WH3080-Solar - no rainfall

[g4ilo]

A few days ago I installed a new Nevada WH3080-Solar weather station. It has never registered any rainfall. At first I thought it might be that the rain we had was too small to register. But today it has been raining quite hard for a few hours and all the rainfall figures remain at 0.0.

Also the hours of sunlight recorded are far too low. Yesterday was sunny all day yet the station reported just 3.5 hours of sunlight. The solar cell is mounted facing south.

Has anyone else experienced this problem or have any suggestions on how to fix it?

[steve]

Just to clarify - these are specifically issues with the station, rather than Cumulus? The zero rain total and the low sunshine hours are from the console?

[g4ilo]

Yes, the rainfall is zero on the console as well. The "light" reading seems to be working okay on the console as I've seen it change through a full cycle of values. I don't see how to relate that value to the sunlight figure. The console doesn't appear to display hours of sunlight.

[steve]

Cumulus calculates hours of sunshine based on attempting to determine whether or not it's sunny at any given time using the Lux reading. The code was designed to work with Davis stations and their particular solar sensors which supply a global irradiance value in W/m2. Cumulus attempts to convert the FO Lux reading into something similar, simply by multiplying by 0.0079. You can adjust this factor in the [Solar] section of cumulus.ini by supplying a LuxToWM2 setting.

The 'is it sunny' determination usually requires adjusting for your particular conditions using the settings on the station settings screen - see the help. You may or may not get reasonable results for your station.

[g4ilo]

The weather station still hasn't registered any rain so I took the funnel / cover off to see if the see-saw was stuck. It wasn't. Actuating the see-saw manually a few times did not cause any rain to be clocked up. Am I correct in assuming that it should do?

I don't think there is anything else I can do apart from contacting Nevada and asking for a replacement unit.

[mcrossley]

Am I correct in assuming that it should do?

Yes it should. If you haven't already, check the rain socket for bent or corroded pins, and re-seat the cable a few times.

[g4ilo]

Yes it should. If you haven't already, check the rain socket for bent or corroded pins, and re-seat the cable a few times.

Tried that but still no luck

[mcrossley]

I'd ask for a replacement then, you could check it is definitely the rain bucket and not the transmitter by connecting the wind sensor to the rain socket, spin the cups a few times and that should register as rain.

[g4ilo]

The rain plugs into the solar cell. Tried plugging the wind in there and still nothing. Tried a couple of other permutations but no luck. Now I have got a flashing red Error indicator in Cumulus. The console is still showing readings (except for rain) but everything apart from Recent Extremes in Cumulus is zero now.

[g4ilo]

Pulled batteries in console, restarted it and Cumulus. Figures aren't all zero now but in Status where I used to get a flashing green New Record nothing is flashing at all.

[AllyCat]

Hi Julian,

Have you tried a test of plugging the rain (or wind) cable directly into the "solar" socket (I believe still labeled "Rain") on the transmitter? For fundamental tests it can be better just to read the LCD Console data (and not even connect to a PC).

... where I used to get a flashing green New Record nothing is flashing at all.

The Green "Light" should only show if there actually is a new "all time" Max or Min value (which can become very infrequent after some time).

Cheers, Alan.

[g4ilo]

For the sake of anyone as dumb as me who comes across this thread looking for a solution, here it is.

Don't assume the two batteries supplied with the weather station are ready to use. They are not. They need charging (in a user-provided charger) first. The manual makes no mention of this. So the rain sensor wasn't working because the batteries were only providing 1.3V each.

I have my wife to thank for discovering this (using my test meter, no less.) I was half way to sending it all back.

[AllyCat]

Hi Julian,

Perhaps you should have "sent it all back" because if the batteries are the "recommended" Rechargeable Alkaline Cells then they should NOT need charging before use. Once they are down to 1.3 volts then they're virtually "dead" (and incapable of satisfactory re-charging). So either they've already been used or their quality is even lower than the normal "cheap Chinese garbage". If NiMH cells have been supplied, then these only have a nominal voltage of 1.2 volts anyway, and are not recommended because of this lower voltage and their high leakage current (which may not get through a dull Winter).

Also, the transmitter SHOULD work reasonably well at 1.3 volts/cell, because the "Low Transmittter Battery" warning Icon on the Console LCD only comes on at typically 1.2 volts/cell. However, if you measured the "Open Circuit Voltage" (on the volts range of your meter) then the cell's high internal resistance may cause the operational voltage to fall even lower when current is drawn (and thus the transmitter to malfunction).

Cheers, Alan.