Best procedure for sensor experiments?

[skyewright]

Yesterday I dismantled one of my OS extra sensors to see if there was scope for modification. The result (aside from a short break in transmission of course) was a blip in temp and humidity when I refitted the battery, due to handling of the sensor.
So after a while I deleted the records, but that seemed to cause a recompute of data and other complications.

If I wanted to do such a thing again I suppose I could just leave the battery out longer, then try minimum disturbance while re-fitting, but I wondered if the following might be a better idea...

a) Before starting the experiment, either remove or change the assignation of the sensor on the Sensors page, and Save, e.g. either th3 => blank, or th3 => some unused th sensor.

b) After re-assembly and stabalisation, restore the original assignation, then Save.

Would that be liable to cause any re-computation or other undesirable effects?

Also, if I wanted to do experiments with a rain gauge (e.g. test the minumum time between tips that it can handle) would the best thing be to reset the gauge before re-assigning - so that the gauge was reporting a lower rainfall total, and thus I think flagging to MH a step change that should be ignored?

[bsparks]

I would be interested in this as well, especially when I'm cleaning the rain gauge.

[sevenless]

bsparks: when I clean my VP2 internals, I simply open up the cover panel (with the solar cells if you've got the wireless version) and unplug the jack for sensor(s) I'm working on. I find this to be easier than hunting down anomalous readings in the raw data logs after-the-fact, especially since the base station reports unreachable sensors as "---" (versus a 0, which would give very weird graphs!)

The only danger here is making sure you don't unnecessarily shake the station while opening the cover, and thus accidentally tip the gauge... but that would be a single blip.