Hi Noel

Re the brightness/readability of the display - the supply being provided from the USB connector doesn't seem to improve the brightness of the display, so I guess it's internally regulated. Next time I look inside the box, I'll see if there is a resistor which can be changed to boost it, although I guess the main problem is the construction with 4 green LEDs at the edges of the screen which don't produce an even light. I also note that the contrast of the display seems to improve when viewed from about 45 degrees above, as though the LCD isn't being driven at the correct voltage.

Hi deneb

Thanks for the reply, I agree with your summation. I have however after consideration moved on. I have posted on the Welcome and Techie forums my experiences with the Watson so I won't repeat them here, but please have a look and comment.

Betel and I have been discussing where the DCF receiver is housed and how, if it is in the external transmitter the data is passed to the base unit, your thoughts would be very interesting.

Thanks for the help and I hope you will be pleased with yor Watson, I nearly was, but I was concerned about the dislay, DCF reception and the build quality, when I opened up the base unit a number of pieces of component off-cut wire fell out, one was 20mm long. Not what you want floating around the electronics.

Cheers Noel

This is my website (and how I found this forum). The software supplied by Waters and Stanton on my machine (Vista) lost elements from the window such as the wind direction and the actual window framing itself. I restarted it morning and evening and it never actually completely crashed on me but on my sons machine (XP) it hung the entire machine a number of times.

The new software appears to be more stable - the window remains intact without restarting it every few hours and my son ha no longer had it hang.

We have both seen ludicrously high rainfall reported when none has fallen at all and have both removed rainfall from the online reporting. My own rain guage was never very good - I'm convinced it under reported - so this is no huge loss to me.

As an entry level station it is barely acceptable but giving it the name "professional" is an absolute joke. I really can't recommend it at all - I've received several emails from DigitalHam visitors reporting problems and asking for help.

The "about" text just comes from the EasyWeather.ini file. As it writes the dat file to the program directory it is better to install it somewhere other than "Program Files" under Vista if yo wish to manipulate or use the dat file in other programs.

I have one of these babies, And i have fiound that my external feed dissapears occasionally, it usually comes back after a while though so its not too much of a problem for me, i Have to agree that there is a bit too much wire on the sensors,Ill shift them at some stage, when a friend of mine who is a builder gets round to installing the hinged pole that hes offerd to do for me, I dont know why any woman would want to complain about the sensors all over the place though,( I AM 'her indoors' and i put my own fixtures up, whats the sense in paying some bloke to put the things up when i know how to use a black and decker myself ).

All in all, i have found the Watson to be acceptable for my needs

Apart from a few problems at the outset,when I was getting mad readings like -67c, I, like Jane, am perfectly happy with my unit.

Hi,I have just replaced my Watson 8681 as the original was faulty,managed to get the time etc set but the wind speed does not show only direction shows.
any ideas as im cant be bothered sending this one back (postage to N Ireland not cheap malc

Hi all - just joined the forum

I recently bought the £79.99 maplins Watson W-8681, and have simialr comments. The screen is just about useless in anything except bright sun. The wind direction vane spins faster than the anemometer somtimes ! But the PC interface works great and couldn't be simpler and Easyweather v2 seems OK and stable too.

My outside hygrometer failed after a few weeks, and maplins replaced the unit without question, and the new one is fluctuating between 40 and 80% over every 24 hrs - perhaps I will try a reset

The outside temperature sensor was very susceptible to solar heating - but then I pushed the shroud down harder and it clipped into position and seems better now - there is a nipple on the top of the sensor, battery box that locates in a pot on the shroud that seems to need to be "encouraged".

You get a wireless station with 8 sensors and a PC interface for £80, good value as long as it works !

I noticed a tiny red LED light up for a few second when I installed the batteries on the transmitter and I believe I saw it blink a few times after that - I assume when it was sending a burst of data.

At least one of the people who contacted me through my digitalham website said that their unit wasn't displaying any outside values.

Perhaps the manufacturers confine themselves to testing that the led comes on which only proves there is a working led and not that anything is being transmitted nor that the receiver is working. I suspect though that there is no quality control at all.

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I can only say I have found no defects as yet in mine, everything works as expected - though I have still to prove the pressure sensor is following the pressure accurately. I'm finding the transmission range is quite exceptionally good, with never a missed packet that I could see in the .dat file.

Did you make any further progress with stripping the data out of the .dat file to enable it to be fed into APRS?