Development Page--Not for Official Use

This page is for information about the RM Young 32400 A/D to serial converter and outlining the design of our dream converter.

Sensors

Sensors that have been interfaced with the RM Young 32400:

1. RM Young 5106 Wind Monitor (wind speed and dir)
2. Carol 18/2 90 degrees SJ00W CSA FT-2 P-7K123033 MSHA (air temp)
   • uses VIN 3 or 4
   • 0 V=0001 mV, 5 V=4002 mV

Sensors not yet interfaced:

1. Barometric pressure sensor (bpr)
   • The NOAA standard Setra sensor used at most TCOON stations will not work with the 32400 because it is differential.
   • A RM Young bpr sensor, 0-5 VDC, could be easily used with the converter, but we do not have one yet. Also use of this sensor would not conform to NOAA standards.

A/D sensors a standard cube station should have:

• Two air temp sensors (atp), used for Aquatrak calibration
• One barometric pressure (bpr)
• One wind monitor (wsd and wdr)

The 32400 is setup to output in the following format:

  WSD WDR V1 V2 V3 V4

Polling takes place by serpoll (from cron), using a configuration file of type Rmy.conf. Rmy.conf is the template file, the actual sensor configuration file can be anything that starts with a lower case letter and ends with .conf. For more information about template and configuration files, see Cube Menu Help.

Alternatives

Other A/D to serial converters are available but not recommended because they do not come with housing for the converter chip. The Rm Young 32400 is housed in a hard box with mounting fixtures to attach it to a post or a wall.

Modifications

Here's a quote from RM Young for the custom serial interface requested in October 2003.

I corresponded via email with Dennis Sanderson of YoungUSA.com during October 2003 regarding a custom A/D to serial converter for DNR. Here is what I asked for (Brooke):

1. We would like to use VIN1 and VIN2 for two VC (Celsius) temperature sensors and have the output be in 0.1 degrees Celsius.
2. We would like to use VIN3 and VIN4 for one barometric pressure sensor and have the output be in 0.1 millibars.
3. We would like the device to output at 1 Hz, or one sample per second (instead of 2 Hz).
4. We would like to use ASCII output format (instead of NMEA, etc).
5. We would like to use the 5103 and 5106 Wind Monitors with the device.
6. We would like to have the WS output in 0.1 m/s.

At the time the above quote was given for these modifications, we were unable to order the modified deviced due to budget constraints.

Modification Notes

While talking with RMYoung about their Model32400SerialInterface for reading wind, bpr, etc. I discovered that they can and are willing to create a custom interface of similar design. We just need to get a proposal to them and haggle about price :-) According to the person I spoke with (Dennis) they could probably turn out a custom solution in about 2 months once all of the details have been hashed out. So ...

• What sensors should it be able to read?
  • wind
  • bpr
  • temperature (how many? air+water only?)
  • another wind?
• What should the "standard set" of sensors be?
• How programmable should it be?
• What should the menu system look like?

Once we identify our dream system, we'll have a starting point from which to negotiate something real from RMYoung.

Things that should be part of the system

• There should be a way to store an identifier that is always part of the output. (What station is this? Look at the identifier.)
• If we're going to mix and match sensors at will, there should be a way to name sensors.