vue (other than by using some significant surgery, which most won't bother with) because the the transmitter circuit board is fully potted.

If a supercap fault seems likely then the fix has to be a replacement transmitter module (older Vues) or full sensor harness (Rev M and later). In practice, with the latter it's certainly simpler and with not much difference in price - unless the replacement is significantly discounted - to replace the whole ISS.

Well,
I just opened it, although there is no visible rust or corrosion, still I cleaned everything including metal connectors near battery.
And not it works well.

This is an update of my original post dated Nov 2015 and I can report That my Vantage Vue ISS is still working perfectly on the battery that was installed at that time. I believe the battery contacts are stainless steel and I know from my long experience with electronics that it is a terrible material for electrical contacts of all types even if it looks OK, This is why I used conductive silver paint on them and the battery and as I've said no problems since..