What do neph error messages in the daily email messages mean?
The TSI nephelometer reports error messages whenever it detects that things are not quite right inside the instrument. The errors are represented by a 4-character code. The meaning of the individual codes can be found in the TSI nephelometer manual, I believe near the end of Chapter 6 (chapter discussing serial data commands). The ‘0008’ error I believe is a chopper fault. It may be that for a second or two (or perhaps much longer) the chopper rotated slightly outside the normal rate of rotation, and the error was generated. The ‘000C’ error looks like a chopper fault (‘0008’) plus a valve fault (‘0004’) at the same time (0008 + 0004 = 000C in hexadecimal). These errors could possibly be generated by power glitches that make the chopper, backscatter shutter, or zero filter valve rotate in a way different than the normal operation. On the other hand, something could actually be wrong here. If the amount of errors that the TSI neph generates increases greatly, or if the amount of time th
