Good evening,
(Sorry for my English, it is about a translator)
Did you know?
In station WRM200, the solar collector it there with a battery. Unfortunately several users realized which was connected nor not reli
After translating from French I’m very interested in the findings. I have a spare Solar unit at home so I’ll disassemble the unit and do some testing. It maybe as simple as increasing the built in rechargeable battery capacity to accommodate the night time operation. Some calculations will need to be done on the current draw of the unit and charging capacity of the solar cell.
I’m thinking that the Alkaline batteries are a backup supply to the inbuilt battery to hold up the unit at night in case you had a lot of cloud cover.
Hi all,
After reading this post Batterie not connected to the solar collector(WRM200) so I decided to pull apart a WMR200 Solar unit to take a look. Inside was a disconnected 3.6V Ni-MH 600MA battery , go figure?
I did some bench testing and found it provides 3.5V (under load) to the 2 power supply leads when connected. I tested with a 4.8V torch globe. I also tested the solar cell to see if it produced a voltage to the battery pins on the mother board and it does. Notice the text on the board? it states which lead to use for “temp” & “Wind”, don’t remember that in the manual.
Now I’m still to test the unit in the full Aussie sun to see if the circuit board regulates the voltage as it might go through the roof but i doubt it.
My guess is that Oregon had some issues with the charging cycle, or issues with the amount of charge the solar cell could provide in areas of poor or non-continuous sunlight so they pulled the battery. Or my other thought is that its a marketing stunt and they will offer a “NEW” solar unit that holds the temp/wind senor up at night.
I’ll do some testing on the weekend as the 2 Alkaline batteries may back feed into the unit but my guess is that they are used as a back-up supply to the Solar/Ni-MH combo unit during long periods of cloud.
Or maybe it’s just something that never made it into the (very basic) manual? :lol:
The rechargeable in the WMR928 solar units is also supplied disconnected - but it’s more obvious there that it exists and that it needs connecting because:
a) It’s mentioned in the manual.
b) The alkaline batteries are in the same compartment.
Threads merged to avoid confusion.
According to posts on the forum linked in the original post some users were reporting that the batteries were already connected as they received the station. I’m with skyewright, it seems reasonable to me to ship electronics with the batteries disconnected (may be a requirement for some forms of freight) so I think it’s just a lack of coordination at OS, they made a process change and didn’t update the documentation.
Very Interesting…a bit of climbing required perhaps… 
I’d just like to be sure it’s OK to run the rechargeable and the dry cells together without zapping the anemometer.
Is there any difference between the ‘wind’ and ‘temp’ leads. I just power(or not :)) the anemometer from the solar as the thermo is in another location.
Hi there.
I’ve also discovered a set of batteries in my solar panel, and have connected the plug to the battery pack. As already written no mention in the manual whatsoever.
I’m wondering if you can use a regulator from a garden solar-lantern? They have almost always a regulator to control charging of the often very low power batteries included.
Just my two cents worth.
Flemming
I did some more testing it looks like the capacitor on the circuit board hold the solar cell voltage down as the voltage risers to about 10V then drops to 4V and holds. This test was done using a bench light, but i’ll test in the sun on the weekend, its dark by the time i get home, no more daylight savings 
I’m going to check to see if there is any charging voltage running through the solar leads into the sensor, if there is you might be able to install rechargeable AA batteries into the unit.
So, what do you propose, to connect the battery to the circuit?(if its not connected, didn’t check it)
And whats the benefit of doing that?(excuse my ignorance about electronics)
Done some more testing, removed the AA batteries from the anemometer and plugged in the Solar unit battery and the sensor continued to work ok but the console shows a low battery icon (obviously as i removed them).
I will continue to run the anemometer with the inbuilt solar batteries to see if it holds up during the night.
My next test will be to place flat rechargeable AA batteries into the unit in the morning and see if they charge before sunset. After that test it should tell us whether the solar unit can run the anemometer and recharge the rechargeable AA batteries on a sunny day.
The only issue will be is how long the inbuilt Solar battery will last in extended cloud cover, I don’t really want to do the maths on current draw charge rate etc.
Thanks for doing these tests - very helpful :salute:
Egalement,
Merci
Serge
A quick note on my test to date,
I have run the anemometer for a full week just on the inbuilt solar battery with no AA batteries with success even with a lot of cloud cover. I have now reinstated the AA batteries.
I did some internal voltage measurements on the temp/humidity sensor with the AA batteries removed. There is 730mA on the AA battery tabs (batt removed) when the solar unit is connected so in theory there is voltage available for charge but i did not do a current test.
I have replaced the AA Alkaline batteries with rechargeable ones and measured the battery voltage at 2.52V so I will monitor them to see if the voltage rises or falls.
I took down mine last evening and sure enough the rechargeable battery was not connected.
As luck would have it I was also using the ‘wrong’ lead.
So I swapped leads,connected the rechargeable and put new dry AA’s in.
The odd thing I noticed was that I had to do a few resets/scans before the console picked it up,
@ watanobbi - any further observations to report ?
Thanks CH
Yep, you can’t charge AA batteries from the solar unit. I installed some low charge rechargeable and they went flat (lucky i plugged in my solar battery).