Cumulus Support

Hi all,

My trusty old Watson WH-1080 has started to play up badly after 8 years.

I've always had the occasional lock-up, maybe once a month, but kept in check by having the synchronise fine offset reads checked. But over the last week it's become extremely unreliable, locking up every few hours.

Checking the Diags files, I can find no reference to the term "drift" to see if clock drift is the issue. However I do notice that when the station stops responding, the log records "invalid first block of memory" every 0.5s. Is this normal or does it suggest an issue with the weather station?

Thanks in advance for any advice. Here's a log sample

25/01/2020 14:53:54.412 : Rain last hour: 0.0
25/01/2020 14:53:54.412 : Rain last 24 hour: 0.0
25/01/2020 14:53:54.412 : Initial data processing complete
25/01/2020 14:53:55.412 : Wunderground archive upload complete
25/01/2020 14:54:04.389 : 14:54:04 Start Synchronising
25/01/2020 14:54:04.972 : EWUSB: Rain total count from station = 2143
25/01/2020 14:54:23.413 : WOW archive upload complete
25/01/2020 14:55:00.561 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 14:55:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 14:55:00.561 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 14:56:00.069 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 14:56:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 14:56:00.069 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 14:57:00.127 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 14:57:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 14:57:00.127 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 14:58:00.200 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 14:58:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 14:58:00.200 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 14:59:00.293 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 14:59:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 14:59:00.293 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:00:00.424 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:00:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:00:00.424 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:01:00.827 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:01:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:01:00.827 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:02:00.913 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:02:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:02:00.913 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:03:01.001 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:03:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:03:01.001 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:04:00.080 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:04:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:04:00.080 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:05:00.170 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:05:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:05:00.170 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:06:00.529 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:06:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:06:00.529 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:07:00.617 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:07:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:07:00.617 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:08:00.706 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:08:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:08:00.706 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:09:00.771 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:09:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:09:00.771 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:10:00.830 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:10:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:10:00.830 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:11:00.248 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:11:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:11:00.248 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:12:00.343 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:12:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:12:00.343 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:13:00.402 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:13:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:13:00.402 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:14:00.495 : Writing today.ini, LastUpdateTime = 25/01/2020 15:14:00 raindaystart = 642.599975585938 rain counter = 642.900024414063
25/01/2020 15:14:00.495 : Latest reading: 100: Data: 00 38 AB 00 59 3F 00 55 1D 0A 18 00 00 5F 08 00
25/01/2020 15:14:04.459 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:04.955 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:05.468 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:05.956 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:06.468 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:06.955 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:07.459 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:07.957 : Invalid first block of memory
25/01/2020 15:14:08.459 : Invalid first block of memory

I believe this problem is why Steve defined this line for Cumulus.ini file:

EWdisablecheckinit=1

See the wiki https://cumuluswiki.org/a/Cumulus.ini#I ... et_family: for brief extra information, or search for Steve Loft's explanation somewhere in this forum.

Totally unrelated to this issue,but might be useful to someone with more frequent lockups from a different cause; I recall that a few years ago I found I had lockups that (after a lot of experimentation) I cured by using

EWpressureoffset=x.y

In that case, Cumulus 1 was struggling to read and understand all the required sensor values, and it seemed the fixed conversion to "relative pressure" that it attempts to read when Cumulus starts up somehow affected some subsequent read process? I don't pretend to understand it.

EDIT: I should add that I removed this line after I migrated from the original Cumulus software (C1) to MX, and later discovered that there is an error in how C1 reads pressure from Fine Offset (it reads wrong bytes) that was present in beta MX, but Mark corrected MX to read correct part of the Fine Offset memory.

Probably already tried but dismantle the transmitter and clean battery contacts etc, replace batteries and any dead spiders

Try running the transmitter closer to the receiver to see how it performs.

Thanks for the suggestions. Still troubleshooting, but what I have tried:

Using batteries in console
Replaced/recharged batteries in transmitter (don't think it's that anyway as the sensor data is visible on the console when it's not responding on the PC)
Used different USB on PC
syncforeads=1
foreadaheadperiod=10
Upgraded to Cumulus MX

Still lasting 3-6 hours before no response.

I did notice that the lockups became more frequent after I moved the console's location slightly, so have now replaced the USB lead, and will see how that goes

Failing that, it might be new weather station time. Not sure what I would go for as I prefer to be able to have the temperature probe in my Stevenson Screen, rather than the very small screens that you typically get in the all in one units which unless aspirated I think would over-read on sunny days

Eight years isn't a bad innings for a cheap weather station, what's that, less than £10 a year. I admit not great for consumer electronics, but when you look at how those devices are slung together!...

Whats the voltage on your transmitter batteries?

Hi,

A couple of real "long shots", but I've also been having (different) problems with one of my trusty 1080s. Could there be a "2020 bug" in the software, or might the EEPROM simply have "worn out" (my issue started with some garbage data in the logging) ?

StuartB wrote: ↑Fri 31 Jan 2020 3:11 pm I did notice that the lockups became more frequent after I moved the console's location slightly,

The 1080 (not 1081) has a Radio Controlled clock located in the external "transmitter", so it's possible that receiving (versus not receiving) the updated time (every 2 hours "on the hour", I believe) might "glitch" the clock. Note that the Console only displays a "lost contact" ("----" external data fields) after about 7 consecutive "missing" data packets (one every 48 seconds). Therefore, the radio communications can be really struggling before an issue becomes apparent.

Cheers, Alan.

Interestingly my rebranded 1080 began behaving similarly back in 2016 before I got my VP2.
Fiddled with everything & with the last thought to cross my mind being the console batteries.

I didn't suspect it as it "Looked fine" & don't recall a low battery indicator.
When I did check, I found the cells were actually leaky, & didn't bother measuring them at that point, just cleaned it up & put fresh cells in & it was on it's way again.

May have been just hitting a threshold when it tried to receive.

Phil

Mine was doing the same whether powered through USB or fresh batteries. Bought a replacement WH8681 and working fine, though annoyingly while the ad showed a similar setup to mine, the actual weather station is an all in one so I can't put the thermometer in a separate screen

Hmm, mine is playing up now but in a different way.
The red led on the transmitter stays on and the console only reads the UV readings
All the other outdoor parameters are not reading....
This keeps happening
Bit of a nuisance as I supply the local area with met data...
I’ve blow dried the transmitter but not sure that’s the problem - red transmitter led glowing brightly...
I’ll try resetting everything........

30 mins with a hair dryer seems to have worked.
These storms in Pembrokeshire seem to blow rain upwards!

No, it didn’t last.
Red led on all the time, just no pairing/transmission apart from the UV

I had similar problems on my 9 y.o.1090. Ended up removing the transmitter circuit board and cleaning it with a toothbrush and isopropyl alcohol to remove crud and oxidation, then applying clear nail varnish to the tracks as a protective barrier. Restored to health after that, but keep clear of the temp/humidity sensors with any fluids or sprays, can do permanent damage.

Thanks for that. I dosed it in wd40 then left it in the warm for a bit.
Seems to have come to life.
I think my transmitter is the old sealed type, otherwise I’d do as you say and open it up.
Strange the UV info still comes thru..
Thanks

Mine was sealed too. I prised the (glued?) casing apart however, and it could be joined again with more glue or just by using the weather shield. Because mine is in an enclosure (no shield) I just used a cable tie.