On
September 26th 2014, two members of the NM Climate Center Team
travelled north from Las Cruces to perform maintenance on three weather
stations and install a new station. The maintenance
was performed at Ponderosa Valley Vineyard, Corrales Winery, and Los Lunas
Agricultural Science Center. The new station was installed at the Estrella del Norte
vineyard.
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| Locations of weather stations. Image from Google Earth. |
In cooperation with the New
Mexico Climate Center, the NMSU viticulture program is installing weather
stations at vineyards across New Mexico.
A Davis Weather Station was installed at the Estrella Del Norte secondary
vineyard. According to Elizabeth Smith, the secondary location was chosen because it is in a topographically challenging area and also is away from the main tourist location. The
owners wished this location to be monitored due to its increased chance of
experiencing freezes. Installing
the physical station and computer system took approximately 1.5 hours and was
maintaining network contact at the time of leaving.
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| Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith |
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| Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith |
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| Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith |
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| Weather station at Estrella del Norte vineyard. Photo by: Elizabeth Smith
The second location they visited
was Ponderosa Valley Vineyard. The
stop was necessitated by poor response from the computer system, so a new
computer with updated software was installed. The data stored on the old computer will be sent to the vineyard at a later date. Communication to the network was
working when we left.
The third location, Corrales
winery, needed an updated computer as well. Communication to the
network was working and stable when leaving.
The Corrales location worked for approximately 7.5 hours before a
network error occurred. At Elizabeth's request, the winery re-booted the computer and
monitoring resumed within 3 hours.
The last location they went was Los Lunas Agricultural Center. The weather station in this location was failing to record
accurate air/soil temperature data. They also noticed that the station was reporting
very low battery voltages. Therefore, they decided that the problems could
be one or all of the following:
1. A bad battery, 2. A bad charge controller, 3. A bad solar panel, or 4. Bad air/soil temperature sensors. Once they arrived, Stanley Engle opened the battery box and immediately noticed that the battery terminals were very corroded. Further, the water level in the battery was very low. The voltage was 12.5 volts and datalogger was also reporting 12.5 volts. He covered the solar panel with a black trash bag and recorded 3 volts from the solar panel. The voltage reported by the datalogger slowly began to fall until it stabilized around 8 volts. During this time, the datalogger was also showing bad data from the air/soil temperature sensors. Stan uncovered the solar panel and replaced the battery with a new 12v deep cycle marine battery. He repeated the process of covering the solar panel, however, this time, the datalogger reported voltage of 12.5 volts. The air/soil temperature reading were also holding steady at reasonable levels. Uncovering the solar panel also yielded steady 12.5 volts reported by the datalogger and manually measured at the charge controller. From this process, they concluded that the only issue we had to deal with was the bad battery. Since then, the voltage and air/soil temperature readings have all been reasonable.
Finally, the Los Lunas office/weather station Campbell Scientific RF 401 radios were replaced with Campbell Scientific RF 416 radios. The RF416 radios operate in the 2.4 GHz frequency and are lower transmitting power radios. Since the Los Lunas weather station is so close to the office, we didn't need higher transmitting power radios. The RF 401 radios are now available to be used at other locations.
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