Short history of 'Weather Station' in 40-meter lab
The Weather Station was assembled together in the summer of 2001 by a SURF student Victor Tsai, and then according to Alan Weinstein, it soon stopped working, and it was in a nonfunctional status for several years before Andrey Rodionov made an attempt to fix it in April 2008.
As of the 1st of April 2008 the only information that seemed to be reasonable was the indication of the inside temperature on the screen of 'Weather Monitor'. This means that there were two separate problems with the weather station.
* Problem 1: No data for outside temperature, pressure, humidity were available even on the screen of 'Weather Monitor', so the signal from outside sensors was lost before getting into the 'Weather Monitor'.
* Problem 2: No indications on the MEDM "c0Checklist.adl" screen on UNIX control computers. This means that processor 'c1pem1' (located in the laser interferometer room near other processors in a DAQ rack near the middle of Y-arm) that should communicate with control UNIX computers did not do his job, and as it turned out later, the long blue ethernet Cat5 cable that goes from "WeatherLink" to the processor 'c1pem1' was defective.
In April 2008 both problems were resolved.
* Firstly, communication between outside sensors and 'Weather Monitor' was restored by re-plugging cable endings into the cable connectors located half-way between 'weather sensors on top of the roof' and 'Weather Monitor' (see picture below). These cable connectors were moved inside the 40-meter interferometer room. They should not be outside where unfavorable weather conditions can shorten their life and the wind can break the connection. For your information, these are not cat-5 ethernet cables.
* Secondly, communication between 'Weather Monitor' and UNIX control computers was revived by rebooting the processor 'c1pem1' and making the new RJ45 internet connector (plug) at the end of the long blue Cat5 cable that links the 'WeatherLink' and 'c1pem1'. Two remarks: (1) Only one of two RJ45 plugs was replaced, namely the connector/plug that is at the end of the Cat5 cable that is plugged into the processor 'c1pem1'. The other RJ45 plug that is near the 'WeatherLink' did not seem to be flaky initially. (2) Rebooting of the processor 'c1pem1' turned out to be a nontrivial problem because 'c1pem1' was attempting to reboot from a nonexisting computer op140m, so it was necessary to convince 'c1pem1' to boot from 'Linux 1'.
Here (follow the link) is a short description of RJ45 connector / plug for Cat5 8X8 ethernet cable and the explanation of how to install this connector to the end of a Cat5 cable. The process of installation of RJ45 plug to the end of the blue Cat5 cable that links 'WeatherLink' and 'c1pem1' is fully described.