I might have mentioned that my AAG WS603B Weather Station turned out to be the most oddball replacement for my original 1990’s Dallas 1-wire Weather instrument. It worked reliably for 10 years. I had version 1.0, which was rather difficult to program for as it used the DS2401 serial number for each wind direction. This required a lot of extra 1-wire coding.
I’ll spare you some of the gory details regarding the quality of the latest AAG unit though I should mention that it was incompatible with all 1-wire wiring standards to date.
The real problem with the new unit (other than reliability) was that the new case is clear (no so bad) full of colored LED’s (can you say SILLY?) and not water resistant. Even though the case seemed closed and the PC board was “sealed”, it still managed to die after 6 months of usage. It took 6 months of trying to get the Windows software from them for the station… by then… the device was dead. I’ll not be buying anything else from AAG.
Anyway, one of the design ideas that AAG implemented was actually quite sensible. They used HALL sensors for Wind Direction instead of the fragile reed switches as used with other station designs. The Dallas Version 2 weather station (formerly sold by AAG) used a DS2450 and reed switches to track 16 positions of wind direction with just 1 magnet rotating. Only 8 sensors were needed as the intermediate positions were resolved when the magnet straddled two sensors at once.
Dallas Weatherstation version 2 Schematic:
I attempted to recreate this solution with Hall Effect Sensors. My first test circuit is below. Seems to work well.
So now my plan is to rebuild a replacement for the failed board in the WS603 housing.
Well, I don’t have a final working veiorsn just yet, only a basic perfboard veiorsn and a PCB design started. When I have something working from a PCB perspective, I will post it.