Cumulus Support

I'm 10 miles from the coast, and sheltered by the Purbeck hills. Salt air isn't an issue here.

Anyway, I'm sticking to what I said earlier. I'll let the anemometer finish itself off, but I won't be replacing it, nor any other parts of the Davis station.

The only original part of my initial set up is the sim box. Unacceptable to go through so many parts failures in such a short space of time. Davis equipment isn't any more reliable than the competitors, and it's grossly overpriced.

prodata wrote: ↑Tue 28 Mar 2023 8:14 pm
Well, I could say several things to that, but let me keep it short:

1. Ever wondered why dealers don't engage more often with this sort of forum? Maybe I am stupid to even try and help by trying to explain things from a dealer's perspective.

I think for most people they dont know of the situations that dealerships have with the vendor. why should they, though it is nice that you at least, interact with your customers on forums to allow valuable information to be given/received in these situations. Much appreciated in my opinion.

What I don’t understand is why potentiometers are still being used when a Hall Effect sensor must be a viable option.

My other hobby is flight simulation and I used to use Saitek throttle quadrants. £60 for a three axis unit. It worked fine for around 4 years but when the pot failed the whole unit had to be thrown away as Saitek made no provision for replacing pots costing a few pence.

That’s pretty outrageous really when we’re trying to stop waste.

So maybe Davis need to up their game and make their anemometers as robust as possible. It can’t be beyond the wit of man to replace a pot with a Hall Effect sensor.

Hi John
The beauty of the Consumer Guarantee Act is that a Distributor, Seller, Shop can't negotiate out of the the CGA.
The CGA only applies to NEW stuff but I think there can be a case for USED goods that are falsely advertised.

RayProudfoot wrote: ↑Wed 29 Mar 2023 9:11 pm What I don’t understand is why potentiometers are still being used when a Hall Effect sensor must be a viable option.

I suspect that there are multiple reasons why the 6410 anemometer still uses a pot, like:

It's relatively rare for the direction reading to become faulty, certainly as a result of a wearing potentiometer. Where there is a problem then it can also be a faulty ISS board or a cable fault. (Please don't interpret this as me saying that the pot is never at fault, but honestly it is pretty rare, at least within the first 5 years - maybe longer - of use.)

Second, Davis do know all about Hall Effect direction sensors - after all this has been standard in the Vue model for 12-13 years now IIRC.

But compatibility is probably the reason. AIUI a HE sensor would need a change to the ISS SIM board input circuitry and so we would end up with old and new versions of both SIM board and anemometer, which would be mutually incompatible. This has significant cost implications for both Davis and dealers (in all of development, manufacturing, stock-holding and support) and so overall my guess is that there simply isn't a convincing cost-benefit justification.

Thanks for explaining things John. Makes sense. I can’t recall my direction indicator failing. It’s always been the speed element.

The 360° directions are really kicking in today.

You get 360 when the pot goes "open circuit" ie the wiper has lost contact with the track. So either the track is worn out or contaminated. As above, I'd really try giving it a soak in contact cleaner and spinning it around manually and see it that fixes it.

I can't get to it without hiring a roof ladder for £50, so it's staying up there until it dies.

It has pretty much had it now, almost always 360 today.

As I said, I'm not replacing any more items. I'm done with the ridiculous cost and poor quality of Davis.

Very late to the party on this thread. Full disclosure that I haven't read all the posts on this thread either. (Apologies for my slackness)
BUT.... For servicing of the anemometer check here. (if not been posted already) https://www.chatteris.biz/blog/davis-64 ... 3-version/
This has been my goto and I have had success using the steps. Has saved me much pain knowing what look for and what to expect.
I see the link provided is referred to in this posting viewtopic.php?p=141972&hilit=chatteris.biz#p141972
Hope this can be useful

Mine is the newer version, which doesn't have a reed switch.

Either way, it's beyond my pay grade to meddle with any of that. I'm still sticking to my original plan, and that is to leave it until it fails completely, and end it there.

I refuse to keep paying expensive Davis prices.

Mapantz wrote: ↑Thu 23 Mar 2023 8:56 pm Initial outlay of the Pro2 system. £600
Bought the anemometer transmitter. £200

That doesn't sound right. Where do you get that from? The boards and components I thought would be 200 pounds max for both the TX and RX units. Maybe you're counting expensive enclosures or something?

@Mapantz, I’ve been watching your wind direction for over 2 minutes and it never moved to North once. Unlike a couple of months ago when it was seen on several occasions.

Maybe the problem is resolved.

My money is still on damp ingress - either on the transmitter unit connection or in the measuring unit itself. I have an identical issue, definitely intermittent - and there is a high correlation with wet weather and certain wind directions.