Cumulus Support

Hello every1:

I have the same problem with mu ClimeMet CM2000, bought in Juy this year. I have contacted seller, see quote from my email:


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Hello Marian,

Thank you for your email detialing the issue you have been having with your new CM2000.

This is not an issue we have come across before and all of our other systems seem to be keeping time correctly. We have contacted the supplier, however there is no firmware update available at the current time.

A full reset may impove the issue,
Kind Regards
Skyview Support

-----Original Message-----
From: Emsi [mailto:emsi@zmail.sk]
Sent: 01 October 2009 14:01
To: Skyview; enquiries@metcheck.co.uk
Subject: Re: CM2000 - ClimeMET Wireless Weather Station

Hello,
I have bought CM2000 WS recently. I have found a bug. When it receives
the DCF, it automatically set the clock. The problem is, that it sets it
with 1min offset.

I have compared CM2000 to my other DCF devices at home (another 5). All
of them but CM2000 were showing same time. CM2000 was exactly 60 secs ahead.

Is it possible to fix the bug and upload a new Firmware in my station?

Thank you for your time.

BR.

Marian Ciganik

As suspected a software of hardware error then.

Resetting the unit can not have any effect as the time signal itself sets the date, minute, second, etc.
They were probably hoping you would go away by giving you that option; very common when they can't fix something.

Mike.

I just purchased a ClimeMet CM2000 from MetCheck / SkyView just over a week ago and asked if they had fixed this problem with the time being out by 1 minute and they said that it was only a one off problem and probably due to bad reception and hadn't had any other problems.

When I got mine home and set it up, guess what, yep it was faulty too when compared with other radio controlled clocks in my house, being fast by one minute.

I contacted the support people via email - after chasing 5 days later I finally got a response - firmware needs upgrading but don't know when the manufacturer will be sending it out. I chose to wait.

Since then I have discovered that :-

1. outdoor temperature sensor is not immune to direct sun interference - going up several degrees above air temperature.
2. The pressure is reading consistently low by about 10hPa when compared with weather forecasts - I can't see anywhere to calibrate it.
3. You can't mount the sensors out of sunlight and in an unobstructured windy location despite some 5 foot of wires between some of the sensors so you have to make compromises.
4. The anemometer has packed up already - reading no speed and sometimes no direction.
5. The display was poor contrast - being masked with sensory film to allow the touchscreen facility - you can see through it in some areas and see the difference. The website image is not a true representation of the contrast and has been manipulated.

The good bit was having the capability to set the time between memory readings and able to store over 4000 records. Software was fairly straightforward and adequate for my requirements.

I think its all got to go back now. Pity, as it was good in theory and price was acceptable. Don't know what I am going to do now...

jonazap wrote: 1. outdoor temperature sensor is not immune to direct sun interference - going up several degrees above air temperature.
2. The pressure is reading consistently low by about 10hPa when compared with weather forecasts - I can't see anywhere to calibrate it.
3. You can't mount the sensors out of sunlight and in an unobstructured windy location despite some 5 foot of wires between some of the sensors so you have to make compromises.

All is not lost on these three points:

The temperature sensors need to be properly shaded. I used an RJ11 telephone extension cable so that I could have the wind instruments at the top of a pole and the temp and rain sensors down below in a shaded spot. Cost £8 and totally solved. The rain guage didn't respond well to wagging about on top of a twenty foot pole either.

The Pressure issue foxed me at first too. The machine is showing absolute pressure. You need to sort of calibrate it to show relative pressure adjusted for the altitude of your location. You should be able to find an option to swap from ABSOLUTE to RELATIVE pressure in the software that came with the device. I did this is Easy Weather, and as I recall I had to enter an offset which the machine then took up and did automatically. You can either work this out by a calculation based on your altitude above sea level, or look at the difference between the displayed pressure on your device and a trusted local one - like a nearby airport.

Thanks for the suggestion EvilV. Sounds some good ideas.

The anemometer actually came back to life a couple of days after the rain stopped and we had some sun so I suspect that it got too wet rather than being faulty. I was concerned at the quality of the sensors when I put them up and even applied some grease around the connections to prevent water ingress! Having made my own many years ago and seen the affect the weather had on them (totally disintegrated them after a couple of years). I now know that the ones supplied are unlikely to last much beyond the guarantee period, if that, so I have reluctantly decided to send them back. I didn't want to have to keep buying spare parts regularly and go up and down the ladder.

I've looked at other reviews and products and it looks like the Harris ones are the only real alternative that would be more reliable and accurate but you would end up spending £500 + to get the same level of functionality as the CM2000. So unfortunately as other needs are prioritised above this I'm going to have to go without. Pity.

Thanks again for your help.

Hi

Just looking around again at some of the other stations and it looks like the Watson W8681 made by fine offset too is virtually identical to the CM2000 (though different screen) and considerably cheaper at £89.99 via Amazon instead of £163 from Skyview (although this comes with mounting kit worth something less than £20. ) . That seems more tempting if it is going to be a bit flaky and hopefully avoids the 1 minute offset problem (I wanted to use it to accurately start my conference calls). I'll ponder over that one...

I've been running my WH8081 for over a year now and some people on here have had them longer. The design and build quality is not brilliant but fair enough at the price IMO.

Gina wrote:I've been running my WH8081 for over a year now and some people on here have had them longer. The design and build quality is not brilliant but fair enough at the price IMO.

Totally agree, and the real beauty of the system being relatively simple is that as long as the transmitter unit keeps working most other issues should be fixable fairly easily and cheaply. I reckon I could knock together a wind vane or anemometer that would be more robust than the originals if ever the need arose.

I completely agree with Gina and Alan. My Watson cost me £69 + £5 post from Nevada Radio. It works and it works well. I've only had it for five weeks or so, but it delivers temperature measurements which tally with the local airport, rainfall measures which tally with the bulk of local stations, give or take a millimetre, and pressure measurements that are spot on. I can't vouch for the wind speed measurement, but I have no reason at all to imagine that it is wrong. If you keep a decent set of batteries in the outside unit, site the thermal and rainfall instruments properly( * see footnotes) it will perform far better than I think you would have the right to expect for such a paltry amount of money. Having to calibration the pressure readings for relative pressure differences caused by station altitude is absolutely normal. Barometric pressure is normally given in units relative to sea level, although most stations are not at sea level. There is a java script calculator to show you how much correction to employ in the station control software when you set the offset. Just enter your station height and the absolute value that your station shows and it will tell you how great an offset to use. If you do not know the exact height above sea level of your location, you can find it with Google Earth which is free and a great piece of software.

Offset calculator:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/barcorrecthca ... m=990.2990


I taped up the battery box and since it is in a shroud, I don't expect it to have a lot of difficulty. We had really torrential and penetrating rain last week and I have had no loss of function or indication that anything is going to go wrong.

Obviously, some people have more disposable dosh than others and for some their hobbies are REALLY important, so they want to spend more, but personally, it would be hard to get me to part with this set up and shell out £500 for a replacement. I'll keep that money for other things, like the new car I am picking up in a fortnight's time.


*notes on siting sensors:

Thermal sensor out of direct sunlight, over grass at about 5 feet, and away from paving, buildings and heat sources.

Rainfall sensor shaded from strong winds, but not shadowed by shrubs, fences or other things that will divert rainfall from catchment funnel.

Wind sensors in the clear and away from trees and buildings which willl create turbulent conditions and false wind speed readings.

Thanks Gina, Alan and EvilV

Nice to hear that there is the possibility of good service with these cheap weather stations. Hopefully I've just had a bit of bad luck with the wind sensor packing in and now understand how to get round some of the limitations, thanks to your help.

If I could have the same level of functionality without the touchscreen so I could more clearly see what is going on I would be happy. I'll check out the models you mention for this.

Just packing it back into the box at the moment and will take back on Saturday - nearly 2 hour round trip . Unfortunately Skyview don't seem to do the models I would be interested in now.

Thanks for renewing my interest and confirming some confidence.

regards

Jonathan

Jonathan,

I know what you mean about the display on the Fine Offset, but I hardly ever use the actual display. I load my data up to wunderground via an old laptop and check on the web from my netbook. I can also use the old laptop to review data through Cumulus. I can use either of these methods to interrogate my data. Weather Underground let me or any user check my data right back to the day I set it up and allow a variety of searches for data from today, the week, the month and the year.

The beauty of the Fine Offset Watson et al. is that you can connect them to a computer, making the data much more versatile and freeing you from analysing it on the actual data logging unit.

Thanks again EvilV - some more good suggestions. I prefer not to have my big old desktop on all the time and work from home quite a bit so the display is more useful to me.

Had another look around and this Sinus one came up pretty well covering all my requirements.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TFA-Dostmann-Si ... 956&sr=8-2

There is a Nexus that seems very similar with different display but is more expensive.

No touch screen - has all the same as the other units plus has the sunset and sunrise times plus moon phase which helps with my other golf and astronomy hobbies . Has individual sensors so can be placed better and also able to add extra temp/humidity sensors for greenhouse etc.

The only negative is the capacity for 200 records only - so going away for holiday for a couple of weeks I could switch to longer time periods - just a pity it isn't 4000 records like the others.

Anyone had any experience of these Sinus weather stations?

thanks

Jonathan