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I encouraged a friend to purchase the Maplin WH1081 and he has told me that he got a low battery symbol come up on his logger (he was using some old re-chargeables that had gone flat), I questioned this as I didn’t think this was possible
However, when you shine a light onto the LCD display there is indeed an RX and TX meter in between the (heading line for both IN RX meter and OUT TX meter) temp and humidity values! I hasten to add I’ve never seen them turn on on my station logger. Maybe it’s just my unit that doesn’t do this or perhaps he is very lucky, anyone else noticed their unit advising them of low battery strength?

Didn't even know it had them til you mentioned, and yeah, just shone a torch on mine and they are there, one for Rx and the other for Tx, nice spot mate, handy to know

The big question - but do they work? Until my friend mentioned it I have not seen mine alert me even though I did have to replace the batteries in the transmitter. Perhaps it's a feature that has only just been activated but was built into all the circuit boards?

It could also be dependant on the batteries, if for some reason you had a fast discharge, or fail, then the signal would not be given to them, maybe only if they just drop normally, but i am making pure guesses

I've always know that the symbol was there, but assumed it was for the base unit. Are you saying it came on when your friends transmitter batteries were low, or the base units?

Well you have one for transmission, and one for reception, so I would say its for both possible, although I cant figure what the Display would transmit to the unit?

I think it was the logger that had the duff batteries but I didn't witness this myself. I'll have to check with him. Mark - you mention you knew about the symbols but have you ever seen either of them work. And I would agree with Rob that having RX and TX would imply that it relates to the logger and transmitter - but hey, it is a Fine Offset Bless them

Well there is definitely only one battery symbol on my display 1090, and I hadn't noticed before but yes it does have the letters TX on it indicating it would be the remote transmitter battery status. My original no-name batteries are still going OK after 11 months even at -11C, so I'll wait and see...

Wierd, well I couldnt tell you what mine was, its a rebadged maplins (napkins) one, the one that "doesn't" auto set the clock, and that definatley has Tx and Rx on it

robynfali wrote:Wierd, well I couldnt tell you what mine was, its a rebadged maplins (napkins) one, the one that "doesn't" auto set the clock, and that definatley has Tx and Rx on it

The Maplin one without the clock is WH1081, on mine the logger has a label on the battery cover with the details.

logger?, i got the transmitter on the roof, and the display? or is it the display thing you mean?

I do mean the display station, I didn't expect you to pop outside and start climbing ladders

An interesting quirk came up the other day on my 256NC (AKA 1080?). The TX battery low indicator came on. That in itself isn't interesting, but...

The TX unit is in Costa Rica (with no batteries in it), and the display is in Canada! How's that for long range sensor contact?

But today, the TX battery low indicator is no longer showing. Hmmmm, what's going on here?

nking wrote:The big question - but do they work? Until my friend mentioned it I have not seen mine alert me even though I did have to replace the batteries in the transmitter.

Hi,

I've just been testing my new Maplin kit with a variable-voltage power supply, so think I can give an answer, which is "Hardly at all".

Note that I placed the transmitter and receiver fairly closely together, so any effects of reduced transmitter power or lower receiver sensitivity when the voltage falls (which may be relevant to real-world use) are excluded.

Firstly, the receiver/display continued to work when dropping the voltage slowly from 4.5 volts (nominal primary cell voltage) down to about 2.8 volts, but the "low RX battery" warning did NOT come on. At 2.75 volts the unit "crashed" when it switched on the receiver (which confirms a query in another thread that, to save power, the receiver is indeed only switched on just before a message is expected). The voltage then had to be raised to about 3.3. volts for the display unit to boot properly again.

So, it appears that the "low RX battery" icon does not work at all. However, below about 3.5 volts the backlight doesn't illuminate (or is so dim as to be of no value) so there is hardly any need for any other warning below this level.

But the Transmitter unit does appear to "monitor" its battery voltage and transmit data (probably a single "battery status" flag bit) in each transmitted message (Sky TV remote controls have the same facility). When the receiver/display is switched on (e.g. when inserting the batteries) then the first message received from the transmitter does switch on the "Low TX battery" warning if the transmitter voltage is less than about 2.5 volts. However, any subsequent changes in the status (i.e the voltage susequently falling below the threshold, or rising above it) appear not to update the icon status. This looks rather like a "bug" in the software, that the flag is only tested on initial booting and not during normal operation. It's possible that the flag is only tested infrequently, but the reports from people having never seen the icons displayed suggest otherwise.

The "low TX battery" function is not quite useless in that when changing the receiver/display battery you might be warned that the transmitter battery is also in need of replacement, but the overall functionality is not really what could have been hoped for.

Cheers, Alan.

AllyCat wrote: Maplin kit

It's "napkins" not maplins get a grip lol (do a search for napkins to understand )