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Accuracy of remote temperature sensor

Discussion specific to Fine Offset and similar rebadged weather stations
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teg
Posts: 29
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010 8:28 pm
Weather Station: Weathereye
Operating System: Windows 7

Accuracy of remote temperature sensor

Post by teg »

Had my WeatherEye (rebadged Fineoffset) for a few weeks now. I've checked the accuracy of both internal and external thermometers and the external remote one always reads 0.7 degrees too high. I adjust for this with the calibration function in Cumulus. The specifications indicate different ranges for the internal and external thermometers which seams to indicate different thermometers with different respective accuracies.

Questions:-
Ignoring the effect of solar heating what are normal accuracies for external thermometers?
Is there a way recalibrate the Fineoffset external thermometer by 'tinkering' with the hardware?

Trev
Charlie
Posts: 363
Joined: Thu 04 Feb 2010 12:22 pm
Weather Station: 1wire-Cumulus & Fine Offset
Operating System: Windows 7
Location: Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada

Re: Accuracy of remote temperature sensor

Post by Charlie »

You're kidding, right? 0.7 degrees high is pretty good for this class of instrument.
By the way how did you measure it? What's the acuracy of your measuring instrument? Have you looked at linearity? It might be off 0.7C at 20C, spot on at +40C, but off by 2 degrees at -40C.

To answer your questions:
I believe you will find the published acuracy in the manual.(+/- 2F or 1.1C)
The sensor is not intended to be adjustable.

If you believe you have an acurate characterization of your instrument, simply use Cumulus configuration - calibration to enter a correction and to display (and store) the values you believe are correct.
Gina
Posts: 1885
Joined: Sat 21 Feb 2009 12:41 pm
Weather Station: Nothing working ATM - making one
Operating System: OS X, Linux Mint, Win7 & XP
Location: Devon UK

Re: Accuracy of remote temperature sensor

Post by Gina »

One degree Celsius is pretty good. Most mercury thermometers eg. as sold in garden centres, are no more accurate. These are cheap weather stations and use a thermistor for external temperature measurement and to my way of thinking, give good accuracy for the money.

Incidentally, checking mine against a mercury thermometer showed 2C high - I corrected for this in the software calibration.
Gina

Sorry, no banner - weather station out of action. Hoping to be up and running with a new home-made one soon.
User avatar
teg
Posts: 29
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010 8:28 pm
Weather Station: Weathereye
Operating System: Windows 7

Re: Accuracy of remote temperature sensor

Post by teg »

Charlie wrote: By the way how did you measure it? What's the acuracy of your measuring instrument? Have you looked at linearity? It might be off 0.7C at 20C, spot on at +40C, but off by 2 degrees at -40C.
Many thanks for the feedback.
I checked them them with four different thermometers I have at home with the consensus that the indoor one was likely to be the most accurate. I checked the outdoor and indoor thermometers between 12C and 24C and got a consistant difference of about 0.7C.

I didn't realise that thermometers could be so 'inaccurate' and admit I expected too much out of the Fine Offset which, for the money, is a fine station.

I was asking if anybody had tinkered with the outdoor thermometer as I've noticed, on this forum, that people have managed to adjust the remote humidity sensor. I've noticed with mine that, compared with other local stations, the humidity is consistence with low values (40-50) but increasing low above 70. I adjust for this by deducting 10 with a 1.24 mulitplier.

Regards

Trev
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