Author Topic: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem  (Read 5544 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline BlueSky

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« on: January 30, 2015, 01:24:52 PM »
Hi All,
Apologies if this has been well covered before but I am new to all this and could really do with some help please.
I have a Watchdog Spectrum 2700 station with a Watchdog datalogger located on a site 20 miles away. A third party company supplied it with their own GPRS system. It uses a Sierra FX009 wireless gateway. This company provided a service to retrieve the data and put it on their website. All great until they went out of business.
Now I've got all the hardware and no idea how to go about sorting it out. Ideally I'd like get the data straight onto WU so I could view it remotely. Is this a realistic option and if so how would I do it, and if not what would be the other options ? Thanks for any suggestions.

Offline geofb13

  • Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 131
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2015, 10:22:20 AM »
Bluesky did you ever get this figured out?

Sorry that I didn't respond earlier but I somehow missed this over the last month. The stations that I work with are Spectrum Watchdog stations and we use a gateway similar to the Sierra FX009. However, we don't send the data to WU as we collect all the data on our own servers now. There is always the option to send the data to Spectrum who can host a little site for the station if that's all you want.

Offline BlueSky

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2015, 09:34:16 AM »
geoffb13, thanks for the reply. No I haven't managed to make any progress. I've looked at various options including switching to a Spectrum GPRS and using Specweather. However they tell me the GPRS unit is being discontinued in favour of a different system that looks more complicated. Also we are in the UK and the on cost of this system is prohibitive compared to swapping the whole lot for a Davis equivalent and using their Connect modem and service plan.

However I would really like to be able to use what I've got as it is a perfectly good unit and it is 'only' the communications side that doesn't work.

I have learnt a bit trying to figure out a solution but not enough to be any use ! I'm assuming the board that sits between the Spectrum datalogger and the modem is running some proprietry software that calls for the data and triggers the modem. Is that correct ? and if so how would I go about redirecting the data? I thought WU would be a good solution for the web side, but I don't know what format Spectrum dataloggers output their data and don't have the Specware software.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Offline geofb13

  • Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 131
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2015, 10:50:58 AM »
Hmm, the not having the Specware software might come down to being the biggest problem if you wanted to keep using the current communications (COM) board that your station has. The Specware software is how you'd be getting into the brains of the COM board between the modem and datalogger. From that, that's where you can change the information as to where the data is sent in my case the difference between the Spectrum website and our servers. Currently we are using both their older version and newer version of the GPRS equivalent here in Quebec but we also use another proprietary board that can collect and transmit the data as well as using a RaspberryPi to collect it as well. So there are outside options for getting the data without using the parts Spectrum has to offer and without having to get a copy of Specware but it would probably still be worth it perhaps.

As far as the data format, first it would depend on what you have connected to which ports of the station outside of the temperature and humidity data if I'm remembering correctly. I'll see if I can find some raw data and I'll post it because the data isn't encoded in anyway between the datalogger and COM board and in the setup I use it's not encoded even in the transmission.

Offline BlueSky

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2015, 12:12:18 PM »
The board between the logger and the modem is not a Spectrum part as the GPRS was originally supplied by another company, so would the Specware software be able to configure this ? I wouldn't mind buying  Specware if I was confident I could resurrect the rest of the hardware.

Offline BlueSky

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2015, 02:49:54 PM »
Have added some pics to show the station setup with the datalogger, board and gateway.

Offline geofb13

  • Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 131
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2015, 07:30:00 PM »
Ah ok, I either missed something or misread a part of your initial post. While the board the third party supplied is similar to the Spectrum version in parts, I don't think the Specware software would save you after seeing that.

I'm going to look into that board though because there might be something you can use to manage it the same way Specware manages the Spectrum COM board.

Offline BlueSky

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #7 on: March 03, 2015, 05:59:43 AM »
That would be great, thanks for having a look at it.

Offline Potato

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 1
Re: Remote Spectrum Watchdog 2700 GPRS problem
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2021, 02:01:26 AM »
Hi I appear to have a similar issue with the unit at my work is there a way to I'd if the cellular unit is a spectrum or a 3rd party unit
Believe it's a 3rd party unit but would like to confirm and then resolve the issue
Thanks