Today I upgraded the WD Basic that came with my WS200 to what I hope was the latest version: 10.37M Build 1
This fixed the problem of no THSW display on the main page, but …
THSW on main page differs from THSW on Weather Dials page. This morning the main page was 2 degrees (C) higher than the Weather Dials page. This evening they were both the same, and now tonight the Weather Dials page says 24.4 while the main page says 21.7.
Is this normal, a bug, or some setting that I screwed up?
On the Solar/UV/ET graph, the ET red line is permanently at zero. Is this normal? I have the OS UVN800 sensor out in the garden. The other lines look reasonable (though I am wondering why the UV scale goes to 100 when I think my machine only goes to around 12?)
Speaking of which, is it okay to leave this sensor in the rain? Manual is not clear on the issue, and OS have ignored 3 emails already, so maybe someone here knows?
On the main screen, main chart, what is the green line?
Last puzzle: is the clear plastic protective cover over the solar panel supposed to stay there or should I take it off? On the one hand I’m worried it will melt in the sun, on the other, that if I remove it, water will get in… once again, manual does not advise.
I can only tackle the first question I’m afraid - the latest version is always shown at the top of each Forum page and yours is not the latest - the latest is 10.37N which solved some issues for me.
Is your station WMR200? I’m just checking whether there was a typo - if so then it’s the same as mine and I can maybe advise based on mine. I don’t have the UV sensor. I did remove the plastic protection strip from the solar panel as it will deteriorate and reduce performance. I would recommend tilting the sensor a little towards the South (assuming you’re in the Northern hemisphere) as it’ll not only get slightly more light that way but the tilt will ensure that rain washes off rather than stands on it.
Would you like to send a link to your page so we can take a look and see what you’re seeing?
Yeah, sorry, box is no longer lying around and memory returned wrong answer … it is WMR200. Have since heard back from OS re the UV sensor, they advise it is ‘water resistant’ but not ‘waterproof’ and should be brought inside if there is a lot of rain about.
I gave them my opinion on that … not complimentary.
Will remove the plastic strip then … solar panel is angled already, north in my case since I’m in Sunny South Africa … Have also queried OS on this. Also told them that maybe I should have bought a Davis system…
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I have Basic version which does not support that … I also have the software on my linux box but the WS is hooked up to a windows machine at the moment.
Hi Ian, I would quite agree re the solar sensor - it would be reasonable to expect that a weather station’s sensors are setup and then left there. Nearly all of mine are attached to an aeriel mast on the roof so I certainly wouldn’t plan on hopping up there as the weather changes and moving some of them.
On the other hand, I’ve had an OS WMR928N for many years and was very pleased with its performance. Eventually of course things do wear out and a few of the radio transmitters had gone down (for that model has separate solar powered transmitters per sensor) and so I decided to upgrade to the WMR200. I do think that is a great weather station and would recommend it so hopefully once it’s bedded in and doing the job then you will find that too.
I bought the full WD and also WDL because from my old weather station I had a reasonable looking weather page on my web site but it took hours of messing around with keyboard macro processors to get it to display graphs, screen capture them, and then upload them to my web site. WD gave me the opportunity to make a huge leap forwards and get all that done automatically.
My views on the full WD…
Loads of options. PRO - you can do almost anything with it - everything seems to have been thought of. CON - there are so many options and no good manual so that figuring them all out is taking longer than it did to write my original web capture mechanisms - in defence if you want just the basics then it has a great setup wizard that does it all for you
Very active forum with lots of help available on most things
The Wiki is a good resource but far from complete
Where abouts in Africa are you? I have an office in the Newlands area of Cape Town so spend hours on the phone to them all.
Kind Regards
Steve
Perhaps you can post as screen shot point to which green line you are referring to. I have removed the plastic cover over the UV sensor, have however found that after recent heavy rains my UV reading are only getting up to 2 or 3 on clear sunny days - this is way off.
You will need to add an offset to get VP calculations more realistic. See screen shot.
Feel free to send a PM and perhaps I can help out over the phone.
The latest version of WD is 10.37N b 6 and can be found here There is no update for the basic version tha comes with the WMR200. The full version can be used for 30 as a trial. It is WELL worth to purchase the full version that is updated regularly!
If you want your weather station to be on the internet, and if you want to have your data included by other weather sites such as Wunderground, then really you need the purchased version of WD and WDL. If you’re ok with the price - won’t break the bank - then go for it - not only will it give you all that but it has endless possibilities and will soak up your free time in the nicest possible way.
Um, I was referring to the clear plastic protective layer over the Solar Panel, not the UV sensor. I also (I think) removed the clear plastic over the plastic window on the UV sensor.
I can’t find the settings page in your screenshot … perhaps it’s only in the bought version?
I changed one or two settings, I think I set it to ‘display wind chill factor even if above 10 oC’. This had the effect of changing (as best I can remember) the order of the three temps just below the wind direction indicator, to now read Heat Index, Dew Point, THSW. I seem to remember THSW being at the top before, next to the LED. It also replaced THSW on the Dials screen with Heat Index.
Anyway, now the two Heat Index readings agree…
I restarted the program and noticed that once loaded, and while loading data, the main screen showed “Wind Chill”, which was replaced by “Heat Index” once the data was loaded.
