WMR200-reception can not be improved - What station should I replace it with?

[Per Edström]

I think I need to give up now. I have tried everything but the WMR200 does not want to listen to the outside world.

My latest change was to unsolder and remove the built-in antenna and replace it with a BNC.connector. But it seems that the reception is almost as good with nothing connected and only slightly better with the GP-antenna. What is the root-cause of the WMR200-reception? Poor shielding? Bad PCB-design? EMC-sensitive components?

So, what weatherstation should I get now? Davis? Their (display) design is quite poor I think but reception seems Ok. Does it work well with Weewx?

[Lloyd Adams]

Hi

Do you still get bad reception with the usb cable removed? What sort of range are you expecting and does the console have line of sight to the sensors?

I've just built my own receiver for os sensors which I've interfaced to weewx. Should be in a position to post more details shortly.

Lloyd

[Neville Davis]

I have a wmr200 it am getting good reception at about 30 metres through light frame building and walls(not brick). The final position has it at about 20 mtrs glass and walls between with usb connection to pi directly below it with other wireless phones within 2 mtrs, a very electrically noisy position but the best I can do. I sometimes have loss of data but mostly acceptable.

[Thomas Keffer]

If you decide to switch, the Davis has excellent reception. I have one remote battery operated temperature station about 100m and 3 light construction walls from my Envoy receiver. No problems.

The Vantage driver was the first, and probably most mature, of the weewx drivers.

They're expensive, but I think you'll be happy with it.

-tk

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Weewx user's group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to weewx-user+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[george hofmann]

My Davis Vantage Vue is about 400 feet from my Weather Envoy not in a line-of-sight configuration. There is a slight hill in between. The Envoy reports 98% reception typically but dropping somewhat during heavy rain but never losing data. My system has been running for about a year and endured temperatures from zero to 100 degrees F as well as wind gusts of 50 mph not to mention snow and hail.

George

[Chris Manton]

Per,

If you change weather stations, who will debug the driver ?

;)

C

--

[Per Edström]

You're right! I will fight to the bitter end!

Round 1 to me at least: I opened WMR200 and found that they put VCC/GND from power supply next to the USB in the same band-cable. This will probably induce USB-interference in the power for the circuits hence blocking out radio reception. I separated the VCC (brown) and GND (green) and this improved reception quite a lot! Note that on my other WMR200 the VCC is green and minus is brown.

Next step is to run the USB-cables /red/orange/yellow) through a ferrite-core but I need new longer cables for this, maybe twisted ones too, now they are too short/no space there for the ferrite when closing the box..

[David Hathaway]

Thanks for the update and the photo.  I hope this improves things for you (and potentially me).  Is there a reception improvement when the box is open and the guts lay bare?

You mention you have a second WMR200.  Does it also suffer poor reception?

[Neville Davis]

As a suggestion maybe screened twisted with one end of the screen tied to oV or frame if possible.....

I am keeping track of this for myself possibly :)

Neville

[Peter Humphrey]

Apologies for dragging this up from the dead...

I, too, have a wmr200 that has been running fine (with only very occasional reception loss e.g. on low battery or significant local RF transmission) standalone for several years.

I recently installed WeeWx/Apache2 running headless on an early Raspberry Pi running the standard (Debian) wheezy image. Software runs fine, no log issues, generates reports nicely.

I lost reception from the outdoor sensors as soon as I connected the USB cable to the WMR- even if WeeWx isn't running on the RaPi.  it is like magic- connect- lose sensors-disconnect and the data returns to the display. 

I guessed there was an RFI/EMI problem, so added ferrite slugs to all the RaPi cables- now I just lose the wind sensor (which i think is the poorest transmitter as it suffers very occasional data loss normally).

My question is, did you succeed in making it reliable, and has anyone experimented with grounding? I'm going to split the cables as above but both the RaPi and the WMR have cheap floating-output switch mode PSUs which makes me think providing a ground might help?

Thanks,

Peter 

p.s. *please* don't tell me to get a Vantage; that was my undisputed choice but I ended up with the WMR because 'someone' spotted a Christmas present opportunity whilst I was working myself up to spend what the  Davis  cost ;-)

[Glenn McKechnie]

On 16 March 2017 at 21:25, Peter Humphrey <series...@gmail.com> wrote:

Apologies for dragging this up from the dead...

I, too, have a wmr200 that has been running fine (with only very occasional reception loss e.g. on low battery or significant local RF transmission) standalone for several years.

I recently installed WeeWx/Apache2 running headless on an early Raspberry Pi running the standard (Debian) wheezy image. Software runs fine, no log issues, generates reports nicely.

I lost reception from the outdoor sensors as soon as I connected the USB cable to the WMR- even if WeeWx isn't running on the RaPi.  it is like magic- connect- lose sensors-disconnect and the data returns to the display. 

Lost or lose?

I'm working on the assumption that it's lose ie: it hasn't worked sinced you've started using the pi?

With the some of the early models you could backpower the pi from the USB. I wonder if that's happening with yours and the 5V to the wmr200 is being affected with the drain?

' cat /proc/cpuinfo ' will show the hardware and revision number

Hardware        : BCM2709
Revision        : a22082
Serial          : 000000004f84e41b

from there you could find out whether it's an issue that might be affecting you?

http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware#Power

 

I guessed there was an RFI/EMI problem, so added ferrite slugs to all the RaPi cables- now I just lose the wind sensor (which i think is the poorest transmitter as it suffers very occasional data loss normally).

Ah, some improvement but still misbehaving.
I do wonder if it could be related to the design of the Pi's USB though, I understand that they are quirky.  If I put a long cable between the pi and the wifi it starts to act up, which is more about inadequate power in my case.
Anyway, good luck. Hopefully it helps rather than distracts.

Cheers
 Glenn

rorpi - read only raspberry pi + weewx: now with scripts

[Peter Humphrey]

Thanks for the pointers, I'll check hardware version and try a USB cable with the +5 line cut.

It is a temporary loss of signal when USB is connected...

Peter

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "weewx-user" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/weewx-user/CxMAsF2bvrk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to weewx-user+...@googlegroups.com.

[Peter Humphrey]

An update; 

My RaPi was not loading the WMR200 USB power, it is not one of the earliest ones

The separation of the ribbon cable inside the base unit  helped enormously- I immediately got  data most of the time from the Wind sensor.

It may be noted elsewhere, but the internal arrangement of the ground plane in the WMR200 means it will receive much better with the aerial 'flat' in line with the display and the indoor unit wall mounted. This helped me further.

My next step is to ground the system and see if I arrive at 100% data availability...

FWIW my sensors are appx. 40m from the receiver, through a double skin concrete block wall. 

 

Thanks for the assistance,

Peter 

On Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 11:47:50 AM UTC, Peter Humphrey wrote:

Thanks for the pointers, I'll check hardware version and try a USB cable with the +5 line cut.

It is a temporary loss of signal when USB is connected...

Peter

On 16 Mar 2017 11:38 am, Glenn McKechnie <******************@gmail.com> wrote:

On 16 March 2017 at 21:25, Peter Humphrey <*********@gmail.com> wrote:

Apologies for dragging this up from the dead...

I, too, have a wmr200 that has been running fine (with only very occasional reception loss e.g. on low battery or significant local RF transmission) standalone for several years.

I recently installed WeeWx/Apache2 running headless on an early Raspberry Pi running the standard (Debian) wheezy image. Software runs fine, no log issues, generates reports nicely.

I lost reception from the outdoor sensors as soon as I connected the USB cable to the WMR- even if WeeWx isn't running on the RaPi.  it is like magic- connect- lose sensors-disconnect and the data returns to the display. 

Lost or lose?

I'm working on the assumption that it's lose ie: it hasn't worked sinced you've started using the pi?

With the some of the early models you could backpower the pi from the USB. I wonder if that's happening with yours and the 5V to the wmr200 is being affected with the drain?

' cat /proc/cpuinfo ' will show the hardware and revision number

Hardware        : BCM2709
Revision        : a22082
Serial          : 000000004f84e41b

from there you could find out whether it's an issue that might be affecting you?

http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware#Power

 

I guessed there was an RFI/EMI problem, so added ferrite slugs to all the RaPi cables- now I just lose the wind sensor (which i think is the poorest transmitter as it suffers very occasional data loss normally).

Ah, some improvement but still misbehaving.
I do wonder if it could be related to the design of the Pi's USB though, I understand that they are quirky.  If I put a long cable between the pi and the wifi it starts to act up, which is more about inadequate power in my case.
Anyway, good luck. Hopefully it helps rather than distracts.

Cheers
 Glenn

rorpi - read only raspberry pi + weewx: now with scripts

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "weewx-user" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/weewx-user/CxMAsF2bvrk/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to weewx-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Per Edström]

I also added this "mechanical" antenna amplifier:

http://www.the-lighthouse.se/eng/teknik/antenn-amp/antenn-amp.html

It is in swedish but just take some solid copper wire and remove the isolation. It improved my reception a bit more but looks ugly. Now, my motto is "Form follows function" so it is Ok..

As my "PC" (Ebox 3350) is sending interference (at least that is what I suspect) through the USB-wire, I added a 10m USB repeater. It also improved reception somewhat.
(My theory is that the PC-CPU is running at 933MHz so there might be an "undertone" of around 433MHz propagating down the USB-line into WMR200 thus blocking out the 433MHz-signal from the sensors. When using RPi I have a lot less issues with reception but maybe newer RPi will cause interference?)

[Per Edström]

If you get some really small ferrie core blocks then these might reduce interference over USB-cable. Not much space to fit them though.

Also, if possible, clock-down the RPi CPU. It might help (unless it is the USB-circuit that causes it)

[Peter Humphrey]

I have now managed (so far) 100% reception since I grounded the RaPi  and added a miniature pulse transformer core round the cables inside the WMR200 as RF block.

This is as well as ferrites on the external cables and wall mounting the receiver. 

Cheers,

Peter

On 17 Mar 2017 9:09 pm, Per Edström <peredst...@gmail.com> wrote:

If you get some really small ferrie core blocks then these might reduce interference over USB-cable. Not much space to fit them though.

Also, if possible, clock-down the RPi CPU. It might help (unless it is the USB-circuit that causes it)

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "weewx-user" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/weewx-user/CxMAsF2bvrk/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to weewx-user+...@googlegroups.com.

[Markus Roth]

I have use a Aurel RX-4MM3++/F.
The reception is better with the Aurel.

https://rothlive.de/de/content/oregon-scientific-wmr-200-empfang-verbessern-erh%C3%B6hen
German Only Sorry.
But you can see it on the Images.

[Peter Humphrey]

Vielen Dank fur die Informationen... Ich verstehe immer noch ein bisschen Deutsch...

 

Peter

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "weewx-user" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/weewx-user/CxMAsF2bvrk/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to weewx-user+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

---

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2016.0.8007 / Virus Database: 4756/14142 - Release Date: 03/19/17

[Markus Roth]

Sehr gut.
Very nice.
Der Emfang ist mit dem Modul viel besser.

Später werde ich die Texte auf meiner Seite vieleicht mal übersetzen.
Aber im Moment versuche ich ehr mehr zu veröffentlichen.
Later i will translate my Webside.
But at the moment i will try to write more.

[Per Edström]

Google can translate web pages.

How much better reception did you get?

Does the WMR200 provide +3VDC to the receiver? Or 5VDC?

It is odd that the WMR200 can't run on the USB-power alone..