I have quite a few Rainwise Mark IIIs either at my home or at another friend's place or the airport where they have been perking along well for some time, like years and years. The occasional battery change and all has been well.
I have had two, one a LR model and one a standard lower frequency one, that have decided to give me fits. I assumed when one went off line that it was a battery problem even though one of the guys at the airport bought an expensive 6 volt battery from Batteries Plus and swapped it out. Within days it was off line, despite the ads for these units saying that in the winter they could go months without sunshine to recharge them. I swapped the battery again, with a new one from having been topped off on my trickle charger/discharger/balancer and again it was down to 3 volts in short order, less than a week.
My LR unit is at my home, and admittedly the sunlight hasn't been the greatest, but the diagnostics told me (when it was online) that the max volts were 6.2 or so with the sun on it. But dead was the rule, and I put a new battery in it and went on with some of the things I was doing with it as a test bed (for software, inside) and within a day or so it was kerplunk. I wandered out, took the solar panel off, was getting 7+ volts in sunshine, tested the battery and it was about 3.6 volts too!
I'm off to check the batteries once more, but I'm becoming suspicious that the sending units are at fault. I haven't checked the boards but I would think that they, including the transmitter boards are different.
Has anyone had a similar problem, where new batteries are drained rapidly, and only work in the sunshine when the panel is providing power?
I guess I could send them back to Rainwise to see if they can locate an errant component, but unless they are willing to take JUST the boards, I'm hesitant to send the whole heavy, hard to package, unit back.
Looking for ideas....
Dale