Troubleshooting wind direction issues

[Pete Deffner]

I'm kind of a noob with this stuff but am motivated to learn. I have everything working great but when uploading to weather underground there is no wind direction shown. Where would be the best place to start in order to see that my wiring/hardware is all correct? When I run the Adafruit MCP3008 example simpletest.py I get numbers everywhere and when I look at channel 0 I get either a 0 or 1 off/on. If I run the differential.py script it'll say "Channel 0 minus 1:" and then either have a 0 or occasionally a 1,2,3 etc. Is that expected? It's a pretty calm day wind-wise today so I don't know if that matters...I'm using the WS1 weather station.

Any other tests I can do to check things? 

[mwall]

On Tuesday, January 7, 2020 at 4:42:24 PM UTC-5, Pete Deffner wrote:

I'm kind of a noob with this stuff but am motivated to learn. I have everything working great but when uploading to weather underground there is no wind direction shown.

if the wind speed is 0, then there is no wind direction.

some people prefer to report the direction the wind vane is pointing, whether or not there is any wind.  see parameter 'ignore_zero_wind' in the weewx user guide for details. 

[Pete Deffner]

That's good to know. I still think I have a different problem though. Even if there is a 5 mph wind, I don't get any wind direction. Is there a way to see the data other than what shows up on Weather Underground? 

[mwall]

On Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 1:46:50 AM UTC-5, Pete Deffner wrote:

That's good to know. I still think I have a different problem though. Even if there is a 5 mph wind, I don't get any wind direction. Is there a way to see the data other than what shows up on Weather Underground? 

run weewx directly, not as a daemon.  you will see each packet of data that weewx obtains from the WS1.

for even more information, set debug=1 in your weewx configuration file, then run weewx directly in one window, and tail the log file (typically /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages) in another window.  you should see the serial communications between weewx and the WS1 station.

m

[mwall]

sorry, i should have been more explicit.  run weewx directly like this:

sudo weewxd /etc/weewx/weewx.conf

(the specific paths may vary - see the weewx user guide for details)

tail the log file like this:

sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog

(you may or may not need sudo - depends on your operating system configuration)

[Pete Deffner]

Thank you so much! So everything is working except "windDir: None" every packet. And in the log file there are no errors. And there is a 5-10 mph wind right now. Where can I go from here? I've checked that the wiring is correct and have tried 2 different MCP3008. Anything else I can try? Other more raw data I can check?

[mwall]

On Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 2:06:28 AM UTC-5, Pete Deffner wrote:

Thank you so much! So everything is working except "windDir: None" every packet. And in the log file there are no errors. And there is a 5-10 mph wind right now. Where can I go from here? I've checked that the wiring is correct and have tried 2 different MCP3008. Anything else I can try? Other more raw data I can check?

turn debug up to 11 :)

do this in your weewx config file:

debug=1

...

[WS1]

    ...

    DEBUG_READ = 3

then restart weewx, and tail the log file

[Pete Deffner]

Ok so I'm guessing something is still wrong with my wiring/hardware because in the log I am getting "Unknown Wind Vane value: 0.0". I'll have to go back and look at it again. Random question but for my RJ11 jack even though the lines are numbered 1-6, you still pair up to the outside, correct? So meaning I have the wind speed on 3  and 4 (the middle 2) and the direction on 2 and 5 (to either side of the wind speed wires). Thanks!