Strange disturbans

[Vagspel]

Hi,
I set ut our new Davis Vantage Pro Plus yesterday and that worked whiteout problems, almost.
I get some strange disturbance on the Wm2.
I guess it is due to a 250W FM transmitter with the antenna just a meter away from the outdoor part of the station.
Why is there a yellow dot on the bottom of the instrument?
//Gunnar

[mcrossley]

That does not look right, the solar reading should be zero until around sun rise, you have a reading of 160ish all night. Is the console reading the same? If so check your connections. If they are OK then you may have some faulty hardware.

The yellow indicator on the gauge lights up when the sunshine threshold is exceeded.

[Vagspel]

Yes it does not look right !
The reason is the FM radio transmitter very close to the outdoor unit.
When we started the radio last night, when everything was mounted, it went from zero to 150-160. That is the power of the FM station.
We are going to put some ferrites on the cable from the radiation instrument and see i f that helps.
An other thing would be to but som alu folio around the instrument and see if that helps.
A third solution would be to calibrate it down to zero when it is dark outside.
How this is done I have to find out by reading TFM
The station is up and running now under http://www.o-vader.se. (only in Swedish )
Regards
Gunnar

[mcrossley]

I think using calibration is a bad idea.

Another problem you may find is that the transmitter battery starts to go flat much sooner than normal. The transmitter normally stops reading the solar and UV sensors once it goes dark to conserve power whilst the solar panel is not working. It only reads the solar sensor every 5 minutes or so until it gets a non-zero reading, then it starts reading regularly until it goes dark again.

[Vagspel]

Ok, no calibration
The station is cable connected so there are no batteriers!
//Gunnar

[ConligWX]

If this Davis Vantage Pro Plus is new, why are you trying a workaround to an issue rather than Identifying the cause and eliminating it?

firstly just move the Pro Plus away from the transmitter. Does the Solar sensor give off the same issues. If so you have a faulty piece of hardware and thus you need to contact your Reseller or Davis themselves.

[Vagspel]

That is just what we are going to do today when it stops snowing
//Gunnar

[Vagspel]

Hi Simon,

I got a mail from Davis saying that this is a problem with FM Tx and is difficult to fix.
They suggested to wrap some foil around it and see if that helps.
I moved it as far out from the transmitter and that lowered the value from 160 to 60
The place where I have the station is on the top of a water tower and I do not have any other place to put it where we can get ADSL.
I will also do some changes that is used when having RF problems with shortwave radios, ferrites, shielded cables and so on.
Interesting problem but maybe solvable.

[ConligWX]

Hi Simon,

I got a mail from Davis saying that this is a problem with FM Tx and is difficult to fix.
They suggested to wrap some foil around it and see if that helps.
I moved it as far out from the transmitter and that lowered the value from 160 to 60
The place where I have the station is on the top of a water tower and I do not have any other place to put it where we can get ADSL.
I will also do some changes that is used when having RF problems with shortwave radios, ferrites, shielded cables and so on.
Interesting problem but maybe solvable.

Thanks for the update. At least you have identified the cause.

[ConligWX]

I wonder if you can use a Parabolic Reflector to boost the signal from the Davis Antenna to your console? A bit like the old days with the 54G antennas.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Parabol ... eflectors/

worth a try.

[Vagspel]

Hi Simon,

We I don´t use wireless connection from the station to the consol.
This is the answer I got from Davis:
"AS for the solar sensor, it is sensitive to the FM freq and is best to avoid strong signals. We have taken great care to try to prevent as much noise as possible, but still sometimes we will see some creep in. You may try wrapping it in some foil. "
Later we got this:
"Installing a toroid core, ferrite bead, choke should help."

I will give this a try when we get a bit better weather
If it is not solved I will take away the solar sensor. Better than showing a false reading!

[Vagspel]

Hi,

It looks like we solved the problem with the disturbance from the FM radio transmitter.
We added some ferrites on each cable that did not help we then rebuilt the card in the junction box adding several capacitors.
As far as I can see now the value is descending down to zero as the sun sets. Will check to night when it is dark