Topic: Texas Weather Instuments RWS-Solar New Modem

[joyceinc]

Hello,

As we recently found out, Texas Weather Instruments went out of business and we cannot get a hold of them.  We have a remote solar weather station (RWS-Solar) that no longer sends data due to losing the wireless plan they previously sold us. 

Our Verizon rep said we cannot reactivate the 3G modem directly with them due to FCC regulations phasing out 3G only devices... long story short we got a new modem that has a serial port connection specifically for connecting it with the board in the weather station.  Does anyone have any experience with this sort of upgrade?  we have internet to the modem but cannot get the weather station to talk to the modem via serial port. I am not familiar with serial port setup nor do I have any of the specs for the weather station.   Any experience, tips or places to look for documentation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[DaleReid]

Hi, there are a few of us trying to keep our TWI stuff going.

While I'm still working with another member with the temp and humidity pagoda project and tipping bucket for him, I wonder if you can show a picture of your station, especially if there is a precise model number, name, or even some printed tag with the info on it.

What had you been getting off the station?  All the usual data points?  Just wind, or temp, or humidity, etc?

And are you saying that the station is remote, interfaced with a modem, which relayed info to their site, and you watched your data off from their feed to some software they had as part of the deal?

Thanks. Dale

[joyceinc]

Hi Thanks for the reply. Yea I can try to get pictures of the device.. it is still on site with our client at the moment.    We were getting the usual data points like temp, wind, rain etc.

We had to get a new cellular modem for this unit as the old one was 3G and they won't activate it again for us. So we now have a new 4g modem that runs on 12v (the whole unit is solar with a battery).  Unfortunately though, I can't get the weather station to talk to the modem to get internet.  It connects with a serial port which our new modem has but I'm not familiar with serial ports and all the settings involved nor do I know what the weather station's settings were before and can't find any documentation on it.  That's where we are getting hung up.

I think we are looking at getting a new station instead if I can't get it working pretty quick.  If we do, it will have to be solar powered and be able to connect to our modem via Ethernet (preferrably, wifi if not) and not require a computer or any 110 power (even for the Ethernet adapter).  Any suggestions?

Thanks all.

[Kev]

You would need an IT tech to assist you in attempting to get the new modem to communicate with the station. Here is the full manual for the RWS Solar.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/5c9x0c7carg9vx5/RWS_Solar_-_Operation_Manual.pdf/file

Considering your needs, if you need to change stations, a good option for you would be the Davis Vantage Pro2.
https://www.davisinstruments.com/solution/vantage-pro2/

Please, if you decide to change stations, don't throw your RWS away, contact me via the forum messaging, as I need sensors/parts for my Texas Weather Instruments WR-25.  I have been trying to find any old TWI station+sensors for a while to no avail because every time I've found any possible leads, they've already been thrown in the trash.

[Kev]

And are you saying that the station is remote, interfaced with a modem, which relayed info to their site, and you watched your data off from their feed to some software they had as part of the deal?

Thanks. Dale

The way the RWS worked, was it used a regular cellular phone signal to send all the weather data straight to the internet for viewing via WeatherView32 and to Weather Underground.  There was no display console with the system.  I only have seen one other before.

[joyceinc]

Hi Kev, Thanks very much for your replies and information. Thanks for the manual link but unfortunately that is the manual I have already found. Not very detailed in my opinion...

I'm currently working the angle of trying to get the serial port connection working so I can get connected to the device. However I'm concerned that even if I do that it will still be trying to send weather data to TWI which their servers could be offline at any point.  I am hoping there is a web based control panel to view and edit settings within the device (such as the wunderground credentials).. what do you think the chances are that the RWS has such a config screen built in and still available with TWI out of the picture?

Thanks for the tip on Davis - I called them and got the various options for a station with cellular data and also ways to use our existing new 4G modem. So that is an option as well. Unfortunately I'd need 3 different items to make it work and still would have my own modem and solar panel for that.   (unless I want to just get rid of our modem and use theirs and their annual plan).

Any other stations you know of that can run on solar and plug directly into internet via ethernet to send data out to weather underground?  (some type of adapter is OK but don't want to have a console up there unless it would run on the solar as I can't supply it 110 power in this location).

Thanks for all the help!

[havtrail]

I don't know if this is relevant, but I worked with an old Onset HOBO U30 cellular weather station. It was made obsolete by the dropping of 3G cellular coverage. The 3G cellular capability was built into the unit, not a separate modem. It also had a USB port, which was used to set it up, but you had to have Onset's software on a computer to do that. The same Onset software could also be used to get data off of the station through the USB cable, and I was able to get that working again and salvage its stored data. In this case, the station would not send up current data via the USB, you had to instruct it from the computer software to upload data to the computer, so it was not "live" in operation this way. Perhaps your TWI is similar in this regard, and might have come with PC software for use with the cable.

Rich K.

[DaleReid]

That's what I am beginning to think of the one that Mike has to work with here.  The setup is partially started with a firmware set series of addresses and stuff, going to the web site perhaps to get all the final points in order.

Rainwise sort of has this, as best I can fumble through, with some of the IP-100 stuff, and no way to update firmware but to have the sort-of-Wu messages back to the unit.

I really like to be much more fail safe than this.  And of course once the places change their fixed IP address or worse yet, go belly up, you are screwed royally.

I can't see anything wrong with having a USB port, or even a ethernet plug to allow access with an address which is inscribed on the bottom of the unit, and then being completely independent of a host site, that is you can get data just like from old stations where they were designed that if there was no internet (rare these days, but still happens) the box is still functional.

Weather display seems to be able to query and get data back from a whole host of station types, all via RS232 or ethernet.

I've run into this a lot more with work where some of the new and coming stuff that I deal with is designed without this 'its gonna happen someday, you whippersnappers' approach, and when you don't have the free or expensive software, your box is dead. 

I'm still trying to find if there is some trick (tough to do without a unit to fiddle with) based on the instructions given (really a step down from the old manuals and way of doing things at TWI) to see if there is some way that this can be saved.  I'm sure some genius will come up with an arduino or Rasp Pi interface to take all this into account, but from all indications, there really aren't too many of these stations of this type out there.

Dale