Rain gauge retrofit ALMOST done…but..

So here is a picture of my ALMOST finished rain gauge 1-wire counter refit.  It works great EXCEPT the coin cell is SUPPOSED to power the DS2423 counter in the event the 1-wire bus is disconnected.  I thought it was weird that when I was doing testing of my 1-wire library, shorting the bus to ground, that the count would zero out.  Well, nuts, for some reason it’s not saving the count. (The PCB LOOKS nice though. 🙂 )  On my breadboarded version it works as planned; the count is preserved even if the MicroLan (1-wire bus) is disconnected.  The coin cell’s 3V appears at the VBAT pin of the DS2423 on the breadboarded version but not on my PCB 🙁  After taking some measurements, apparently either I have a bad BAT54S Schottky diode at D2 (pointed to with pencil) or a bad solder connection.  Hope it’s the latter, but thankfully I have spare diodes.  The only saving grace was that I found this out BEFORE I installed it in the backyard.

UPDATE:  The Schottky diodes are fine; I determined it’s a bad solder connection on D2 Pin1.  With the coin cell installed, and measuring the voltage on pin 3 of D2, when I press down on the diode, voila!, I see about 3 volts on its pin 3, which is the way it’s supposed to work.  So now back to the soldering station.

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