More Davis ISS signal loss woes - any thoughts?

[elagache]

Dear WeatherCat Davis troubleshooters,

Well I thought I had solved my problem with losing data from my weather station.  I even managed to refuse the shipment of the second Weather Envoy so at least I didn't have to pay the shipping back.  Then . . . . . . . . .

This morning at about 5:30am my Weather Envoy lost the signal from only the ISS again.  It remained stuck in that state until I power-cycled the Envoy and it finally found the signal again.  When I got up the console was picking up the signal just fine.  I checked the communication with the ISS and was reporting 100%, alas Davis didn't give us a way to troubleshoot the communications from an Envoy.

I checked the ISS again and changed the station ID from 5 to 3.  The battery had dropped a bit from 3.23 to 3.2 volts.  So just to be safe I replaced the battery again.

After doing this I changed the Console settings and used WeatherLink to update the ID on the Envoy.  The Console took about 10 to 15 minutes to find the ISS, but the Envoy didn't find it after an hour.  Once more I had to power-cycle the Envoy before it finally picked up the ISS at ID #3.

Afraid this is a weird one, but any thoughts?  The only thing that could have changed is a new cordless phone.  I'm going to check at what frequency it is running.  I've added another Ambient Weather remote temperature and humidity sensor, but it is at 433 Mhz while Davis is running at 900 Mhz, so that shouldn't be problem.

I sure hope I've got this station working.  We are expecting rain tonight and sure don't want to miss that!

Cheers, Edouard 

[Bull Winkus]

It does sound like you might be getting interference, considering the on again off again nature of the issue. I'd be looking at the new phone. Is there a way you can disable it for awhile, like revert to using the old phone or something similar. Some wireless house phones are on the 900 MHz band. Some are spread spectrum. Some not. Don't know if that matters.

Us old warriors in the troubleshooting business have an old saying, "Isolate and conquer." Meaning that if there are multiple possible causes, eliminate each one at a time.

[elagache]

Howdy Herb and WeatherCat station troubleshooters,

It does sound like you might be getting interference, considering the on again off again nature of the issue.

The plot thickened a little further last night and that give me a clue.  I started getting errors on my temperature and humidity sensor only.  You folks may remember that my actual sensor is over 50 feet away from my ISS under the deck which serves as a jumbo radiation shield.  I passed on the Ambient Weather battery charger beta test, so I got saddled with another indoor/outdoor thermometer console.  To test that I put the outdoor sensor on top of my Davis temperature and humidity sensor so that I could compare the readings.  My troubles started about that time.

I finally finished up my evaluation and moved that Ambient Weather remote sensor to the other side of the house.  No problems since I did that.  I'm wondering if the 500 Mhz signal wasn't increasing the noise on that long cable between the Davis temperature and humidity sensor and my ISS.  I've never had problems before, but that's a long cable run for what I assume is a low-power signal.

So far so good - I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Thanks for the feedback and moral support! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[Bull Winkus]

You say the temp/humidity sensor is wired? To the ISS? I don't understand.

[elagache]

Howdy Herb and WeatherCat . . . . goin' about it da' hard way types . . . . 

You say the temp/humidity sensor is wired? To the ISS? I don't understand.

Well, . . . . it is a long story.  Before getting my Davis station I had an Oregon Scientific 968.  That station allows has 3 separate modules: temperature humidity, rain gauge and anemometer.  I was aware of the radiation shield problem and so I put the temperature humidity sensor under our deck.  So even with an inexpensive station, I was getting decent temperature readings.

Alas, after 2 years anemometer failed on the Oregon Scientific station.  At that point I was hooked and decided to buy a Davis station.  However, the FARS stations were new and expensive and I wasn't sure I trusted that system.  I had a fool-proof radiation shield and decided to stick to my location under the deck.  So I bought a Davis 6382 Wireless Temperature/Humidity Station and wanted to use that data as my official temperature station.  Just one problem - you can't!  Davis expects the first temperature to be your official temperature and LWC (this is pre-WeatherCat) couldn't swap channels.  So there I was, I had a standard radiation shield ISS over a concrete walkway and I had a second Temperature/Humidity probe, but I couldn't connect it to the ISS.

So I did a little more digging and discovered that you can splice the cable to the probe and therefore run a much longer cable from the ISS to wherever you want your Temperature/Humidity probe.  So I bought myself 100 feet of 6 conductor phone cable and extended the cable from under the deck to the ISS which is on the other side of the house.  I explain all this in my posting about my station:

http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=969.0

So I won't repeat the whole story.

However the important point is that Temperature/Humidity probe under the deck is plugged into the ISS temperature/humidity port.  While the Temperature/Humidity probe that is on the ISS was also spliced and that signal is sent to the transmitter that came with the Davis 6382 kit.

It has been working fine since 2009 so I'm not going to change it.  However, in the 5 years since I first did all this the FARS stations have proven themselves.  If I had to replace the ISS I would use a FARS unit and simply things.

So, that's why there is 100 foot of phone cable in between my ISS and the Temperature/Humidity probe.

S-s-s-s-simple, . . . . isn't it!! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[Bull Winkus]

Lol! I don't think there is anything simple about anything you do, Edouard. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, but did you check it against a known standard? Don't know how you'd do that with humidity, but with temperature you'd put the probe and the probe from a [known to be correct] temperature measuring instrument in a glass of water to see how well they match. Or, if unable to come up with a highly accurate standard to compare to, you could check the measured variable at a fixed point defined by the laws of physics; i.e. a glass of ice water should measure right at 32? F or 0? C. That should give you a lot of confidence that your long cable isn't introducing any error due to line loss.

Of course, I'm going to assume that you tested after installation, and all of my suggestions are unnecessary. Hmmm??

 

[jace]

Herb.

You are of course assuming that Edouard lives in an area with a ample supply of water.

JC

[Bull Winkus]

 

Oooo? [pause] That's so sad.

[elagache]

Hi Herb, JC, and WeatherCat station caregivers,

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, but did you check it against a known standard?

No I haven't really tested it, but by this setup I have two Davis temperature and humidity probes.  When the sun isn't beating on the ISS they are usually give readings that are very close.  Since it is very unlikely that they both have a bias in the same direction, I'm reasonably sure the values they are turning are accurate.

Cheers, Edouard 

P.S. I really like that emoticon JC!!  Too bad you can't download it apparently.

[jace]

P.S. I really like that emoticon JC!!  Too bad you can't download it apparently.

That's strange, I stole it from a smart roadster forum I frequent. I just right clicked on the image, selected "save image as" to my HD, and then upload it to photobucket, then I could insert the image from Photobucket into the post. Might be an easier way to do it but I don't know of one.... yet

Special one just for you Edouard.


JC