Cumulus Support

Any ideas why my rain guage might have stopped working after working OK for nearly a year?

I have cleaned it out and nothing appears out of order.

Bad connection, broken wire?

I've got the same problem. My rain gauge has stopped working after about a year. I Have checked for blockages and replaced the bateries. All other functions appeare to be working fine.

Another possibility might be a sticking reed switch? I think you'll probably have to bring it inside and get a meter on it...

Mine stopped, when I unclipped the top of it, I found 3 spiders and another creature in there, once they were out, it started working ok again. I've heard spider webs do the same.

had the same problem myself with earwigs.a few strips of grease tape for apple trees works a treat.3 bands on the mounting pole and a thin strip all around the rain guage works fine.
should last the full season also.
http://www.selections.com/images/produc ... GF5308.jpg

Just took my rain gauge apart, it was full of cobwebs. Cleaned it out and the gauge is working again.

Mine died after about 18 months. Tested it several times since whilst ensuring it was clean inside ,it would either register rain when there was none or would ignore any tipping of the scales.

Hi

Anyone managed to find a cure other than the insect one for these rain gauges?

I now know of 4 FO stations that have dead rain gauges, including my own.

Reed is fine... back to main PCB...just no data... everything else works great...

Shame to bin the thing due to that!

David

If the gauge is kept clean and the buckets tip OK the only things that can go wrong are broken wires, bad connections or the reed switch. Replacement reed switches may be obtained from Maplin etc. Just don't get ones that are too big. Miniature reed switch N30AN should be fine. Check with an ohmmeter for continuity of connections and that the reed switch closes as the bucket unit tips.

Hi

I am affraid that the reed is ok, and wiring is ok back to the PCB, so I need to look at a component repair on the pcb... which is next... hence I was asking if someone had been here before.

The few duffers I have seen all check ok back to the pcb... sadly...

David

I presume you mean the transmitter PCB? - the one in the rain gauge simply connects the cable to the reed switch.

magnet of the tipbucket still ok and strong enough?

Weird one this week - My rain sensor has been disconnected for at least 2 months yet 2 days ago it registered 311mm of rain !

KetteringUK wrote:Weird one this week - My rain sensor has been disconnected for at least 2 months yet 2 days ago it registered 311mm of rain !

No more weird than the fact that the Fine Offset rain counter can behave randomly anyway. Not having any error detection or correction (e.g. simple parity) doesn't help, and it's possibly interesting that 311 mm is equivalent to around 1036 tips - 1024 tips would have been a dead giveaway (i.e. a single bit flip).