Cumulus Support

hurring wrote:I am running the fineoffset 1080 unit and I am having to change batteries monthly.
I am guessing it maybe the distance I have it from the base unit and having to travel through walls
cheers
Adrian

Hi Adrian! This is significantly worse than anybody else has reported with this type of unit. There are a couple possible causes.
First it may simply be broken. I can think of a couple failure mechanisms that would result in excessive current drain.
Second, and more likely, is that the transmitter power is directly proportional to the battery voltage. Your Alkalines will drop about 0.2 V as their first 10% gets drained, and ramp down a bit more slowly after that. If you are on the hairy edge of signal strength, this could certainly cause it to appear that the batteries are dead. I guess you could test this by taking the "dead" batteries, and trying them in a different application. The lithium curves suggest they hold their voltage better, so you may experience considerably longer "life".

http://www.foshk.com/en/products/show.asp?id=41

Fine Offset claim batt life of 2 years for transmitter (point 26 ) on prod description,
Mine has been running since Aug 09, hope they keep going, don't relish the thought of getting the pole off the side of my house to change em

Seems to me the Fine Offset web page is optimistic in a number of things! Apart from battery life, the display is only that clear if you remove the touch screen from in front of the LCD display!

There are problems if you go by the instructions supplied too (as has been discussed before). The wind instruments are best as high as possible (up to 10m) but the rain gauge shakes on a high pole causing phantom rain indication. It catches the wind. Also, in a high wind, rain is blown out of the funnel. Best height - around 50-80mm (couple of feet) above ground. Likewise, the temperature/humidity/transmitter unit should be at the standard 1.25m (4 to 5 ft) height above ground. Makes battery changing easier too.

All true Gina.

You should phone Brown and Cameron and offer to become a coalition Prime Minister. We might get some sense then.

EvilV wrote:All true Gina.

You should phone Brown and Cameron and offer to become a coalition Prime Minister. We might get some sense then.

Can I ask what may be a silly question, but is battery related. When you replace your batteries in the sensor do you shutdown Cumulus and disconnect the console and take out its batteries incase there is any corruption caused by rebooting the sensor unit or do you just leave it connected without any probs. I haven't replaced my sensor batteries yet but as winter in on the way and I had an hour of lost sensor contact today, I'd better do it soon.

hills wrote:Can I ask what may be a silly question, but is battery related. When you replace your batteries in the sensor do you shutdown Cumulus and disconnect the console and take out its batteries incase there is any corruption caused by rebooting the sensor unit or do you just leave it connected without any probs. I haven't replaced my sensor batteries yet but as winter in on the way and I had an hour of lost sensor contact today, I'd better do it soon.

When you replace the transmitter batteries the console loses the signal and doesn't automatically pick it up again after the batteries are back in and the remote unit is transmitting. To get the console to recognise the signal you need to power it down and then up again (being careful not to touch the screen until signal recognition has occurred and a beep heard). Powering down means removing the three batteries and disconnecting the USB. You will need to reset date/time and relative pressure plus anything else that was changed from the default I would also recommend shutting Cumulus down before disconnecting the USB and running it again after re-connecting, but I don't know if it's really necessary.

Excellent thanks Gina!! I've just gone to the servo and bought some Energizer ultimate lithium batteries, so I'll see how they go.

I'm starting to show the odd spike in my temperature readings for external so I think it's about time I changed the batteries. They've been in the transmitter for around 18 months and are bog standard Alkaline. I'm happy with that.

Changed the batteries. They still show 1.36 volts and were actually just heavy duty batteries, not alkaline.

Just checked your graphs Terry, the wind speed graph showed when you changed the batteries I think.

The temp graphs look quite consistent before and after however, so I wouldn't have picked it as the batteries?

Not like my temp graph (with no screen) which can rase and fall roughly 3 degrees depending on direct sunlight.

I am wondering how do you get such a fantastic wind direction graph? I assume your trend line is due to not being plugged in, and cumulus recording the average direction.

What do you use as your averaging, and your recording period? I have been using 48 minutes as my averaging and noticed a far better plot in the data points recorded when my station is unplugged (98% of the time. I have also been using7 minute recording time. We got 2mm more rain over here in the Waitaks yesterday

I corrected the temperature spike and it's other influences.
I wondered about the due north for so long but I was only down for about 20 minutes and the wind has been from the north or NE for a while now. Pic attached.
My transmitter is under the eaves on the west side of the house and seems to be quite immune to sun influence.
Do you see a problem with my wind direction graph? It is modified with a larger tail and a counterbalanced nose and is quite stable.

Maybe the Zero if calm had the influence this morning on the direction?
Settings attached.
Of course you had more rain in the Waitaks

Hi guys.

Have just serviced my weather station which included a battery change in the outdoor unit.

These were the original batteries, as supplied, and installed in June 2008.

So 23 months of service including temps down to -10C.

Of late i have been getting some spurious data so did suspect the batteries, but having measured the voltage am now convinced that bad batteries was not the cause.

I do go with RF ! But from where? I run VHF Tx to 50 W and HF Tx to 100 W with all the aerials within 10m of the unit so why dont i get more issues. Dont know !

Regards - Phil

@philcdave

How often do you TX at 433 mhz ??

sorry double post !!