Need Help debugging LaCrosse WS-1510-IT

[heboland]

Hello list - my first post! This forum looked interesting so I joined.

My 1510 is out of warranty and the display shows dashes for the thermal-hygro-anemometer. The same thing happened a few months ago and LaCrosse received and returned it working. Now I'm being referred to GreatBigOutlet.

I think the hygro is working, but the display isn't receiving the signal correctly. The display does correctly receive the rain gauge which is a separate 915MHz remote sensor.

What I would like to accomplish is to isolate the problem to either the hygro unit or the display. This may be beyond the scope of this forum or discussed previously. If so let me know - I'm new here.

If your still with me here, perhaps a 915MHz Quagi antenna with a diode detector could provide an oscilloscope display that could determine the hygro heath.

GreatBigOutlet has a replacement hygro for about $50, but I'm hesitant to throw good money after bad. Especially if the hygro isn't the problem!

Another alternative might be a display built by someone else that might use the LaCrosse sensors.

So I hope to get some feedback from this post, if only to learn I've launched a square peg into a round hole! Heboland

[niko]

I think the hygro is working, but the display isn't receiving the signal correctly. The display does correctly receive the rain gauge which is a separate 915MHz remote sensor.

I would say that it's unlikely that the console/display is the problem if it is correctly receiving one of the sensors. Clearly the rx part must be working OK, so then there would have to be some problem in the data processing part that causes it to not process the hygro data, but process everything else.

I assume you have tried moving the tx close to the rx?

It's possible the tx part of the hygro is working, but the data is garbage, so whether it radiates or not would not be conclusive. Generally wireless weather stations transmit for a very short time, at very low power, and quite infrequently, so I doubt a simple diode detector would be much help. You might pick up a tick sound on a scanner (but remember the interval), or you could get a 915 MHz receiver module off ebay and look at the output on a scope. I've tested all three ideas in the past with a Davis station and only the last one worked.

Sorry not to have a better solution

[heboland]

Thanks for the response, niko!

I'll consider then that the hygro unit is the most likely problem. Yes I did take the display up on the roof where it's ten or so feet to either the rain gauge or the hygro. A few question follow. Please bring me up to speed if you are so inclined.

Is there a more generic thermo-hygro-anemometer I could buy that would be compatible with the WS-1510-IT? This weather station came as a gift two years ago. If I have to spend much money to resurrect what I had, I would be more inclined to invest in a weather station with a USB interface.

As a newbie to this wireless application, I wonder if there is any standard encoding protocol for the 915 weatherstations. My impression from the archives is that each manufacturer rolls his own protocol.

I'm also transitioning to Linux. My dual boot with XP is the last Microsoft OS I'm intending to buy. From what I saw in the archives there is some Linux support for a computer interface. Is any particular make of weatherstation more friendly to Linux?

For grins I'll look into a 915MHz receiver. I have a scope but a garbage transmission wouldn't be recognizable from good data. I cut the hygro unit (TX31U-IT) apart. Each of the three active elements are buried in separate mounds of black epoxy.  I can try testing the broken hygro with a powersupply instead of batteries. Heboland