My vp 6163 is going crazy with rain totals. nothing seams odd in tripping bucket area. station is pry 10 years old. looks like they have changed hardware? anyone had good luck swapping from old to new style bucket? I think this is proper replacement ? Vantage Pro2 Tipping Spoon Replacement Kit, 19" (0,5 m) Sensor Cable - — Davis Instruments
Sounds like your reed switch is not acting correctly to the magnetic field; have you displaced it? If I understand it correctly, there are now separate metric and “inchic” versions.
I think (but not 100% sure) that they moved from a two bucket system to a single bucket system with a counterbalanced weight.
I decided to try the single bucket when I did a station refresh… (new anemometer, battery, solar panel). I heard changing out the dual tipping spoons with the new single unit is kind of a pain. So, for just a few bucks more, I ordered from Scaled Instruments a base with the tipping bucket already installed. The hardest part was re-snaking the various cables through the hole. Anyway I had enough old parts to set up the dual spoons as just a rain gauge. It sends on channel 2 to a spare console. They are nearly identical in their readings. I think the single spoon is more accurate. I am still checking to see if is providing an accurate rain rate.
I changed mine a few months ago to the tipping spoon, easy apart from getting cable through the hole to plug in. No issues since.
Thanks all! I ordered a new single spoon. Do you think it would help to cut old cable and use to tape to new one to pull thru?
You can try it but it wouldn’t of worked for me as mine is a wired pro, I managed it with long pointed pliers and about 15 mins.
Naw… I would keep it intact. Working spare parts are always a bonus when you need them.
Interesting! I certainly will not be changing the buckets in the immediate as I have already several other priorities. Can anyone tell me whether the hardware change also requires a software change, to keep the calibration.
I’ve replaced the original tipping bucket with a new spoon-type few months ago. Readings are much more consistent than before but still showing 5-10% too much. I haven’t put effort into changing the hardware calibration (I don’t even know where there’s any knob to rotate).
As far as I know, the tipping spoon for VP2 is similar to one used in Vantage Vue.
No software change is required. In essence they combined both spoons together on the same side with an appropriate counterweight. Instead of 2 kids on each end of a seesaw… both kids are on the same end. Davis has stated that the new unit is calibrated at the factory. They recommend against trying any adjustments. Unless you have a visual rain guage mounted right next to the rain bucket you can’t say that it is mismeasuring. Everyone thinks that a rain storm is uniform.
Yes, I have a calibrated manual gauge 6 ft from the Davis collector. Last month we were close to 600 mm of rain (monthly sum) and was able to tell the difference quite accurately. But the tipping spoon measures consistent and am happy I decided for a replacement. With the original tipping bucket, totals were non consistent (sometimes under reporting, sometimes over reporting).