Minimum working temp WC8

Good morning all,
 
does anyone know the minimum working temp for the WC8?
Mine has been working very well until temp went to 32 F and below, now no connection,even with power down
 
TY
Rainer

Mine has gone into the negative, I have got a bad temperature sensor before did you try replacing it?

Rainer,
 
does your board back to life after warming up?  If that was temperature related, you will see board working in certain temperature range and not working in another.  If that is the case, we want to see that board.  As far as we know, there was a business sent WC8 to north pole for remote measurement back couple years ago, we had not heard anything wrong from them at very low temperature.

TY for both responses. I have not tried bringing it back in.
I will first remove the sensors and see if rebooting works. If not, I will bring it into the house. If it then works, I have a second board I can replace it with and send you this one for eval,

Rainer

If you have another board, try to replace the board to see if the 2nd board working at same wiring and same sensors first.  In that way, you can isolate  the problem easier.  Norway is a lot of colder than NY, LarsK has been using WC8 there for many years.

TY for that info.
I will have to wait until Saturday as it is too dark by the time I get home, but I will do the changeover then.
Interestingly enough, the board did send me an e-mail hourly from 10am to 2pm - the temps just about 35, at 2pm it stopped again.
In either case, I will do the trial and error this weekend.
 
Norway - great country - I grew up in southern Germany and know Norway somewhat well!
 
Rainer

Before you do a lot of swapping make sure the input voltage to the WC is OK.
 
Have not seen this mentioned but I'd test that first, since you said the blinking status LED was off.
 
/tom

If there is moisture or condensation on the board it could be a problem. Water is not a great conductor of RF energy but frozen water is. This is why many RF cables cease to work in the cold but work fine in the summer.

An old-timers trick is to use a bunch of resistors, an insulated box, and a PTC.
As the temperature goes down, the resistance goes down, the resistors dissipate more, and the whole device stays cosy warm.

I'm now working in quite a cold area of Northern Norway. It will for sure be -20 to -30°C in the winter time if this winter will be normal.
I could try to run one of the bords outside just to see what it can take...

I just took the board out, brought it into the house and within 5 min it worked.
Took it back outside into  the coop, right now it still works but we now already have 31 degrees (warm). So, I will leave it as is, without temp sensors connected, and see when it stops sending e-mail (currently set to every hour).
If it still works over night (should go down to 20 F), then I will start attaching temp sensors again.
TY for all the replies, I will continue the saga.
If I have time I will get the second board going and see how that compares side by side, but may not get to that this weekend.
Will keep UTD

Rainer

When you bring it from the cold into the house you just drenched the board with more condensation, should that be the problem. Try leaving it in the cold and hit it with a hair dryer lightly, for a minute or so,  before booting it up
 
Also metal contracts in the cold so a poor connection in a terminal block, or anywhere for that matter, may not make contact when in the cold but be good in the heat. Check for insulation in terminals blocks and for wire shoved under the pressure plate in the terminal blocks. IIRC they tighten down backwards (not rotation) to most terminals in that the pressure plate comes up from the bottom when tightened. It's easy to get your wires underneath by mistake.

TSchmidt,
 
you are most likely correct in your assumption!
 
I took the initial WC8 and ran it without temp input (re-powered) and did not work after 20min in cold.
Worked well inside house.
Took my second WC8 and attached same power and, after about 10 min, didn't work.
The lights do the following: Red is on, Green blinks bright and then fades over 1 sec or so, then repeats the cycle.
 
The only other power adapter even close is a 8.4V, 1.4A. Would that be acceptable until I can get a true 9V 1A?

Sounds like Tom has something there. It definitely sounds like your power supply may be bad.
 
I ordered a 9v 1amp switching regulator on eBay. The only thing is the pins were not "locked' in and the second time I unplugged it the live pin was stuck in the receptacle.
 
I recommend not getting the 1amp unit with the sideways mount with the flat face on the receptacle side. I would hope the 1.5 or 2.0 ampere one that has the raised panel with the 120v pins in it may be a better quality and not so dangerous.
 
Get a switching unit that has a regulated voltage. The analogue units (with larger transformers) get hotter, consume more energy, and can put out 15 vdc when first plugged into the WC8 board. Then with loading devices the voltage can sag lower than things may operate.

Glad you figured it out.
 
8.4 volt supply should be fine. The input feeds a 5V regulator with a series protection diode, so anything over 8volts should be fine, perhaps even down to 7ish (that is an engineering term for I don't know for sure).
 
/tom