Cumulus Support

After 9 months of use the receiving station has developed what appears to be a connection/reset problem.
Whilst connected to my PC the WH1081 started issuing a single bleep at intervals and losing time/date info, transmitter received info, and generally behaving like a HAL 9000 on a bad day.
I have tried PC reboots, battery resets and problem still occurrs.
If the weather station is disconnected from the PC it performs normally!
Has the receiver station failed? Is there a USB issue suddenly? Is there a Cumulus software corruption?
Any suggestions/help gratefully received...

Did you try a different computer?
Different USB cable and USB port ?

Tried different port, but with same computer and cable - no change to problem although transmission from memory of station (whilst detatched) to cumulus appeared to work when reconnected, although the display was blank!

gazinho wrote:After 9 months of use the receiving station has developed what appears to be a connection/reset problem.
Whilst connected to my PC the WH1081 started issuing a single bleep at intervals and losing time/date info, transmitter received info, and generally behaving like a HAL 9000 on a bad day.
I have tried PC reboots, battery resets and problem still occurrs.
If the weather station is disconnected from the PC it performs normally!
Has the receiver station failed? Is there a USB issue suddenly? Is there a Cumulus software corruption?
Any suggestions/help gratefully received...

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is totally applicable but I have a N96GY station which I'm using the Fine Offset (WH1081) settings to communicate with Cumulus.

Going back a while ago, when I first got the unit, I was having issues with my station losing contact between the receiver & transmitter and on occasions the receiver would lock up all together and require resetting.

I followed the advice I received here on the forum and made sure that I had ticked the "Synchronise Fine Offset Reads" option in Cumulus [Configuration > Station] and this did help a great deal ... but not completely.

Anyway, cutting a long story short, after not receiving any replies to emails sent to the manufacturer (Fine Offset Electronics Co., Ltd in Shenzhen City, China [full postal address at end of post]) I decided to write to them via air mail ... and lo, I actually received some very helpful emails from them because they are fully aware of this problem !

Just in case it helps anyone, here's the advice I received from the manufacturer ...

We found it could be related with USB power influence the console memory accessing part. We have tried a temperory solution by reducing the USB power voltage: adding two pieces diode(1n4148, 1n4001) in serial so that the USB voltage goes to the console side will be reduced to less than 4v.
I have the modification method attached. Let me know if you can make this modification or not.
 
Best regards
Henry

Fine Offset Electronics Co., Ltd
2/F., Building no.3,
Ping Shan Minqi Industrial Park,
Xili Town,
Nanshan District,
Shenzhen City,
China

odintheterrible wrote:Anyway, cutting a long story short, after not receiving any replies to emails sent to the manufacturer (Fine Offset Electronics Co., Ltd in Shenzhen City, China [full postal address at end of post]) I decided to write to them via air mail ... and lo, I actually received some very helpful emails from them because they are fully aware of this problem !

Just in case it helps anyone, here's the advice I received from the manufacturer ...

We found it could be related with USB power influence the console memory accessing part. We have tried a temperory solution by reducing the USB power voltage: adding two pieces diode(1n4148, 1n4001) in serial so that the USB voltage goes to the console side will be reduced to less than 4v.
I have the modification method attached. Let me know if you can make this modification or not.
 
Best regards
Henry

Interesting. I've bought myself a cheap 12cm USB A-male to A-female extension lead to experiment on. Unlike the lead shown it's screened, but I've managed to separate the red wire from the rest. I haven't added any diodes yet, but I did measure the station's current consumption: 8.5mA rising to 15mA when the touch screen is illuminated. However, my old Asus router is only outputting 4.4V (PSU on its way out, again) so normal current consumption may be higher than this.

Hi,
If you're interested, I've just bought a job lot of 25 each of the diodes (cheapest way I could find to get hold of them) so that I can do the mod; so if you want to get hold of these components, let me know and I can fire a couple off to you.

JD

odintheterrible wrote:If you're interested, I've just bought a job lot of 25 each of the diodes (cheapest way I could find to get hold of them) so that I can do the mod; so if you want to get hold of these components, let me know and I can fire a couple off to you.

Thanks for the offer, but I've found a 1N4006 in one of my many junk boxes. Only need one diode with such a low PSU voltage. (-:
(On the downside, my webcam won't work at that voltage.)

Hi Jim,

jim-easterbrook wrote: I did measure the station's current consumption: 8.5mA rising to 15mA when the touch screen is illuminated. However, my old Asus router is only outputting 4.4V (PSU on its way out, again) so normal current consumption may be higher than this.

Is that sufficient to even make the internal relay click in (or have FO modified the design, not using a relay)? Last year I measured about 40mA for my Console as reported here.

Cheers, Alan.

AllyCat wrote:

jim-easterbrook wrote: I did measure the station's current consumption: 8.5mA rising to 15mA when the touch screen is illuminated. However, my old Asus router is only outputting 4.4V (PSU on its way out, again) so normal current consumption may be higher than this.

Is that sufficient to even make the internal relay click in (or have FO modified the design, not using a relay)? Last year I measured about 40mA for my Console as reported here.

I've not noticed any relay click from this station - maybe the design has changed. I haven't had it apart to find out. We know a change of some sort introduced the USB lockup problem.
You also had an increase of 12mA when the console is illuminated, compared to my 6.5mA. More efficient LEDs in the newer model perhaps?

Hi Jim,

Yes, modern LEDs may be more efficient. However, Green LEDs have a "constant" forward drop of at least 2 volts, or maybe even 3, and there may be other "fixed" voltage drops in the circuit. So the drop across the series resistor (and hence current) won't be proportional to the supply voltage. But I would have expected rather less than almost +100% increase from 4.4 to (perhaps) 5.5 volts.

Sometime (when "on offer") I will have to get one of the "new" Maplin kits to investigate the changes that FO have made, but I already have a "spare" Clas Ohlson station (which uses a significantly different RF protocol) from when they were being sold at "silly" prices (£40 delivered).

Cheers, Alan.

jim-easterbrook wrote:

odintheterrible wrote:If you're interested, I've just bought a job lot of 25 each of the diodes (cheapest way I could find to get hold of them) so that I can do the mod; so if you want to get hold of these components, let me know and I can fire a couple off to you.

Thanks for the offer, but I've found a 1N4006 in one of my many junk boxes. Only need one diode with such a low PSU voltage. (-:
(On the downside, my webcam won't work at that voltage.)

And it's crashed. Traditional USB lockup after running for a few days with the one diode. Either I do need two diodes or this isn't a cure for the problem.

I have had problems with one base station and a laptop for some time. base station works fine on other laptops but every time its connected to the dell 1545 it was failing to see the base station. tried different usb ports, changed the cable still the same.
thought what the heck nothing to loose put the diodes in the positive (red) wire and connected it up and so far it has been up and running without a failure for 2 days.

time will tell if it has fixed the problem.

bruce

Trying this now as my weather station has this annoying fault.

Whether it works or not I have 9 spare sets of diodes if anyone is interested.

Sadly, the diode solution didn't work for me.

After much trial and error I did find a solution that at time of writing has been stable for over 7 days.

Solution : 5 Meter USB lead.

Initially I had the laptop 5 meters away from the controller in case radio interference was the culprit, but for the last two days they have been sat next to each other (still on a 5 meter lead) and no drops. Yay

I can only guess that a longer usb lead drops the voltage to tolerable levels.

Hi,

Yes perhaps longer, or just simply a "better" USB cable (e.g. screened).

The later FO Consoles (e.g. WH308x) appear to suffer from an issue with radio interference radiated by the USB cable (back from the Console?).

Cheers, Alan.