After another hardware battle, I discovered my 1-wire hub had a failed port so I had to reconfigure my wiring, dropping my solar sensor. Will get back to that another day. More importantly, I had decided to make the switch to Linux on my old T23 thinkpad that’s running my Java software. It is maxed out at 512mb ram(!!!) and has a 20 GB drive. After playing around with Linux (Ubuntu 8.10) on my destop with great success, I decided to replace the slow XP on the T23 with a Linux system. Should be perfect – right? Old, small slow machine – just where Linux shines. Well – NOT!
Weather Station Back & Working – after much effort!
Things started to go to hell in a basket in late August. My wife’s computer died (motherboard) and after two dead replacements, bought a new machine. Took the better part of a day to update & cleanout the crap (Dell, Vista). A day or two later my motherboard went out – one DOA replacement, second one good to go (several weeks passed). This all happened shortly after my station went dead for no apparent reason. During the summer I had moved my AAG Wind unit to a mast mounted on the peak of my roof. We’re surrounded my tall trees and I wanted to get as much height as I could since in its orignal location I was greatly under reporting wind speed. Everything was working swimmingly until I started getting lots of errors on all my sensors. Nothing I could find pointed to a sensor hardware issue so I assumed it was a wiring problem. I was using a 1-wire star configuration and decided to switch to a hub. This necessitated major software changes. When all the software was ready and hub bench tested okay, I hooked up the hub to my outdoor sensors and everything dead again!
After several frustrating days I concluded the hub had died and it took several weeks to convince the vendor to send a replacement which then took several more weeks to arrive. By that time my computor was back up and the final testing and configuration of the software got completed. Then a week ago the wind anemometer seized up and today I made my second trip up on the roof to take it down, free it up by spinning it, and try to douse it with WD40. Everything’s back in order – for now.
Unusual product support
Today I received a free replacement temperature probe for my Taylor Digital Oven Thermometer/Timer. This is years old and has given me total satisfaction until about two weeks ago when the probe failed due to a break in the insulation/wire. Email communication to Taylor was answered quickly informing me that I was eligible for one free replacement probe, with additional ones costing $5.00. The thermometer goes for about $20 delivered on the ‘net. No questions about receipts, when purchased, if abused, no returns – no nothing. Just my address and I got the probe! This is incredible customer service in this day and age – and talk about retaining customer loyalty! Go Taylor!
On another note – major weather station changes/problems – details to come.
Weather Station Update – Modified Solar Sensor
In addition to relocating the temperature/humidity sensor, I’ve enclosed the solar sensor in a translucent cover from a CD spindle stack. This has eliminated sensor saturation (in effect, sunglasses for the sensor) and I can now calibrate the sensor for 100% at peak sun (around 1:30 PM these days).
Weather Station Update
Well, at around 8:00 AM Saturday, 12 April we got hit with a major thunderstorm – lightning, hail, wind, much rain. At which time my station went dead. I didn’t discover this until later in the day. Turns out the DS9097U RS232 interface connector got zapped by a lightning induced surge. This gave me a chance to make some more updates to my software and things are now back up using my spare DS9097U. I’ve ordered the parts to build a surge protector to avoid future recurrences. I’ve also modified my temperature/humidity housing to eliminate radiated heat from direct sunlight: