About a year ago, a good friend gave me a LaCrosse WS-2810 system when he upgraded to the Davis. It worked perfectly for about 5 months, then the wind sensor started transmitting to the Sensor sporadically, then quit working at all. I took it down opened it up, put a spot light on it, and it charged the storage battery to about 2.8 volts, then it would transmit to the sensor. It worked just using the sun for a few days, so put it back up on the mast about 15’ off the ground, a few days later, stopped. Took it down went thru the same routine. Finally deciding that the solar storage cell was just not keeping up.
Tried this. Got a battery case from Radio shack, one that has two AA cells side by side, wired in series, drilled a tiny hole in the anemometer case, ran the wires from the battery case thru the hole and soldered it across the two solar cell solder points, (the biggest ones on the board), before connecting it permanently, measured the dc amps, it only drew about 40 micro-amps! Varying slightly by the amount of light on the solar cell. Anyway, mounted it underneath the arm that goes to the pole using Velcro and a couple tie wraps. It has been up there since last September and the wind speed sensor has not missed a beat. Quite simple to do, just make sure you connect the positive of the batteries to the positive on the solar storage battery terminal.
Theoretically it should last hundreds of hours. A AA battery has over 2100 milliamp hrs, 2100/.040 = 52500 hrs. So far it’s lasted over 4000 hrs. If you send me your email address, I will send you a picture of what mine looks like up there. CK
ankor@att.net
