Author Topic: Frustrated with WS5000 rain gauge and lack of customer support...  (Read 1501 times)

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Offline AgriChem

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I have been battling Ambient Weather for almost a year now with the WS5000 Rain gauge....  ](*,) Ive gone through several customer support people and the last was Matt.  For some reason they refuse to help address a faulty rain gauge based on my observation.... So when i got the station and i noticed after we had a big rain that the gauge only showed .02 tenths... I looked at other stations on ambient weather in my area and most people had at a least a tenth or more.  So i inquired to them about the gauge and they said that it is suppose to register .004 per tip of the bucket.  The Problem is if i take 1" of rain from a manual rain gauge and tip the bucket once every minute, when i run out of water the rain gauge only registers .05 and .07 when i did the test two different times..... I told Matt this and suggested he take his own rain test measurements to verify which he said he would do but never has.... They have sent out at least 3 gauges and the last one he said he personally verified but he never did because it reads just like all the others. I originally had sent the display back to them but apparently it was OK and after the last test i suggested that maybe the display was faulty and he said he would get another sent out... Well after 10 days and no display I left him a message and he replied back " I heard back from our engineers in China and they are telling us that 3 tips equals .01" of rain as each tip equals 0.004" of rain.
Thank you for your patience and understanding"   I gave up getting any help from them after that email......
So my question is for people that have a verified working rain gauge how many tips of the bucket does it take to equal 1" of rain... According to my calculations it would take dave 14" of rain for the unit to register 1".... I can't calibrate the gauge because the values don't go that high on the display Anything I'm doing wrong or overlooking.... Any help would be appreciated.   Brian


Offline mcrossley

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Re: Frustrated with WS5000 rain gauge and lack of customer support...
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2022, 03:11:51 AM »
I'm not saying your gauge isn't faulty, but you cannot just take 1" worth of rain from your manual gauge and expect the tipper to read the same. That would only be true if the collection areas of the two gauges are the same.
Mark

Offline box

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Re: Frustrated with WS5000 rain gauge and lack of customer support...
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2022, 03:45:59 AM »
Bang on

You need a correction factor between rain gauges based on their collection area

Your 1 inch of rain is based on the associated collection area, it's not 1 inch for all collection areas

IIRC standardised met instruments convert their measurement into a coverage per square metre before reporting


Offline AgriChem

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Re: Frustrated with WS5000 rain gauge and lack of customer support...
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2022, 11:03:15 AM »
Thanks for the replies i dont know how else to verify the gauge to check its accuracy.
I can 100% absolutely gaurentee that if 1" of rain fell the WS5000 wouldn't even be close in measuring  an inch.   Like i mentioned in my post we had some pretty good rains when i first got it and it didn't even measure a tenth ...

Online Rover1822

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Re: Frustrated with WS5000 rain gauge and lack of customer support...
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2022, 12:43:07 PM »
AgriChem

Have you been able to compare the readings of your manual rain gauge vs your WS5000 after a rain event? They should be located as close as possible.

Is your manual rain gauge a decent one, like a Stratus?

With the tipping bucket sensor on the ws5000 which I I believe is the Ecowitt wh40 , one thing to check, is if it sticks. There have been incidents where this occurs, it has happened to me. To test just press down on the bucket a few times and see how it bounces back, you may have to do it a bunch of times, and of course this will mess up you readings as you are doing it. If it does, you can spray some silicone around axel area of the bucket.

If you have already done or mentioned  this , sorry for being redundant.



Edit: I see you haver had multiple rain gauges sent to you and they all behave the same. This is extremely unusual. I have 2 WH40s (One from Ambient and one from Ecowitt) and they work in agreement with my manual Stratus gauge, within 5% full scale




« Last Edit: January 13, 2022, 01:23:23 PM by Rover1822 »
Ambient:
  WS-2000
  PM 2.5(2)
  WH31B(2)
  WH40E
  WH31P
EcoWitt:
  GW1100
  GW1000(4)
  WH31(2)
  WH57
  WH51(12),
  WH40
  WH5360B
  WN34S
  WittBoy WS90 + GW2000
  WS90 (other one) + GW1100
Personal Sites: Weather Cam

Offline AgriChem

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Re: Frustrated with WS5000 rain gauge and lack of customer support...
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2022, 02:25:43 PM »
OK so based on the two earlier comments the area of the manual rain gauge is 2.19" the area of the WS5000 is approximately 34.21" so with my previous measurements it appears the the gauge is within spec.  The problem during the testing was that if i tip the bucket it won't register every tip because each tip is only .004... I  will set the manual rain gauge next to the ws5000 and compare the results next time when get some good moisture coming...

Offline box

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Re: Frustrated with WS5000 rain gauge and lack of customer support...
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2022, 03:16:28 PM »
OK so based on the two earlier comments the area of the manual rain gauge is 2.19" the area of the WS5000 is approximately 34.21" so with my previous measurements it appears the the gauge is within spec.  The problem during the testing was that if i tip the bucket it won't register every tip because each tip is only .004... I  will set the manual rain gauge next to the ws5000 and compare the results next time when get some good moisture coming...

Sounds like you are making progress

Side by side comparison is the way ahead

Stated accuracy as mentioned is ±5%