METER ATMOS 41 GEN 2 tested

August 19, 2025 Leave a comment

Back in late 2024, METER Group revamped their ATMOS 41 weather station SDI-12 sensor and unveiled a GEN 2 of the same weather station. I was able to get a hold of one thanks to a client. After some initial struggle with it, I realized that I needed to update my firmware in a couple of places to handle this sensor.

First, it responds to polling faster so I have to remove one of the commands that may momentarily block SDI-12 receiving right after sending out a command. This used to be no problem at all but this new sensor responds so fast that the first few characters got garbled if I block receiving even momentarily.

Second, it has some unusually long responses in some of its non-SDI-12-compliant command responses, as long as 141 characters. This is much longer than the maximal allowed 76 characters by the standard. So I bumped up the buffer size to be able to swoop up all of its responses.

After some initial tests, I was able to confirm that the updated firmware version 1.5.11 (15B) works with this sensor. I did this in the spring but haven’t got around to post an update yet. If you need to use this sensor, you can update your firmware to 15B. The instructions and the new firmware are in the adapter’s main page.

Filed under Announcements, SDI-12

Adapters and other modules available

August 18, 2025 Leave a comment

I have been slowly building more SDI-12 adapters and other modules over the summer and will resume selling them on my online stores:

https://liudr.square.site

https://www.tindie.com/stores/liudr

Filed under Announcements, SDI-12

Summer recount/batch build soon

July 13, 2025 Leave a comment

As the stocks of the SDI-12 USB adapter and other modules are getting low, I will be doing a recount of the stocks and plan for batch build soon. I should still be able to fulfill orders until next Friday (7/18) and then take my online stores (square and tindie) offline by putting zero qty on all items so I can accurately recount my stock, decide what quantity of each item to rebuild, purchase parts and boards, build and test them. With my ongoing summer projects, I anticipate finishing this process around late August. This happens once a year during the summer when I have more time to batch build the boards. I’m teaching some new and exciting Arduino-related course next fall so I’m making sure I’m well prepared for that. I’m also prepping for another “new” physics course for the fall and finishing up an astronomy course this summer. I apologize for the inconvenience. If you plan to purchase a relatively large quantity (say 25+) of any board AFTER the end of August, please leave me a message. I’ll make sure I build enough in August to fulfill your order.

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If you live outside of US, check your post office for package held pending customs fees!

March 12, 2025 1 Comment

I have recently become aware that a particular country in Europe has not been actively informing package recipients that there is customs fee due and silently waits for the recipients to show up to pay for the fees or return the package without informing any party involved! So if you live outside of US, please actively track your packages. You receive the tracking information if you order on my square or tindie online stores. If after a week or so you have not seen any updates, check your local post office with the tracking number! “Not moving” or “stuck in Chicago” means the package may have entered your country but USPS has not received any updates yet. If you don’t check, your package may get returned. I can only ship the package out to you again if you pay for shipping and I receive your actual package to ship back. I can’t ship out replacements on the promise that a “stuck” package will return to me.

In case you wonder why the background was so beige, it’s the case of a computer from the same era as the stamps 😀

If you know who the lady was, let me know. I have a lot of stamps with her on it. A queen? A celebrity? What was the black rubber post stamp mark saying below “POST CODE”?

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How to break apart a panel of adapters

February 5, 2025 Leave a comment

Since many of my customers buy multiple adapters per order and shipping cost is only going up, I have decided to ship adapters in panels of 6 for order quantities equal or greater than 6 to save on packaging and waste and hopefully save a small amount of shipping cost.

So when you receive a panel (or a partial panel) of adapters, how you go about breaking it into individual adapters? It’s easy. You first break the panel into three columns, then break out individual adapter. Finally you can remove the edge rails. Here is a video:

Filed under Announcements, SDI-12

July update

July 7, 2024 Leave a comment

Nearly everything I have been selling is low in stock or out of stock by the end of May, when I was pretty busy with projects so I decided to take some time off and build back up my stock. So now I have most of the adapters back in stock and will be building more of them this summer. So if you were looking to get some adapters but found out that it was out of stock, they should be in stock now and most are ready to ship.

Filed under Announcements

Please check USPS international service alters before shopping!

September 8, 2021 Leave a comment

I have just noticed that USPS has suspended packages to Australia when I was searching for first-class package price to Australia at USPS.com and couldn’t find that option. There were no explanation so I searched around and found some news from last week:

USPS Suspends Package Services to Australia Due to COVID-19 Outbreak – Update 3/12/2022

Check the service alerts here. I can only ship USPS:

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international/welcome.htm

Filed under Announcements Tagged with

New compatible sensor added and data logger demo upload resumed

September 9, 2019 Leave a comment

With the help of SDI-12 USB adapter users, I constantly add more compatible sensors to my list. This time is a soil sensor:

EnviroPro EP100G

https://www.enviroprosoilprobes.com/

Credit EnviroPro

I will update my list of sensors at the end of the month.

If you’ve been wondering why my demo data logger stopped showing data, good question. I started a project and set my router SSID and password for that project, forgetting my data logger needs it too. So I recently added an ethernet connection to the logger. Data are stored on the sd card, not lost, just not uploaded to thingspeak channel. Now that the logger has resumed logger, expect to see nice sine temperature data and occasion spikes on dielectric measurement due to raining again.

This is what I see on my side with 30 days:

Spikes are rains and no more shutting down due to outdoor outlet short circuiting and triggering GFCI.

 

Filed under Announcements, data logging, SDI-12, Sensors

SDI-12 USB adapter with larger terminals

July 31, 2019 Leave a comment

After some design and prototyping, now I have a newer version of the SDI-12 USB adapter that features larger 3.5mm terminals. The original 2.54mm terminals can accommodate 18AWG wires and the new 3.5mm terminals can accommodate 16AWG wires. I’ve never seen sensor wires that thick although you could get some really thick wires from AC adapters. The bigger terminals makes installing wires easier with the additional spacing between pins, besides they accept slightly thicker wires. The screws are also slightly bigger, making the terminals sturdier. I have to make the terminals overhang a millimeter or so to fit them on the same board edges. I’ve kept the 2.54mm terminals for the optional analog and digital input terminals on the top edge. I moved the power selector to fit the larger terminals on the left. Otherwise, the height of the terminals is the same as before and you won’t notice a difference unless you look carefully. For example, I no longer have a 3-pole terminal for the external power. Instead, I have a 2-pole terminal to save space. Here are some photos:

The new prototype held diagonally in my hand. I had the board printed in black matte instead of regular black glossy. This has made part placement and inspection easier since there is no longer a glare from the glossy surface. Besides the terminals, I also added a footprint for the transceiver and a solder jumper. Most people will not need a transceiver. I’ve tested my adapters without this added transceiver with cable up to 100ft (30m) without visible signal degradation. You only need it if you have a total data cable length significantly greater than 100ft(30m).

Here is a side view photo of the prototype:

Here are some comparisons between the current version (top) and the new prototype (bottom):

Since the spacing is no longer 2.54mm, like the pin headers, I will have to make a header for testing with SDI-12 sensors after assembly. I also need to find proper source to buy the larger terminals in quantity, and print out more than a handful of boards. It will take a while before I am ready to sell these in my stores.

I have also designed a 3.5mm version of the SDI-12 + Analog USB adapter but haven’t built a prototype yet. It should look the same as the basic adapter though.

Filed under Announcements, SDI-12 Tagged with

SDI-12 USB adapter manual updated

June 18, 2019 Leave a comment

It’s been a year since I last released an update to the manual. There has been a lot of updates since last year. I finally finished it and here is the file:

Manual 2019-06-18

I included detailed descriptions of how the optional analog and digital inputs and addon boards work on the basic adapters. There are also two one-page descriptions to easily print out and refer to. Photos were added and updated. More information about deploying your logger has been added. I’ll make an effort to update my manuals twice a year to reflect changes more frequently.

Filed under Announcements

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