Interference between stations - a cautionary tale

[Paragon]

Hello
I have a Vantage Vue. It was using Station ID 1, the default.

Lately I have been getting strange wind direction and wind speed readings. It can't be a sensor failure, because there are two sensors - the temperature-humidity-wind speed sensor at one end of the unit and the wind speed sensor at the other. I changed the wind direction constant using Weatherlink. Possibly better. Next time I looked it wasn't. So I changed it again. The default for VV in the southern hemisphere is 179. I tried 0, then 90 degrees, with no improvement. Then, confusion increasing, I thought I would set it back to 179, to I put in a calculated value of 358 for a displayed reading of 179 degrees. It doesn't immediately show you the correction value. You have to go back in. I closed Weatherlink and looked at the data. The wind direction was about right. Hmmm. It turned out Weatherlink had set the constant to -181 and the data was about right.

The Davis agent here in NZ asked Davis USA, who suggested I change the Station ID. The instructions in the manual (!) said something about other stations nearby. Clang - penny dropped! A while ago a neighbour installed a Vantage Pro. My console is closer to my ISS than his, but the signal goes through more walls between the console and my ISS than it does to his. The ISSes are about 100 m apart. Davis didn't know about the other station - I hadn't thought about it.

After setting ISS to STA 4, the console was still recording data for STA 1 when I got back inside! The wind direction was 180 degrees out. After setting the console to STA 4, wind direction returned to the correct place. Yay!

So, strange readings may not be a failure, they could be due to interference between stations. I have my fingers crossed that the problem is solved.

Graham
Tauranga, New Zealand

[archae86]

Yes indeed.

I had reception of a neighbor's station mixed in with reception from mine when I first set up my station. So some readings were plausible, and others clearly wrong. In my case I finally guessed what was going on when I saw plausible wind readings for an outdoor positions after I had brought my ISS indoors. (plausible meaning that the speed increased when the real outdoor wind increased and such).

The neighbor station in question was just over 500 feet from my console, and required transmission through several walls to be heard. My previous experience with less capable radio transmission had not prepared me even to suspect that possibility.

[pete_c]

Appears maybe I am having a similiar issue.

Not really sure why but my rain bucket readings stopped a month ago or so. I have failed over to a nearby Davis weather station for data when needing to service my Vantage Vue.

That said called Davis for service. I took apart my Vantage vue and saw no hardware issues with the tipping cup nor the reed switch.

The "other" local Davis weather station appears not to have a rain tipping bucket and my console locks in to it if I shut off my weather station.

Davis told me to send mine in to get a redone "product" as the CS guy said that they have redone the hardware, wiring and software in the Vantage Vue.

My Vantage Vue has only been outside and used for 2 years.

Now I am thinking that even a firmware update to my console isn't going to fix my issue because maybe I also need a firmware update to the Vantage Vue VSS device on the roof (which BTW is a PITA to service).

[pete_c]

Here I was getting ready to send my Vantage Vue ISS back to Davis for a replacement.

That said noticed that for whatever reason the console had switched over to using the neighbor's Davis whatever.

The neighbors Davis station was talking on channel #1. Mine was originally configured to talk on channel #3.

I lost the rain counts about two weeks ago. I just pulled the battery on mine and noticed that the Davis on channel #1 doesn't have any rain counts (2 days now and its been raining).

This morning I updated the firmware on the console. I also retested my Davis Vantage Vue ISS on a different channel (#5) and all is working now (most concern was the rain tipping bucket).

I called up Davis and cancelled my ticket.