Logging somehow station sensor errors?

[elagache]

Howdy Stu and WeatherCat fans,

I've succeeded in getting the Davis troubleshooting gang on the WXForum completely stumped about my miseries with my station.  However, they wanted something that I now see WeatherCat doesn't seem able to provide.  They wanted some sort of a log of when the sensor errors started and which sensors were marked as not working (and if possible why.)

I realized that for all the things that WeatherCat logs, it doesn't log sensor errors.  Stu could you scratch your head and someday think of a way to do that?

While I'm asking, how does WeatherCat detect a sensor error for a Davis station.  Does the communication protocol include a specific hardware indication of a sensor that is not working?  It would help me if I understood what WeatherCat was uncovering.

Thanks Stu for all the hard work!! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[WCDev]

Hi Edouard,
A sensor error is when either a value is unavailable (typically indicated in the station's protocol with a sentinel value - 0xFFFF for example) or the value is outside the range specified by the manufacturer - i.e. a barometric pressure of say 300mB.

Switch on 'Copy Log Entries To Console Log' in the WeatherCat's Advanced preferences. Whenever a sensor isn't available at sample time, WeatherCat will log a message similar to 'External Temperature not ready, retrying...'. Then scroll through the console log to see the times a sensor was invalid. (Applications->Utilities->Console.app, enter WeatherCat into the search box)

[elagache]

Howdy Stu and WeatherCat station troubleshooters,

A sensor error is when either a value is unavailable (typically indicated in the station's protocol with a sentinel value - 0xFFFF for example) or the value is outside the range specified by the manufacturer - i.e. a barometric pressure of say 300mB.

Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to know.  I had a suspicion that Davis had some sort of communication protocol that included a way to indicate a sensor that wasn't working correctly.  I just explained that to the folks on WXForum.

Switch on 'Copy Log Entries To Console Log' in the WeatherCat's Advanced preferences. Whenever a sensor isn't available at sample time, WeatherCat will log a message similar to 'External Temperature not ready, retrying...'. Then scroll through the console log to see the times a sensor was invalid. (Applications->Utilities->Console.app, enter WeatherCat into the search box)

Hmm, . . . . I do leave that option checked on.  I must have goofed and searched the wrong system.log file.  I was seeing the sensor errors as reported by my AppleScripts to display on webpages but I never found the actually WeatherCat entries.  It has to be my mistake.

Thanks Stu!

Cheers, Edouard