Weather station dropping out, look for frogs.

 

If you have one of these weather stations and it drops out fairly often then it may not be batteries or only good for throwing in the bin, I've found they're a haven for frogs, they love them and cause us here in Ingham NQ plenty of headaches.

The fix is to get the frogs out and block their reentry. Take the unit off the post and undo the six screws around the base, a number 2 philips head will do that. Next undo the 4 number 1 philips screws holding the little housing I've marked in magenta here. That little housing is where the frogs love to hide, it also houses the electronics that transmit the signal to your indoor console. The cyan markers on this photo also show where you should probe with wire to see if froggies are hiding away, the long of it is look everywhere.

You'll have to pull the mainboard out of the housing and care should be taken as it's a tight fit, often the aerial will snap off (it looks like a spring) but it's an easy job to resolder it. Take care with the wires as they get fragile and can be a nightmare to try and fix, I've lost sleep over that (sorry Alan). This shot shows some of the frogs that were in Chris's unit when I cleaned it a week ago. Give the board a clean before carefully refitting.

One of those frogs about to be relocated, I love the little things so they're safe with me but nature and birds will take their toll and that's nature.

The cyan areas marked here are what I think are the entry points, there's three little oval ones near the mounting pole and a fair gap between the temp/RH sensor housing and the body, I block them with hot melt glue but find whatever you can and bung them up. The most important entry point is through the mounting pole, make sure you bung that up, a bit of rag will do but a great coincidence is that at 30 mm it's the same size as a soft drink bottle cap, easy peasy.

Showing me wire probing.

Edit: It appears google now trim the piccies to be that rather irksome vertical style that phones love, so I suggest you double click on the piccies to open them up to see what I've written about.