Category: Weather Station

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Cleaned WH41 PM 2.5 sensor

Ecowitt WH41 PM 2.5 detector dropped out in August

When reviewing my annual logs, I noticed the PM 2.5 detector, an Ecowitt WH41 model, dropped off in readings in August, and was pretty consistently low for the rest of the year. I visited the WxForum and found an article suggesting that the air chamber could be clogged and needed regular clearing. Sure enough, I took the device apart and found debris in side, and what might have been a thin leaf stem stuck in the fan. Cleaned and blown out, the device returned to service, readings immediately started to show more interesting behavior. Hope that fixes it!

Post-repair. NOTE: Not to the same scale as the graph above!
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First weather station purchase

After some study on the wxforum.net, and inspired by the now-retired weather station at contoocook.org, I made my first cautious weather station purchase on April 7th, 2021. I ordered an Ecowitt radio-to web gateway GW1000 and a WH31 Temperature and Humidity sensor.

My caution came from notes I had seen on the sometimes difficult task of getting the gateway to communicate with the home router, as it only communicated on the 2.4 MHz band. Worse, for that initial connection, you needed to use a phone app to connect to the gateway and supply it with credentials to connect to the network. What could go wrong? Well, lots, but it didn’t, at least for me. My concerns were unwarranted, as the connection went smoothly, and a new hobby was launched.