A Simple Life of Luxury

The Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station is currently experiencing a few problems. Sometime last week the humidity sensor stopped working properly. This had happened before so I contacted the UK distributors of the equipment and soon had a new one ready to install.

Sunday was the day for the installation of the new humidity sensor. It is a fairly easy job, but best done on a dry, still day so I replaced it and had hoped that would fix the problem… It didn’t, in fact it made things worse. Once the new sensor was attached, we still had no humidity readings, but we also lost wind speed readings and the temperature readings were plainly wrong… 60ºC+? I think not, more like minus 2!

I tried all sorts of things, replaced the battery took the new sensor off, cleaning and checked all connection and wiring, restarted the console, reset the Sensor Suit, but all to no avail. Of course, all of these incorrect readings had by now caused havoc with my data as maximum temperatures for the day, month, year and all time records had been updated to 60ºC or more and many other readings such as dew points, heat index, maximum December temps, warmest daily average temps etc etc had all been overwritten with false readings.

It took me a while to reset all of these readings and find out what the correct readings were and when they actually occurred, but I think I got there in the end by going through the historical data files for the last 2 years… I may however have to repeat this task when I get the station back up and running and reconnect it to the computer and the website. I still hadn’t got the weather station going though.

Whilst the weather station was down and my Dad was here I thought we should make of it and swap the computer than powers the station software and uploads to the web over to a newer (and hopefully faster and quieter one I had waiting for just that purpose). It seemed to go OK and after quite a bit of fiddling we had it up and running with the weather station software running and all of the data as it should be…

Monday morning dawned and my Dad had had a thought in bed… maybe all wouldn;t be quite so cheerful with the new computer as we thought… he was right and no amount of tinkering or even trying to reinstall everything from scratch would get the new machine running properly… SO, that one has gone back with my Dad for some therapy! I also started getting to the bottom of why the weather station isn’t working.. The new humidity sensor that I was sent looks exactly the same on the outside, but if I take it apart it is actually an updated version and is now digital rather than analogue. It would appear that plugging it into the Sensor Suite may have caused some damage. I’m still waiting to contact the suppliers to find out if this can be fixed and how to go about getting it done…. The weather station may be out of service for a few days, and realistically may not be up and running again until after Xmas… Fingers crossed it isn’t too bad though and can be fixed easily…. Sometimes I hate technology.

The weekend just gone was the date of our annual family pre-christmas get together and rather than go ‘Xmas Tree Hunting’ near Bristol most of the Cole family met up at Coed-Y-Brenin for a walk in the woods. My parents arrived here on Friday evening and then on Saturday morning we all headed off to Coed y Brenin where we met Jay, Megan, Harry, Charlie and jack (Jennie couldn’t make it), Brad (Eloise couldn’t make it) and Trudi, Kia and Shaun. We also met up with a small Ynyslas contingent of Simon, Sarah and Josh and Dave and Sarah.

It was a cold crisp and clear day so once we were all together we headed to the visitor centre before deciding most people would go off for a walk in the woods and to see Santa whilst Dave, Sarah and I had a little mountain bike ride. The ride was only a short one but the weather conditions were perfect and the going easy so it was pleasant rather than challenging. The others enjyed their walk and saw Santa and his elves so the main mission was accomplished.

We then caused chaos in the cafe for lunch before playing the playground for a while and then heading home. Brad and Trudi went straight from Coed-y-Brenin whilst Jay and his lot came back with us for a couple of hours at our house before heading off…

All in all a successful day, but I’m not sure how enthused everyone was with the amount of driving involved… maybe if they planned to stay overnight it would be a little easier.

Sunday was another gorgeous, but cold day, so I first tried to mend the weather station…More on that elsewhere and then we set off for lunch at Heathers in Capel Dewi. Unfortunately they had forgotten about our booking and also failed to tell us that it was a Xmas special lunch today, but they soon found us a table and apologised and all was well. the dinner was nice once again. We then had a little look around the Garden Centre before heading into town to buy a battery for the weather station (which we hoped might fix it). After that we headed to the estuary for a quick look only to find someone had got their car stuck in the soft sand. I don’t usually have too much sympathy for such people but as the guy had his very cold looking partner with him and a small baby in the back of the car I towed him out.

Back at home we had a quite afternoon. My dad helped put the loft ladder up (at last) and then we continued to (not) mend the weather station and then succesfully managed to break a PC as well, although it has to be said we did fix it first for a while!

My parents stayed Sunday night as well and left around midday today for their journey back to Gloucestershire. It feels as though Xmas should be upon us now, and it will be soon but unfortunately there is a week of work to fit in first.

It was good to see everyone though and I guess we should start planning the Xmas get together for next year soon!