WS-2300,2310 Owners

Hello all. I have a WS-2310. I’m having a major problem with my outdoor humidity readings. I live in the US in Maine and for the past few months we’ve been having long stretches of very cold air. 2 nights ago it was -17F and last night -10F and the high today was 10F. Of course this is very dry air, humidity is between 30-45%. My station will read a normal humidity for a while then nose dive to 19% which indicates offline. This has happened constantly in temps below 20F. Sometimes it recovers most times it doesn’t until it begins to warm up. Late last year I sent the base and thermo-hygro back to Lacrosse because of this problem and they replaced the thermo-hygro unit but it is doing exactly the same thing as before. Do any of you other owners of WS-2300+ have a similar problem? Or is it just the strange atmosphere up here in Maine. I also live about a quarter mile from the ocean. This happens whether my base station is hard wired or not. Thanks for any comments

We have experienced a very warm winter here but only once can I recall a very low humidity reading…although I have had some doubts to the accuracy of the high end…it was extremely foggy and wet here and the highest reading I have ever recorded was 88%, some other stations within a few miles of me were recording in the high 90’s. I noticed one day a very dry mass of air moved in and I recorded a 19% humidty for about 20 minutes or so and it gradually moved up to around normal which for this time of year here is around 50 to 60%. Those are very cold temps do you have any other instruments or nearby stations to gauge your stations accuracy concerning humidity? I have checked several times and it appears at least my low readings are consistent with nearby stations. I am considering adding an extra humidity sensor using the “one wire” system…as a backup.
Jon

Jon, thanks for getting back on this. I’ve noticed that my readings are fine in normal ranges although in higher humidities it does seem to read a few % lower than what surrounding stations are showing. According to the manual 95% is tops on the high end and 20% on the lower. I’m beginning to believe that the accuracy in the low and high ranges ends up to be around +/- 10% or so. Today is the lowest I’ve seen reported from the Portland Jetport weather station in a while at 24%. Surrounding stations vary from 13-28%. So my station at 19% is as good as any. I must say though that all the other readings on my station a pretty much right on. I’m considering upgrading but it seems there is always some type of problem even with the very expensive 1K+. Would appreciate some recommendations.
Peter

Peter,
There are a lot of us out here with 2310’s and would like to have more sensors…my problem is needing to use a USB port for the one wire (I’m out of serial ports) I will keep you up to date when I get everything sorted out.
:slight_smile: Jon

Hi again all and a hello to you, Jon. Yesterday I received a call from LaCrosse in reference to an e-mail I sent explaining the humidity problems I’m having. After again explaining the problem it was decided that both my base unit and thermo-hygro should be replaced. I did explain that this is the second time addressing the same problem and was assured that it was highly unlikely that my last replacement was the same thermo-hygro. Well when the package came back last time it looked as though I had received a new thermo-hygro but my old base station back. Makes me wonder if the problem was actually in the base station. Anyway the gentleman I spoke with was very nice and concerned, high mark for customer support. I was instructed to again send both units back and have them replaced. I added a letter clearly explaining the problem and what happened last time and asked that both units be replaced. I promptly mailed them out. I was told I should receive the “new” units in 3 weeks from the day sent. Will let you know when I’m back up. Will continue to visit my favorite forum.

cya later
Peter

Dewrag: Hi I also have the ws2310 weather station. I thought I had the same problem except it was the indoor humidity dropping to 19%. I went out and purchased a whole house humidifier and now it responds better indoors. I have seen the outdoor humidity also drop down to 19% on a couple of occasions. The book says that when the humidity drops below 20% it cannot register and defaults to 19%. It usually recovers. What I did is I just purchased another weather station and replaced both the main unit and the thermo-hygro unit and it made no difference. Unless I have two bad units or it is an inherent problem with the ws2310. I will return the other weather station for credit now that I have tried both. Let me know what you find out from Lacross… Thanks Dave…

Peter, hope all goes well with LaCrosse! I talked to them when I first set my station up and they did seem like very accomodating folks. I have been trying to find out everything I can about adding more sensors with the “one wire” network. I ordered a new PCI serial card and once I’m sure that’s working I’ll start adding sensors. Another fellow sounds like he is having a bit of trouble with the usb to serial adaptor…so I’m hoping to be able to avoid that (plus the card is a lot cheaper than the adapter) Keep me up to date.
:slight_smile: Jon

Hi all. I received yesterday from LaCrosse new base and thermo-hygro units. I have been set up for 24 hours and have found that my outdoor humidity readings are finally staying within acceptable ranges. But, alas, my indoor humidity is again offline, But I can live with that considering it is so damn dry in here, my stand alone humidistat reads 26%. Rather dry than deal with mold. It was exactly 3 wks to the day I got my units back which is what I was told by customer service. Cheers to LaCrosse at least here in the states. If this ends up being my only complaint with the ws-2310 I feel that the station is a very good value, especially for a novice. Thanks all for your comments on this issue.
Peter

I just purchased the WS2300, Euro version and it will be with me on Monday - rather looking forward to it ! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

I have a WS2310 online for a couple months now…the wind sensor has been an absolute nightmare. When the unit is plugged in to any computer, the wind reading goes to 57 mph and stays there. The Weather Display somehow manages to display the correct reading.

The people at lacrosse told me to take the DB9 apart and check the cable pins to see if they were all connected. When I took the cover off the DB9, all the wires came loose because the connector was hot glued together when it was built!!

They don’t know what the pinouts are supposed to be so I can’t put it back together or make a new one. They are sending me another cable…so my website is offline until it gets here, which could take weeks or months.

But it doesn’t look like there was anything wrong with that cable before I pulled it apart. So I don’t think a new cable is going to make any difference.

Anyone else have a similar problem with a 2310?

And does anyone know what the pinouts are supposed to be on this cable?

hi
yes, others have reported this
in WD, i ignore those readings

you could try adding a RF balun to the serial cable to the PC
and try extending the cable to get the base unit as far away from the pc as you can and or use shielded cable.

its electrical interference from the pc that does it, and other weather stations are affected, : the wm918 was prone to it too.
you would think weather station manuafactures would read some of these BBS and learn mistakes others have made!

my Vantage Pro had a problem with electrical interference from my computer. I solved it by grounding the computer to the cold water pipe with some wiring. Just connect computer to pipe while unplugged, the plug everything back together.

Chris

yes, a well grounded PC helps too

I finally got my replacement anemometer after 3 weeks, but I don’t think it’s quite right still. My wm918 show a wind run of 85.4 miles right now, the ws2310 shows 35.3. Tomorrow I’m building a tower to mount BOTH anemometers on, so I can compare what the reading are when they are mounted in the same spot.

I finally got my replacement anemometer after 3 weeks, but I don’t think it’s quite right still. My wm918 show a wind run of 85.4 miles right now, the ws2310 shows 35.3. Tomorrow I’m building a tower to mount BOTH anemometers on, so I can compare what the reading are when they are mounted in the same spot.

I had the odd very high wind reading and random direction with my 2300 that was driving me crazy, but I did find a solution that seems to have worked great for the last month or so… I replaced the wind unit cable with a sheilded one :slight_smile:

Before, after a day I would always have a max console reading of 91.8 km/h, even if WD didnt log them, now I have the correct max reading after more than a month :slight_smile:

here is what i found about the unit…

The connection from the wind unit to the temp unit as standard is a 4 wire flat cable the connections are ground, permanent power, a powerup control line for the direction sense and other power hungry bits of the unit, and a return data line… every 3 secs or so the powerup line is enabled and this effectively causes the unit to send a single packet of data. Unfortunately the power control and data lines operate with quite high impedance circuitry, much higher than I would ever design with an unsheilded outside cable! (probably to conserve battery power when not base powered…) What I believe was happening was the power control line was getting enough induced (interfering) voltage to occasionally power up the unit out of sync with the temp module causing corruption of data. I would like to add some buffering at each end of the cable, but hate having the unit not working… replacing the cable seems to have done the trick for now and didnt take long :smiley:

Maybe this trick could help someone else with problems…? can find the pinouts for connection of the cable sheild etc if anyone is interested…