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Weather Station: Fine Offset (various)
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10-05-2017, 10:42
(This post was last modified: 10-05-2017, 10:51 by
AllyCat.)
Hi,
The Fine Offset Solar Sensor (not to be confused with the "chargiing-only" Pods) contains its own microcontroller to measure and create its own fully-formatted "Data Packets", which it sends to the transmitter via one pin in the RJ12 connector. These stations send up to three different data packets, one for External Temp/Humidity/Wind/Rain, another for Radio Contriolled Time Signals (when available) and the third for Solar data, but AFAIK the Weatherduino sadly cannot decode any of them. I do have details of the protocol/format if anybody is interested. Note that the Pod does not process the Rain data at all, the wire simply "loops through" from the RJ11 socket to (the same pin in) the RJ12 cable/plug, where the transmitter processes the pulses in exactly the same way as in the other stations.
Certainly the data is transmitted in the form of "Lux" data (theoretically in steps of 0.1 Lux up to 400k, or 22 bits!) which "should" be limited to the "Visible" light level (i.e. human eye response). But the sensor appears to be a normal silicon photo-diode, so it probablly responds to both Visible and IR, to give a "correct" Watts/m2 value. Note that the later Consoles are switchable between Lux and "Watts/m2" (although they made a mistake in the conversion factor!), but clearly they cannot be switching the wavelength response of the sensor.
There is a separate UV sensor, but the value is only reported in unit steps (0 - perhaps 15) and I suspect it uses a UVA sensor rather than the "correct" UVB sensor (with UVA rejection). It also has a third "sensor" (the sloping PV panel), but that is Amorphous Silicon so of little use as a Watts/m2 sensor. The power ouput is indeed regulated to about 3 volts, since it appears to use a 3.3 volt regulator, further reduced by the forward voltage drop of a Schottky diode (~300 mV). That's not really enough to even charge the intended (horrible) "Rechargeable Alkaline" cells and certainly not enough for the better NiZn type. So 2 x NiMH type cells are probably the "best" option (they actually "float" at 1.5 volts when fully charged) or possibly 1 x NiMH + 1 x NiZn (but mixing cells is not really good practice).
So, (at the moment) I don't think that the FO Solar Pod is "useful" for a Weatherduino station.
Cheers, Alan.
Posts: 329
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Weather Station: Alma, MI USA
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Thank you for the reply, Alan.