Cumulus Support

I've just got the above weather station, and could do with some advice on the time signal bit. Yesterday when I assembled the kit, putting the batteries in the transmitter just gave 1 short red flash , then going straight to the normal intermient flash. After spending a lot of time last night finding and trawling this forum, I found out that the unit had to be aligned a certain way.

So this morning I set it up again, put the batteries in, and got the 4 second red led then the 5 lights to show that it had found the time signal. However there is not and has never been the antenna symbol in the bottom left of the display, and the time/date is simply counting up from power on. Have I just got a rotten signal? Should have said I'm in Central Scotland, so some way away from the DCF transmitter in Germany. If I leave it running, will it keep looking for the time signal, or should I keep restarting it?

Andrew

Hello,

I had the same problem and read this interesting site. Opening the unit was a last resort option for me, so I followed the instructions on page 4 and oriented the flat face of the unit perpendicular to the direction of Mainflingen, for me (in the south of French Alps) it is 15° E.

After sometime, without pulling the batteries out, it synchronised, and didn't lose the signal since.

Francis

Hi Andrew,

I believe the External Transmitter sends the RTC data approximately every hour "on the hour" (within a couple of minutes). So check to see if the red LED flashes "unusually" (i.e. not just once every 48 seconds) at this time. If not, then the RTC signal is probably not being received, so try rotatating the transmitter by 90 degrees (and mounting it higher) and wait overnight for least potential radio interference.

If the transmitter does seem to be sending RTC data then the FO wireless link would appear to be strugging. Are you getting any "Lost Sensor Contacts" or "--" on the Console at all? IMHO any suggest that the wireless link needs to be improved.

Cheers, Alan.

Franz Dur wrote: I had the same problem and read this interesting site.
Francis

Hi Francis, I found that site last night, and split the transmitter open this morning. Everything looked ok, so I taped it up again. There must be a bad connection in it, because previously the humidity was solid at 99%, now its dropped to a more believable figure.

Andrew

AllyCat wrote: If the transmitter does seem to be sending RTC data then the FO wireless link would appear to be strugging. Are you getting any "Lost Sensor Contacts" or "--" on the Console at all? IMHO any suggest that the wireless link needs to be improved.

Hi Alan,

I don't know how to look for lost sensor contacts, but I have noticed a strange thing in some of the graphs. There are sections of graph (eg the wind speed) where the line has lots of changes of up and down, then for longer periods it has more gradual changes. Could the gradual change sections be where a lot of the data is not getting through?

Andrew

aduncan wrote:I don't know how to look for lost sensor contacts

Cumulus flashes the error light; if you click on it, the error message says "Lost sensor contact!!!".

but I have noticed a strange thing in some of the graphs. There are sections of graph (eg the wind speed) where the line has lots of changes of up and down, then for longer periods it has more gradual changes. Could the gradual change sections be where a lot of the data is not getting through?

If you have Cumulus running all the time, then lack of resolution in the graphs could well be explained by lack of data from the sensor. If you stop and start Cumulus, however, then a more likely explanation is that the graphs are plotted at 1-minute intervals when running live, but when drawn at start up they are plotted from the data in the logs, which will be at whatever interval you have configured in Cumulus and/or your station: http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#My_gra ... _starts_up

Ah! Now I see. That equates to when Cumulus was on and off. I,ve set the WEA22 to 5 minutes interval, so that should make it a bit clearer when catching up with data.

BUT.... My radio clock is now working! At first it was 7 hours fast, so I set the timezone to -7. Then a while later it was 6 hours slow, so I've set the timezone to -1, and now its reading the correct time. Be interesting to see what it shows in the morning.

The station is perched on a temporary bendy pole in the lawn just to get the hang of it, but I've got a nice big metal pole which will attach to a solid fence post as a permanent home.

Thanks folks for the help, I'll no doubt be asking for more....

Andrew

aduncan wrote: Hi Francis, I found that site last night, and split the transmitter open this morning. Everything looked ok, so I taped it up again. There must be a bad connection in it, because previously the humidity was solid at 99%, now its dropped to a more believable figure.

Andrew

Hello Andrew, in fact I don't know wether it is the orientation towards Frankfurt or simply shaking the unit when I moved it!! So could well be a bad soldering, the FO are notorious for poor soldering. Anyway it picked up the Time signal and quitted reporting 99%! Two in one stroke!!

As to the accuracy of this relative humidity measurement, at least it looks plausible...

Francis

The station takes up to 7 minutes to get the radio time signal, so it will be absolutely normal if you get no data during that time (flatlining) or the station doesn't pick up signal when you connect the sensor, try connecting both at the same time.
Also, mine does it every 2 hours "on the hour", not every hour, odd.