Davis VP2 Anemometer Stopped Working

As we all know weather station equipment likes to keep us on our toes now-and-again. Anyway today my wind speed suddenly flat-lined, I thought it would just be the battery in the anemometer transmitter but after checking in the loft space it was transmitting packets. After a few tests with a multi-meter it was evident that the anemometer wasn’t toggling the reed switch. After reading this forum I noticed other people have temporarily fixed it by tapping the mast to release the reed switch, I tried it and yep it started working again. #-o

The problem for me is that my anemometer is at the top of my house on a 10ft mast above the roofline, that is a pain to get too. Therefore performing any maintenance inspection is out of the question, I either wait and see if the problem happens again or buy a new VP2 wind speed/direction. Any thoughts or suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks

If you know how to solder, you can purchase a spare reed switch, and the next time it happens, replace it. Cheap fix.

How easy is it to dismantle and re-assemble the anemometer? I don’t have the impression it was designed to be serviced :frowning:

I would invest in a new, improved design, anemometer which AFAIK is solid state/no reed. Should be able to find one for around $100 on the discount pages of suppliers like https://www.scaledinstruments.com

Yeah I would go for this considering that the replacement part is cheap, the problem is that the wind instrument are not very accessible so I don’t really want to do it ever again if I can help it.

I think this is the way to go considering the effort it is going to take to get access. I didn’t know Davis had updated the anemometer again with a solid state hall effect switch, this should improve the longer life over the reed switch in the previous versions.

Ow man. I finally installed a new Davis VP2 anemometer (about 12ft above the top of my house - great view from up there) reconnected it all up to my remote Davis transmitter and my console is displaying wind speeds of over 100mph and the wind direction is jumping about! :oops:

The new anemometer is the latest hardware revision using a solid state switch for the wind speed but perhaps the anemometer transmitter is dodgy too, or maybe it was this all along #-o. I am going to have to take my ISS down and connect the new anemometer directly to it and see what readings I get.

Has anyone else seen excessively high wind speeds on a VP2?

I would suspect a cable/connector problem.

or a ground loop problem?

Thanks guys.

Looks like it was the AC-DC PSU as I have powered the Davis Anemometer transmitter with just a CR123 battery and it works as expected. The wall power plug was not a Davis instruments one, I am guessing the voltage output regulation is noisy - I will investigate further when I get a little more time.