Reviewed the measurements on NCharts since Friday 25 June. 

  • TRH - ok
  • P - ok
  • Radiometer/Wetness - It had been raining everyday since Friday, 25 June. I’m surprised the wetness sensor remains flatlined. Shouldn’t there be spikes or a saturated level recorded? Was a disdrometer was installed? 
  • Soils
    • Gsoil - ok range -40 - 40 W/m^2 
    • Lamdasoil - ok range 0.25 - 0.325 W/m
    • Qsoil - are now positive but values are very low (< 1% vol)  for all the precipitation we’ve been getting. This is compared with Relampago and CHEESEHEAD where values are > 14 %vol
    • Tau 63 - ok range 6-10 s 
    • Tsoil - Note very high values (> 45degC on 25 June that relax to more representative values 25-28 degC max)
    • Vheat - ok 
  • Sonic - ok - w range +/- 0.5m/s, u &v range -10 - +5 m/s
  • co2/h2o
    • Crazy co2.27m values >> 1500 g/m3
    • h2o - ok-ish h2o.27m also show high-ish values > 40 g/m3


  • iload range on the high end - 1820 - 1950 mA
  • icharge range -190 to -80 mA (shouldn’t this be positive and in the thousands??)
  • Vbatt - ok
  • l3mote - without the spikes range is 50-62 mA
  • lmote - with the spikes range is 15-18 mA
  • Lamda - no values on Ncharts
  • Pirga - ok
  • Tirga - ok
  • Rfan - ok
  • Vcharge - ~27.93 V

1 Comment

  1. Steve Oncley

    Wetness.tt reported lots of rain events during the last few days.  I did change the config a bit ago to remove the height designator, but there still is a variable Wetness.2m.tt – perhaps you were looking at this?  A distrometer has not yet been installed, though we have an idea of how this could be done (using a USB dongle and funny cabling to create a 9th serial port and moving a TRH to this port).

    Even though the 27m co2/h2o is back to semi-reasonable mean values (when not affected by rain), the fluctuations still seem not great.  I just power cycled it, which may have helped a bit, though it still seems to me that noise levels are high.  I think service/replacement of this EC150 needs to be on the TODO list.

    High Tsoils: Earlier values of 60C were when the sensors were sitting on top of the grass, getting lots of direct sun.  Are better now that we reburied them on Thurs, 6/24, though yes, the top got rather hot before the rain on 6/25.  Soil temps in the 40s on a sunny day are possible, though it also is possible that some of this probe (quite close to the surface) is directly exposed to sun.  We should inspect it visually next time we're out. 

    As for Iload:  The power consumption of this station should be about (3xCSATS: 15W, 3xTRH: 3W, Ubiquiti: 6W, DSM: 3W = 27W), which exactly matches the 13.5V (Vbatt) at 2A (Iload) that we are seeing.

    As for Icharge: Unlike our previous power monitors, the Victron seems to report Icharge as what is actually being used to charge the battery, independent of the load.  From 5/30-6/1 it was showing the batteries getting 2A (what I had manually programmed the Victron to use as the maximum charging current) until the batteries were fully charged.  Thus, a value near zero appears to be normal.

    BTW, I think it would be better for the Victron currents to be reported in Amps.  I can change sensor_catalog to implement this.  P.S. NOW DONE, though not yet being used.