Cumulus Support

Hello
After some intitial problems my W-8681-Solar has been working well until yesterday when the Wind and Rain data was not available on the indoor sensor - just dashes. The UV/Light level sensor was reading. Thinking it could only be batteries I removed the two AA batteries from the transmitter unit (voltage was low on them) and put them into a recharger. Replaced them after charge and now I get a continuous red light from the LED.
Do you happen to know the cause of this please? I have tried other batteries with the same result.
TIA
John

Hi John,

The red LED staying on permanaently might indicate a faulty/damaged unit, but these units have two processors (one in the solar head and one in the temp/humidity/etc. transmitter) so "booting" the unit can be quite complicated. Firstly take out the batteries for several minutes and then follow the installation instructions exactly. The solar and rain/wind/etc. data appear to be sent as two separate messages and maybe only very few are getting through, so you might also need to check that your transmission path/distance is satisfactory.

There have been several similar topics recently, for example see page two of this thread.

Cheers, Alan.

Hi Alan
Thanks for your reply. I have a feeling that the transmitter unit will be OK and that it is some 'boot' error so will try your suggestion tomorrow.
The unit had been in place for a few weeks now with no transmission/reception problems so the path to the display unit should not be the problem.
Thanks again
John

Hi Alan
I have installed batteries again but am still getting a continuous red led. I'll contact the company I bought the unit from later today.
Regards
John

New alkaline batteries installed but the led is still glowing. I am being sent a new transmitter unit.
Cheers
John

Hi John see you are getting a replacement unit, may be a sill question when you replaced the batteries are you using the reset button under the solar head,there is a small whole with a reset button in and once batteries have been put in it needs holding for 4 sec to make it fully search
hope this may help if you still have the problem

Nigel R

Also note that taking the batteries out of the transmitter unit does not power it down if the solar unit is still attached - I got caught by that one . You need to unplug the solar unit and pull the batteries.

Hello guys
Thank you for your thoughts but I did press the reset button after installing the new batteries and also unplugged the solar unit.
What I did was 'try anyhting, it cannot make it worse' but the manual is of no help at all as there is no troubleshooting section or who to contact in case of problems. Other than that the manual is OK
Thanks again
John

And make sure you double check the battery polarity when replacing batteries as reverse polarity may kill the transmitter as there is no reverse polarity protection in Fine Offset systems. Anyone found any diode protection in any Fine Offsets??

Hi Terry,

Well it might be the component discussed in this thread (to which I see you contributed) but I'm doubtful if it is directly in series with the battery. A forward drop of about 0.7 volt is generally too much to tolerate when you're designing a circuit to run on two AAs which may be only about 1.0 v. per cell at end of (design) life.

Personally, I immediately put marker dots (Red PVC tape, Tippex, etc.) in the battery compartments of devices like these which don't have any "physical" protection against reverse insertion. A very strange oversight when in other respects the plastics design/quality of these FO stations seems generally very good.

Cheers, Alan.

hi folks

just reading trough the posts and they seem very reminiscent of my experience with this device

my first on stopped transmitting data after 2 weeks
my second one reckoned where in a new ice age ,and ok i admit it was cold but -70
the third one lasted 2 days before it went the same as the first

After many phone calls and cost in postage i decided it was not worth the effort and was going to look for a more robust and professional one

However things that don`t work like they should annoy the hell out of me
As a computer engineer i also have some experience and training in electronics
so i decided to have a look

the circuit board looked water damaged and not recent
the solder joints where bad and the aerial was badly connected to the board


so DE-soldered and re soldered major components

connected aerial properly
then reassembled

every thing is now working perfectly
http://agentsofspliff.com/


the site is a work in progress so forgive the basic-ness of it

trying to use dream-weaver to make and edit new pages
but its proving hard teaching this old dog new tricks
A built in page editor built in to cumulus would be help full

Any way i hope this was of help

PS
i all so connected the crystal body to earth,As i have read this is also a fix for transmission problems

trying to use dream-weaver to make and edit new pages
but its proving hard teaching this old dog new tricks
A built in page editor built in to cumulus would be help full

I have Dreamweaver as well but like you wanted something a little simpler. There are others but Notepad++ has been very useful to me, and quite easy for basic page creating and editing.

Paul

PaulMy wrote:

trying to use dream-weaver to make and edit new pages
but its proving hard teaching this old dog new tricks
A built in page editor built in to cumulus would be help full

I have Dreamweaver as well but like you wanted something a little simpler. There are others but Notepad++ has been very useful to me, and quite easy for basic page creating and editing.

Paul

Cheers will check it out