Topic: Replacement parts for Ambient Weather WS-1001 Clone - Maplin N23DQ

[Mandrake]

Can you give me any direct links galfert?  I'm not sure of what I'm looking at with electrical parts.  I found the new bearings easily enough by measuring and searching.

My email to Lucy got bounced.  Can someone please check it for me? 

Address not found 
Your message wasn't delivered to sales@ecowitt.com because the address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail. 
 
 
The response from the remote server was:

552 no such user: sales@ecowitt.com
 

   

Apologies, my bad!

Try support@ecowitt.com
Lucy normally responds within 24 hours.

The other tip I have is you can sometimes get spare parts you need for the older kit made by Fine Offset from Froggit in Germany. Their website has a English language option.
https://www.froggit.de/?cat=c24_spare-parts-spare-parts.html

[Transporterman]

Thanks galfert for taking the time and Mandrake too.    I've ordered the parts including the bearings for less than £10.  I had looked at all the links to the other threads and all the links from those but of course most had expired and without being sure of the part numbers I didn't want risk guessing at the 'similar items' offerers.  I got the thermistor from the UK since I found one that had the +/-1% accuracy rating mentioned.

I'll email Lucy and see what she can come up with.  Thanks again!

[Transporterman]

Had a helpful response from Lucy.    Thanks all.  I get it now (I know you said)   It's a modular thing.  As long as you buy the main parts of a weather station, you can choose what you want in terms of sensors, and if anything goes wrong you can buy the part you need, plug'n play style.  I like that, it means that us lesser mortals can learn more about the truly complicated subject of weather whilst avoiding the vagaries (and burns!) of a hot soldering iron.

I'm still going to risk the soldering iron to try to fix my current Maplin's disaster.  So far I have some of the parts, I have the analogue humidity sensor and a small packet of minuscule E clips (since I accidentally lost one by unwisely attempting to dismantle the station in situ on the roof!)  Only the bearings and thermistor to come.

I understand not everyone has the flexible disposable income and understanding wifes (i normally offer to take her shoe shopping prior to delivery ) good luck hope you make the right choice....brian

Lol, but no shoes or handbag shopping etc necessary with Mrs T.  It was the soil sensors that clinched it!  She loves gardening and technical, functional gadgets and is far better than me at understanding them.    In fact, if anyone knows of a remotely controlled device that can switch on a garden hose/sprinkler, it could be worth a Davis V2 to me. 

   


 

     

[galfert]

Glad you got the modular thing.  That is a big improvement apart from moving from analog to digital. That is why I said it would be worth the upgrade. Wife here was also not to keen on a weather station ruining her view of the garden. But now is the first one looking up the weather and discussing rainfall. She also wasn't too keen on network security cams but now wants me to add a camera for her vegetable garden and soil sensor.

As for automatic sprinkler control look no further than Hydrawise or Rachio. I use Hydrawise because I think the software is better. But Rachio is more popular.

[Transporterman]

Strangely I just got an IP camera.  It took a short video clip of the a badger in my garden on the first night!  What form of online security do people use for cameras and weather stations come to that?  All I've done with mine so far is change the passwords which isn't good enough.  It is connected by wifi to he router, I don't want to get hacked! 

Thanks for the Hydrawise link galfert, a clever bit of kit.  Does it cope with freezing temperatures do you know?  Being a permanent fixture you can't bring it inside winter when you are not using it.

[galfert]

Weather station camera can be any camera really. From a full fledged NVR/DVR system with cameras to individual cameras that are wireless or Ethernet. What differentiates a security camera from a weather camera is not necessarily what the camera is but rather how you position it. You'd want a weather camera to capture nature and at least some sky. Some people set up sky only cameras and I think that is not right either because you are not capturing the effects of wind with trees. The camera doesn't have to be outdoor proof if you can manage to put one looking out of a window. A camera for security is naturally aimed at surveillance and are usually mounted high and looking down and often have no sky as they focus on building perimeter. For now I'm cheating and using a security setup as a weather camera but it gets just a wee bit of sky and some trees. I'll fix that hopefully soon with a dedicated weather camera.

That said there are some dedicated weather cameras like Bloomsky with wide angle lens and designed to capture more sky and some ground.

You don't need to be worried about your WiFi camera getting hacked as long as you don't open up and direct firewall ports. Even then if the camera supports https authentication then you are okay if you use a good password.

Hydrawise or any other smart irrigation controller I recommend not installing outdoors. For a couple reasons, namely weather as you stated and secondly for better WiFi reception. I put mine in the garage. I did have to buy sprinkler solinoid cable and extend the connection point from outside (old controller location) into my garage. It was simple to do. They do make a hydrawise model for outdoor use with a weatherproof cabinet but it is more expensive and you still have the potential WiFi connectivity issue. As for dealing with freezing temps you just treat it like any other sprinkler system and purge before winter. I don't have to deal with that in Florida so I wouldn't know much more.

[PaulMy]

Does it cope with freezing temperatures do you know?  Being a permanent fixture you can't bring it inside winter when you are not using it.

I installed an irrigation system last year with Hydrowise controller.  The controller is outside.  I had my lines blown out before winter and that's it.  The controller stayed outside and I had unplugged the power to it.  When my contractor came this spring to get everything back turned on and fine-tuned he suggested that I should not have unplugged the power and it took quite a while for the controller to get setup again including firmware updates, etc. but no ill effect from having it in sub-zerro weather.

Enjoy,
Paul

[Transporterman]

Interesting.    We live in one of the mildest parts of the UK and rarely even see frost, but occasionally (say every ten years) we get really cold temperatures (for us) overnight.  We have had burst pipes here twice despite pipe lagging when the temp got down to -10c (14f).  Nothing like Canada of course!  I would install the control unit inside but it's always been the external pipework here that has been vulnerable whatever I did.  There is no 'blowing out' service here that I know of  (maybe they have that in Scotland!) but it sounds like a good idea to do yourself to be certain.  We often leave the house for long periods in winter when high wind and sideways driving rain are the main problems.

I have only thought about my new camera so far as a wildlife thing.  I guessed we had a badger in the garden but I wanted to see what else dug the smaller holes.  However, my camera has a fisheye lens so it can't fail to see some sky when the Atlantic winter storms roll in next year.    There isn't much really extreme weather here though apart from the odd big flood event.  So far..

[rods55555]

Hi.

Just to give an idea of how long the replacement sensor lasted. It stopped working on September 27, 2020.
I Bought a new one and installed it on October 20, 2020.
It worked for a bit over 2 years, not bad.
Also discovered the reason why the batteries of the outdoor unit are not lasting more than 3 or 4 months. When I opened it to replace the sensor I found that the supercapacitor is leaking, bought a new supercapacitor to replace the old one (waiting for the delivery from China).
Other than this two problems the unit is working pretty well for its age (and price), the plastic is not brittle (kind of surprising) and all the other sensors seem to be working correctly.

The old sensor (already cutting the wires to remove it)
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The damaged supercapacitor
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So, here we go...

I removed the radiation shield to try to find out how to install the new sensor, since it has a completely different shape.


First I thought that I would just to insert it in the slot that the old sensor was (I just had to cut the two little tabs that hold the original sensor in place) but it was a bad idea for two reasons, first because I accidentally broke a small plastic piece with one of the capacitors on the back of the new sensor board, damaging the board (luckily I bought two of them), the second the reason is that the sensor was too close to the top of the radiation shield.


So, I used a flat piece of plastic to create an extension to install the sensor more or less in the same position as the original sensor was. I used hot glue to hold the piece of plastic in place and glued the top of the board to the piece of plastic. After soldering the wires I applied a coat of transparent nail lacquer to try to protect it from moisture.
Also, I was able to "save" the glue on the top, so I reused it to seal the top of the radiation shield (using hot glue to put it back in place).





Then I put everything back together ... and.... it worked! The sensor works really well, the readings seems to be very accurate.