As most of you may already know by now, the PEM2 has encountered an unexpected but solvable issue that has been discovered with the monitor’s handling of the leap year transition.
On or after the last day of the leap year (12/31/08), when uploading data from the monitor an error message will appear showing the number 4 and the wrench icon on the display. This issue is easily rectified and data prior to 12/31/08 will not be lost or compromised in any way. However, there will be a gap in data collection from 12/31/08 until the monitor is reset. Prompt resetting will minimize any impact in long-term data analysis.
The steps for resetting the monitor are relatively simple. Should you prefer to implement them yourself, instructions can be found at:
http://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org/pem2_restore.shtml
Below are some helpful tips from a fellow webERA partner, Wayne Gathright UW-Madison:
“University of Wisconsin-Madison has monitors in ten buildings spread throughout the 933 acre main campus. To make the job more efficient, I took a wireless-equipped laptop and two USB flash drives to each of the monitor locations. Each location has wireless access. I used one flash drive to retrieve the data from the PEM2. The other flash drive contained the reset command file.
After I retrieved and corrected the data files, I saved them to the laptop’s hard drive. Using the wireless Internet connection, I could verify that the files were corrected and viable as described in section 2, step 8.
IMPORTANT STEP: After the corrected data files have been verified as viable, the retrieval flash drive needs to be cleared using “Quick Format”. (Right click on the drive letter for the flash drive. Select Format. Check the Quick Format option.) Otherwise, the next PEM2 can’t write the data file to the flash drive.
I cleared the retrieval flash drive and used the flash drive with the command file to reset the monitor.
I wanted to visit each location only once. This setup worked quite well for me.”
- Wayne Gathright UW-Madison
We have been contacting everyone to implement the solution, which takes only a few moments. You may also call us at (585) 475-5199 and we will assist you at your convenience. Our goal is to reset all monitors as quickly and efficiently as possible, with minimal interruption to the users.
If you have anything else to add or need assistance, please leave a comment.
January 16, 2009 at 4:12 pm |
Actually, I didn’t need to reformat my flash drive to upload the command.pm2 file and reset the logger. Just to be sure I went back to one of the loggers and downloaded the data accumulated since I’d reset it and it was fine.
January 23, 2009 at 3:44 pm |
I uploaded the files into MyClimateData. Because I added “2008″ to all the file names (thinking it would be easier to find the correct file in the archived data files), the location name did not appear automatically. This was really more an incovenience than trouble.
February 3, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
We are just getting to download the data and reset the PEM 2’s today. We tried it with one and it worked nicely. My assistant is out right now collecting all the data on one of the drives. I hope we do not have to reformat the flash drive after each retrieval because we wanted to leave the PEM’s in place and reset them all tomorrow after processing and uploading the data. I have been working a lot with both web sites. I like the compare notebook option on PEMData.com, so I use both sites. Is it anticipated that this function may be available on myclimatedata.org in the future?
I am having no problem navigating either site and have only one question: Is it possible to reset the Y axis on the on the Dew Point metric on myclimatedata.org? I really doubt that we will ever see dew points down to -500 degrees and it would be good to have a bit more resolution on the dew point trace.
February 3, 2009 at 4:10 pm |
For anyone who is using a building management system to trend T and RH data, after several years of work I have finally been successful in retrieving the trend data from the Johnson Control Metasys program on our dedicated environmental control computer, running it through a special program designed by Leon Zak to bring the T and RH data together in a comma delineated file that can load into Climate Notebook, and finally uploading the Climate Notebook DBF file to PEMData.com and myclimatedata.org. Works slick. The reason it took so long to figure it out was because of problems transferring the trend data from the Metasys to another computer. I had to wait until the flash drive was invented. Once I had Leon’s program there was no problem with Climate Notebook or uploading to either of the web sites. I thought others might be interested in knowing it can be done.