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Weather Station Hardware => Davis Instruments Weather Stations => Topic started by: svampen on August 18, 2019, 05:49:37 AM
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Hi all
I am quite new around here, so first; real name is Robert and I live on the south west coast of Sweden. I have been running a Davis VP since 2004. It started to get brittle in the plastics in the ISS so I opted to exchange it for a shiny new VP2.
At the same time I got a Meteobridge NanoSD, so I could ditch my old computer-device and have an all-in-one-solution. Works very nice!
But now I noticed a few things:
-1- The Meteobridge is generating some heat. Since the heat cannot go anywhere it heats up the console and gave strange indoor-readings. This had to be addressed. Just subtracting an offset was not a good-enough solution imho.
So I popped the hood of my nice VP2 and noticed the tiny little temp+hum sensor. It is located right above the expansionport. It used a small and thin file to cut away the little piece of circuitboard. Then soldered four wires onto the remaining traces to connect the sensor and the "motherboard", so to say. Then I could simply move the sensor to the other side of the casing. I put it on a small nylon-distance to get it off the screen and closer to the rear vent-holes.
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I also drilled some ventilation holes in the battery-lid so air can circulate around the Meteobridge more easily.
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Now, when comparing with a good and proper dual-sensor thermometer, the difference is very acceptable: 22,3C on the console and 22,26C and 22,01C on the external thermometer. (The external device show 66%RH after I turn some knobs, so well within the 67% the VP2 shows.)
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-2- Here in Sweden it is dark half of the year. In order to see the display I want the backlight on. The VP2, however, have a backlight that can be seen from the moon(!) It is very strong. It looks nice, but it is lighting up the whole room. So, what to do? I opted to have the backlight always-on when the external power is connected (it always is...). But it should be dimmed.
I put a little 500ohm potentiometer where the connector for the cabled version is suppose to go. I just glued it in place and pop off the plastic in the casing. In series with the pot I put a 100ohm fixed resistor. One side of this contraption goes to +5V from the external power connector. The other side goes to + for the backlight, which is pin 4 from the bottom on the screen connector. You can see the pot also in the photo above with the drilled battery lid.
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Now the backlight is always on and can be adjusted from underneath. If there is a power outtake the backlight goes off. The function by turning it on and off works as before with the difference it just not goes completely off but toggles between dimmed and full.
Now I can sleep at night ... and when I am not I can see the weather. \:D/
Heres a crappy comparison, using manual mode on the camera.
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Well, those are my mods on this by all means very good weather station.
Take care.
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=D> Genius! [tup]
Welcome to the forum. What an entrance.
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Welcome to the forums. some nice mods! congrats!
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Great idea and good photo documentation.
Hopefully Davis is paying attention...
Greg H.
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Nice job...Something I've done for some time is use a piece of tinted window film to cover over the bright screen in bedroom. You can still see in dark but doesn't light the room up.