New blog post!
☆AcuRite Atlas® new unit review (unposted from last year)☆
I honestly thought I posted this ages ago. I was going to do a new one, but all things considered, maybe posting this and showing what my style was more like a year ago would be appropriate. I've ad(...) https://blog.bluestarcreations.net/blues-reviews/acurite-atlas-new-unit-review-unposted-from-last-year/
#BluesReviews #AcuRite #AcuRiteAtlas #Atlas #solar #SolarEnergy #SolarPanels #SolarPower #weather
Went to check Weather Underground to update the height and somehow my station has a gold medal? I don't know if it's a new gold medal because I updated the height or if it's just been so reliable despite the connection losses until recently (which would mean my being anal about resetting it was factored in), but, like...
I know this is 100% vanity, but it feels good, okay? I have busted my butt so hard with this weather station and not every weather station gets one.
The new #AcuRiteAtlas is performing... as it actually should! No false lightning strikes!
So here's what was wrong with the old one. I did some reading and learned that older units had a defect where the fan power wire was too long and caused interference with the lightning detector. #AcuRite support actually denied this to me in our communication, but seeing as I got my original unit from a big sale, I can only assume they were offloading old stock. Fine, whatever, but mine just happened to have so much interference from that and maybe other sources that it kept killing its own signal, disconnecting itself from the display and thus essentially the outside world. Everything I did managed to mitigate that but not fix it. Including probably making a very effective antenna from having to wrap the long wind unit USB cable quite so tightly because 30 feet of cable on 10 feet of pole doesn't work well. XD
New unit has no such defect. Everything works.
So... Those disconnection issues I had with #AcuRiteAtlas ended up getting me a new unit shipped. And swapping it out could not have been easier. I just pulled the power, popped the lightning detector out, popped it into the new unit, unscrewed the clamp, swapped the whole unit out by sliding the old one up and off and sliding the new one on, set it to the same channel, and plugged it in.
From there, all I had to do was remove the old station from the display and have it search for the new one. The whole process took minutes.
Okay, now I'm just getting annoyed. My #AcuRiteAtlas is STILL under-reporting rainfall after I tried to adjust the angle to bring it closer to centered and I think I have to open it up.
Why?
Because it's probably a pine needle or something fallen in there.
Upon further review of my #AcuRiteAtlas setup, having fixed the angle of the pipe, I realized that the vane itself was sticking out at an odd angle. For anyone else who gets the Wind Extension kit, the top is not actually flat because the Atlas surface isn't flat, which means that my having somehow gotten it flat made it tilted a bit. This has now been remedied.
I have no idea why I keep getting wet every time I touch it, though. Somehow it collected rain inside and isn't draining it. XD
This is probably the last I'll have to mess with it, though.
I'm having a laugh at my old school. I always thought my #AcuRiteAtlas was under-reporting various values because my old school has a weather station on it and I just assumed that they'd have some fancy super accurate model in combination with the local weather or whatever, but their current rainfall is over 7 times more than any other station in the area, which are all otherwise within reason of the forecast.
I have no idea whether everyone else is on #AcuRite or what, but all things considered, either everyone else is the same kind of wrong or the school got taken for a ride, placed it like crap, or let the students build something.
New blog post!
☆AcuRite Atlas Wind Extension☆
This is really an excuse to review my final setup, including all the various parts, because I have updates.
The Wind Extension itself is, to be blunt, a bit of molded plastic, a screw knob, and a cable. No surprise there. For what it is, it's an elegant solution, and what it is is a clamp tha... https://blog.bluestarcreations.net/blues-reviews/acurite-atlas-wind-extension/
New blog post!
☆Solar Power Pack for AcuRite Iris® and AcuRite Atlas® Weather Stations☆
So that name is a mouthful. This battery backup solar panel, which I will henceforth refer to simply as the Solar Power Pack, is available at a discount if you act quickly, but chances are my average reader does not have an Atlas or Iris weather station, so we're just going to sit back and laugh about this thing... https://blog.bluestarcreations.net/blues-reviews/solar-power-pack-for-acurite-iris-and-acurite-atlas-weather-stations/
#BluesReviews #AcuRite #AcuRiteAtlas #Atlas #hardware #RenewableEnergy #renewables #solar #SolarEnergy #SolarPanels #SolarPower #weather
Turns out that the disconnection problems I was having with my AcuRite Atlas was because the display's antenna was up. I found something in a forum thread about it picking up too much interference that way regardless of signal strength. Seeing as all of the disconnections happened in the morning, mostly in a window that would imply 3:30 a.m. with a couple outliers within 1:00-6:00 a.m., I can only imagine that some poor sot is somehow a worse night owl than I am and their electric toothbrush is rated as a class "fuck you" device for interference.
Anyway, putting the antenna down has fixed it. Remember, forums are searchable; Discord is not.
bluestarultor