C-1
Appendix C. Troubleshooting
If your Basic Weather Station seems to be operating incorrectly, there are a number of checks
you can make to help isolate the problem. These checks may enable you to solve the problem,
but, in any case, will give you some basic facts to pass on to an engineer if you need to contact
Campbell Scientific.
C.1 Loss of Battery Power
If you are operating the station in conditions of low solar irradiance (far
North/South for instance) the power consumption may not be balanced by charge
from the solar panel. To prevent the battery discharging, carefully monitor the
battery voltage in Table 2. If it is seen to decline continuously over a period of
several days steps should be taken to redress the balance. These may include
reducing the scan rate to, say, once every sixty seconds, which will reduce the
average power consumption of the system to meet the available charge.
This will of course mean that real-time values are not updated so often and
reported peak wind speed measurements may be lower due to the longer averaging
period. If making this change, please take note of the comment above about
amending the wind-run calculation.
C.2 No Response from the Datalogger
Do the following steps:
1.
Make sure that the main power supply battery has been installed and
connected properly. Ensure that the spade connectors are attached to the
correct battery terminals and that the green connector is fully inserted into the
power connector point on the datalogger – see Section 7.
2.
Use a voltmeter to measure the voltage between the terminals on the Battery.
The voltage must be greater than 11.5V lower than this means that the battery
is either faulty or not getting enough charge. The logger will opertate between
7V and 16V DC.
3.
Make sure that the correct interface and cables are used and securely
connected to the RS232 port on the datalogger and to the RS232 port of the
computer –
see Section 5.
4.
Make sure that the PC200W software is correctly installed and the station file
is configured on the computer.
See the PC200W Manual.
If you still cannot communicate with the datalogger, please contact Campbell
Scientific.
See Section 12.
C.3 Unreasonable or Unexpected Results are
Displayed by the Datalogger
This indicates an incorrect response from one of the sensors. Note this may be the
case where an optional sensor has not been ordered and the input channel remains
unused.
