Cumulus Support

Didn't manage to get onto the mast job this afternoon and now it's dark and raining. Have to see what tomorrow brings.

you mentioned you wanted to check your fence,
found this :
http://www.afence.com/Electric_Fence/ho ... nstall.htm

i don't have this(live in a city) so was interresting to read.

Interesting, thank you Mostly what I/we already know though. Some bits are US specific, of course.

I did find the cause of pick-up of electric fence pulses though. I have a supply cable running from the goat shed parallel to the fence and going to the rain gauge enclosure to run the heater. This was in very close proximity to the rain gauge cable feeding the transmitter unit. I moved the cables apart and the temperature spikes stopped The long power cable was evidently picking up interference from the electric fence and passing it to the rain gauge cable and then into the transmitter unit.

I separated the cables at about 15:30. Here's the plot from an hour before showing the spikes.

blame the poor goat

Very good

look like job done.

Well done

Very cute

Thanks chaps

I'm still getting the occasional spike when the electric fencer is on even with the electric fence near the WS disconnected. The layout of the grounds here is that we have two paddocks with sheds between. The lower one contains the house (bungalow) and the WS sensors. Here's an aerial view courtesy of Google. I've added boundary etc. in yellow. Outdoor sensors in red. F indicates the current position of the fencer.

Having read that article on electric fence systems I can see a couple of improvements I could make. I think the fencer earth could be improved by moving the earth spike to damper ground. It's currently just south of the goat shed and the soil isn't as damp as it is at the bottom end (south) of the Top Paddock where any rain or ground water collects. So I think I'll drive a nice long piece of galvanised iron water pipe into the ground there and move the fencer unit to the north side of the goat shed.

I shall also improve the screening of cables around the outdoor sensors.

I checked the ordinary fencing and hedge around the top paddock and concluded the electric fence wasn't needed to keep the goats in that area. I'm keeping them out of the rest for now. So I've turned the fencer off and it's staying off until I sort things out.

This 12 hour plot shows the effect - fencer off until 09:00 this morning then on until about 14:00 when I turned it off again. I think whether we see spikes or not depends on the exact timing relationship between the fencer pulses and the transmitter. Sometimes it's regular, sometimes not. P.S. Our property layout and some more of my thoughts are on the previous page.

Maybe you could tune the fencer unit to pulse every 48 seconds and put them out of phase

Just kidding.

I have a funny on my main weather web page (logging at 5 minute intervals) just before 08:00, which isn't due to the transmitter because the 48 second logging from the other console is fine (2nd plot). The spikes early on on the 48 second plot simply didn't coincide with any 5 min sample times.

It looks like the first logger was losing contact with the transmitter for a few extended periods: 2:30-4:00, 4:00-5:30, 6:45-7:15, 7:15-7:45, 7:50-8:00. It looks like it may have received a bad packet at 7:45 due to marginal reception?

Ah yes, - I hadn't looked at it that closely, but you're right. And yes, I agree it's probably signal loss - the 5 min console is further away from the transmitter than the 48 sec one.