B&G WS320 Bluetooth Wind Sensor The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[catxtrack]

Same issue as others, my ws320 sits in the sun year round. Suddenly the wind data stops about a month after warranty expires. After retrieving the anemometer I find the battery is about .5v. I replaced the battery but a few months later the battery dies again. Since the warranty is out I took the built in solar panel off to get to the leads. The panels are outputting voltage but I see nothing on the battery. I am going to parallel in a charging board and a bigger solar panel next to the battery side. As someone mentioned, without a battery how do you get wind data at night. I might cook something internal but if it does solve the problem I will make it more permanent and mount it. Either way, I’ll post an update.

[Sailmon70]

I bought my unit in 2018 or 2019. As a result I had a fair share of field test and more than 8000 nm of sailing with this unit.
The battery was replaced twice. Since I am not keen on spending $100 for a special order battery from B&G ( they really suck selling batteries for that price), I used a cordless phone NiMH battery of 2.4V 750 mAH.
The unit was giving us intemittent results (working, not working) in 2022 in the Nova Scotia cloudy weather. In 2022 till 2023 May when we laid the boat up for hurricane season in Grenada, the unit stopped working.
I decided to put in place this second battery change. Anyone with soldering skills can reuse the B&G connector and that was my approach.
The unit startedworking again, but we will know if a few days or a week if if continues to work as I have not determined if the battery charging from the little solar panel actually works.

I really like the unit, it has been reliable except for the battery issue. And anyone who sails should welcome the opportunity to inspect the rigging periodically, but I carry a spare battery on board because this is clearly a weakness in the design.

[noelex 77]

Welcome to forum Catxtrack and Sailmon and thanks for the reports.

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by Stephen_MO

If you want to be your own source for battery packs for your B&G Wind instrument:

Watch this to get the general idea:

If you want to make battery packs for your wireless B&G wind instrument:

Buy this

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FJQN7DT...roduct_details

Spot welding is ideal, but you can just solder NiMH batteries without any detrimental effects, providing you take a little care.

Soldering is less advisable for protected lithium cells as it easy to damage the protection mechanism, but can be done with unprotected cells.

[Sailmon70]

UPDATED:
within two days I had confirmed that the in service battery that I replaced with the spare was indeed incapable of holding any charge.
The unit lasted one or two days and then quit again. I suspect the issue is with the charge circuit / solar cell array not producing recharge of the battery, or a bad connector within the unit. Another trip up the mast is scheduled today for other reasons.

If I canot get a wired or wireless unit in this caribbean area, I will consider the following option: Charge the NiMH battery trickle charge with a 5 to 10 mA current using a resistor connecting the battery from the anchor light wiring. This is a good temporary rube goldberg fix. (12.4V-2.4V)/.010=1Kohm to 1.5 kOhm should do the trick. Not the best for the new battery but otherwise it's no wind instruments till a replacement unit comes..

On this note, I always wondered why makers are not using a bus approach for all masthead electronics. A CAN bus controller built into various units would enable a sngle power and control wire pair to activate anchor light, tricolor, and wind instruments. Looks like mast electronics approach are 20 years behind the rest of the industry. Has anyone seen a solution like the one I propose here?

Originally Posted by Sailmon70

I bought my unit in 2018 or 2019. As a result I had a fair share of field test and more than 8000 nm of sailing with this unit.
The battery was replaced twice. Since I am not keen on spending $100 for a special order battery from B&G ( they really suck selling batteries for that price), I used a cordless phone NiMH battery of 2.4V 750 mAH.
The unit was giving us intemittent results (working, not working) in 2022 in the Nova Scotia cloudy weather. In 2022 till 2023 May when we laid the boat up for hurricane season in Grenada, the unit stopped working.
I decided to put in place this second battery change. Anyone with soldering skills can reuse the B&G connector and that was my approach.
The unit startedworking again, but we will know if a few days or a week if if continues to work as I have not determined if the battery charging from the little solar panel actually works.

I really like the unit, it has been reliable except for the battery issue. And anyone who sails should welcome the opportunity to inspect the rigging periodically, but I carry a spare battery on board because this is clearly a weakness in the design.

[Opie91]

They do have CAN (NMEA 2000) wind sensors:

https://defender.com/en_us/veratron-vdo-nmea-2000-wind-sensor-a2c59501984

Before that we had a Maretron WSO100 which provided 8 years of service At that time the WSO200 was not available but is now. I would check that out if you are running the backbone up the mast.


No complaints about the VDO unit so far.

[ArranP]

My WS320 is giving wind direction but not wind speed, battery is reporting 95% state of charge, visually wind cup is rotating, been up and sprayed wd40, it will give some wind speed say 1-2 knots in 20 knots of wind.... any ideas ?