Latest version of WD running on Windows XP.
All devices are Hobby Boards connected to a 6 way hub.
I’ve had spikes before but (I think) they went away when exiting/restarting WD.
Not sure if this is coincidence but I’ve just changed my AAG wind instrument over to my spare.
Restarting WD it takes a long time (tens of minutes) before the outdoor humidity is shown.
Both indoor and outdoor humidity have “long spikes” but inbetween appear to give correct readings.
See olive (indoor) and blue (outdoor) readings.
Both sensors have the link installed to provide the sensors with 5v.
Removing the indoor sensor and checking that with 1-wire viewer (parasitic powered) it ran for over 4 hours with no errors.
All other sensors behave. It’s only the humidity sensors that are showing these errors.
Any advice what to try?
Hi , I run an all 1-wire station with the same version of WD and no such problem. Interesting that the indoor is the worst.
My guess would be a failing humidity sensor (or contaminated with something). Maybe the failure is pulling down the supply voltage and affecting the other sensor as well.
I don’t believe that is a software problem.
Ian
Thanks for your comments. Looking at the 2 port RJ45 sockets there is some contamination on some of the pins (on the temp/humid modules)
I wonder if the voltage from the hub to the sensor via the 5v reg is intermittent.
Not easy to clean those contacts so I’ve ordered some replacements. In the meantime I’ll see if I can measure the supply volts to the sensors. I’m reluctant to order new sensors at about £20 each but realise they are getting quite old.
Just looking at the overnight readings. Strange. Outdoor humid seems to be behaving. High because it’s misty here. But indoor still showing spikes. (Bottom graph expanded).
I agree it’s probably not a software problem but it would be nice to see a log what data WD is receiving from the sensors.
The graph legend suggests that the olive colour line is Solar rather than humidity although that would look odd anyway because you’re seeing spikes when it’s dark outside!
It often takes another pair of eyes to spot things I had not noticed
Olive line is indoor humidity, Orange line is solar. I’ll look later at why it shows the text “Solar 0%” in olive colour.
When I “expanded” the lower graph to show the spikes more clearly the top graphs (baro, speed) and middle (direction) didn’t change.
I don’t know if that’s normal.
While “playing” I have noticed that sometimes I need to exit WD and run 1-Wire Reader because WD (or rather 1WR) doesn’t seem to find all the instruments. Example - attached screen grab, today the solar wasn’t showing up until I restarted at about 10:30
Obviously when everything is “normal” I run it 24/7/365 which is why I still use XP. No unwanted Windows updates :lol:
Been using 1-wire sensors and networks for 15+ years and I’d agree a failing humidity sensor is most likely. They are the one component I have had to change out the most. Generally speaking humidity sensor are always going to fail as they have to be exposed to the environment so they will usually all fail at a certain point.
Otherwise whenever I see spikes / drops occur it is most likely one of the following:
•Corrosion on rj45 / rj11 conductors. Either in the female socket or on the male plug
•Moisture is always death to 1-wire. I’ve had moisture creep into the back entry side of a RJ45 plug
•Some combination of the above. It can slowly build-up until 2 or more factors start to affect the voltage across the network. This can be maddening to troubleshoot because it may not just be one thing.
1-Wire networks don’t have a lot of spare power / voltage so anything that becomes a drag on the quality of the copper loop can cause intermittent failures.
Agree with everything you’ve written.
Plugs are (relatively) easy to change. The contacts inside the sockets not easy. I’ve ordered some spare sockets as I can see some corrision on some of the “fingers” when using a 10x magnifier. After that, if it doesn’t cure the problem, I’ll buy a couple of sensors.
The ones giving problems are both about 10 years old. Maybe I’ve been lucky that they have lasted as long as that!
It’s a pity Hobby Boards is no longer operating as it would be almost as cheap to buy a new temp/humid module.
10 years is a really long time on an RH sensor. I now buy modules from iButtonLink, but they are pretty pricey at $64 USD each. Prior to that I used hobby-boards and AAG as they had good prices.
I’ve done some more work and experiments and I’m coming to the conclusion that on my system there is a problem with 1-wire reader and/or WD.
On the indoor temp/humidity module I replaced the RJ45 sockets and fit 3 wires to the humidity sensor.
The module had been in my workshop, warmer and dryer than the loft where it normally sits.
Reconnecting the module the 5v line reads 4.93v
The sensor o/p was reading 2.28v and WD displaying 46%, but that soon changed to 2.45v but 100%
I restarted WD, 2.70v, 100%. Another restart, 2.72v 0%
I then quit WD and ran 1 wire-reader. It was finding the ROM ID and allocating to the indoor humidity ok.
Quit 1-wire reader, restarted WD.
2.80v 64% but… the outdoor humidity didn’t appear in the WD screen for 7 minutes.
And the indoor humidity soon went back to 100%
Note that I have checked the module with 1-wire viewer and it ran for several hours without a problem.
I would be nice if I could log the data sent from 1-wire reader to WD for the humidity sensors only. All other instruments are behaving and I’ve yet to be convinced it’s the actual humidity sensor.
Hrmm… that is interesting as you should see the issue in the OneWire Viewer app from Maxim. I’ve just done some poking around and looking at my extra sensors and I’m seeing something a bit strange now too. I run a lot of DS18B20-PAR sensors (8 of them) and I’m getting a spike on the extra real time graph on Sensor #3 where it spikes up or down to ~15.3c every hour or two. What’s strange is that I have removed and replaced that sensor with a backup which has re-enumerated my 1-wire network so that the sensor that was #4 is now #3 and it’s showing the same behavior. So it doesn’t look like the sensor.
I wonder if there is some kind of issue with the timing / readings on the 1-wire bus via WD and its 1-Wire reader app…but it seems now I have an issue too with my 1-wire readings
That is the conclusion I was coming to. It would be nice to have a “timetable” of requests for data from 1-wire reader / WD and also make adjustments to it, maybe to give longer “sleeps” between requests to avoid any collision of data packets. I don’t know how complex that would be as I’m not a software expert :lol:
I wonder if cable length is an issue? The main problem I’m having, the indoor humidity, is on a very short (2m) cable from the hub, whereas the outdoor wind, solar, temp/humid/rain/lightning are on cables at least 10m long. It’s an easy thing to try with an RJ45 extension cable.
