Popp Z-Weather with alternate power supply?

[kroeatschge 29]

hi guys,

I need some advice on how to improve my

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weather station.

 

What's my current setup:

- i have the Z-weather Station connected and set up to my HC2

- the Z-Weather is powered over a solar panel

- the solar panel is powering a capacitor

- the internal energy management wakes up and sends values according to powerlevel between every 5 mins and every 5 hours. (according to marketing slides)

 

What is not so good and should be changed:
- the stored energy is often not enough for regular updated meter readings, even on bright sunshine

- i get 1 or 2 readings a day, maximum! This is totally useless and not acceptable

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What did I try so far:

- I painted the whole thing white (to try to get better temperature readings, as the device sits in the bright sunlight it shows up to 10° higher temps)

  of course I didn't paint the solar panel

- I relocated the solar Panel from the wheater station and put it on a piece of wood underneath the weather station. Like this it's pointing south

  instead of north, which should help to get more power, but doesn't seem to work

- to relocate the panel I had to put longer wires on an solder them in between the existing ones. (i hope this doesn't affect energy that is available for the capacitor)

 

What's my current idea:

- I want to replace the solar panel with a battery

- the battery should power the capacitor (so I don't have to open the device and I can use the existing wires)

- like this the capacitor should be at almost full charge all the time, and report the values every 5 mins. which is accurate enough for me

- the battery should be loaded by a solar panel itself.

 

The solar battery kit looks like this:

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My setup would be a permant connection from the Battery to the Z-Weather Station Capacitor AND to the Solar Pannel.

Battery stored in a dry spot in the childrens tree house.

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My questions:

- how do I know if the capacitor can handle the power the battery is providing?

- is there the risk of damaging the Capacitor?

- Could i just replace the solar panel with a better/bigger one to supply more power during the day?

- Can I simultaniously charge the battery with the panel and have the battery load the capacitor? or can such batteries only be charged OR discharged at the same time?

- shoudl i forget all this and get a propper weather station like Netatmo or even better a Davis Vantae Vue?

 

I'm glad for any advice given.

 

thanks, kro

 

 

 

[jakub.jezek 370]

It does not have any parameters for changing treshold, so i think, there is maybe powering problem.

 

Also that "Solar" panel is just taped, so i think you can see and measue what Voltage it gives for keeping it alive. And it is just IP 34, so you can see electonic behind solar panel .

 

Off Topic to that device:

I have only bad experience with that Weather station. Battery deployed under 1 min (record of mine) by using it fully charged. I mimiced wind.

When customers and potential customers are asking for Z-Wave weather station, then i recommend Netatmo and i know it is not Z-Wave.

[kroeatschge 29]

Exactly. The soldering points are open 

and visible from top. Already wondered how they look after some rain. 

 

As I detached it anyways I can access those to measure the voltage. 

 

But i have to wait for a sunny day to get correct values, right?

how about amp? The replacement battery is providing 500 mw.

Any danger if I just hook a battery like a 9v block up and see what happens?

A bigger panel wouldn't help? Due to capacitor limit?

 

Edited June 29, 2017 by kroeatschge

[petergebruers 1,268]

Can you post a photo of the capacitor? 500 mw seems like an odd value, might it be 500 mF? In that case it's a super capacitor and they are 2.7 V max, or 2 in series to give 5.5 V. You can count the number of parts (cells)  in the solar panels and multiply x 0.6 V to get the open circuit voltage. I need a schematic to be sure how the charge is controlled. In cheapish garden lights, charge is not controlled but the solar cells are connected to a NiCD or NiMH that limits the voltage too... Difficult to explain in 2 sentences, sorry. Keep asking questions if I'm not clear

 

[kroeatschge 29]

hi @petergebruers,

sorry for confusion. the 500mw are not from the z-weather. it's what the usb battery would delivers as output. I even got that wrong

the battery has Output: 5V/1A USB.

 

I did not open the Z-Weather so i'm not sure about the capacitor used in it.

However the solar panel is small. To get an impression you can check this image:

 

 

To be honest, the more i read about it, the more i get the impression that it was a totaly wrong decission to buy this device. For a simular price I would

have got a basic Netatmo station

 

I liked the fact that it doesn't need additional energy, and that it is a Z-Wave device, so no need to mess with other APIs and stuff.

 

 

 

[RH_Dreambox 189]

I also had trouble that my Popp not fully charged the capacitor during daytime.
This meant that it stopped showing measurement values at night. It only worked in daylight.

 

Then I mounted a larger solar panel that gave 6V and it worked a bit better.
Then I mounted a 1.5 V rechargeable battery. Unfortunately, I was a little sloppy with the soldering iron so the electronics gave up
Now I have an Oregon wind gauge that sends measurement values (even wind direction) to my HC2 via Domoticz.

[tinman 1,070]

two problems:

- there is a charger, so not a good idea to replace supercap with ext power supply

- to replace solar panel, with different one is bad idea as well (e.g. due to fact that the solar cell is being used to calculate day/night)

 

Sure, you can remove charger and then connect 5V power supply instead of the supercap, but then you will get anyway some trouble due to fact that there is "intelligent" algorithm to set dynamically wakeup time. The supercap load will be measured (probably over charger control output), and based on that wakeup will get changed (to have always enough energy to send alarm frame in case of unexpected wind gust). 

 

I stopped to play with z-weather and replaced it by much more professional weather station from Qubino (the z-wave is from Qubino, the same Weather Station hardware is being used by lot of manufacturers, so already proven technology).

[kroeatschge 29]

thx guys for your inputs.

 

I came to the decission that I'll throw this device away.

Even this one would be more accurate:

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@RH_Dreambox do you use the Oregon Scientific WMR86?  Why via domoticz? is there no API or diret integration possible?

 

@tinman the Qubino Weather station requires an usb stick to be plugged in somewhere? Where did you put it? Could it be connected to the HC2?

next to the recovery stick?

 

I like the look of the netatmo, what I don't like is the fact I need to pull the data from the cloud, so if that cloud is not available, nothing will be reported.

 

 

[tinman 1,070]

2 minutes ago, kroeatschge said:

@tinman the Qubino Weather station requires an usb stick to be plugged in somewhere? Where did you put it? Could it be connected to the HC2?

next to the recovery stick?

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as it does need only power supply over USB, you can plugin everywhere. The HC2 itself have no boot / update / backup problems with that stick inserted (i have on my desk since a year or so, no issues). The Qubino stick is actually bit too long to be plugged into HC2 , but of course you can use usb cable extender.

 

[kroeatschge 29]

@tinman one last question: HC2 supports it by default? or did you have to code a lot to get it working?

[tinman 1,070]

12 hours ago, kroeatschge said:

@tinman one last question: HC2 supports it by default? or did you have to code a lot to get it working?

 

here we go

 

 

[kroeatschge 29]

thank you tinman!

this is awesome, ordered a Qubino right away