Error message: USB device not recognized

[darryls]

Hi,

I've been using Cumulus successfully for a couple of years (it's great!), but on one of my PCs it has stopped working. Instead I get an error message and the flashing red light on Cumulus, and it says:

"Fine Offset station not found! - check connections and restart Cumulus"

When I plug in the weather station, Windows 7 says, "USB device not recognized."

My weather station is WS-2081, and it works perfectly when I plug it into another PC ... so that says to me that the weather station is working fine, and that the problem is a driver issue or something with this PC.

Any thoughts?

[AllyCat]

Hi,

Normally the first thing to try is to switch off everything and then power-on again (but maybe don't remove the batteries from the Console yet, if data may be lost). Also try plugging the USB cable into a different socket (as different as possible, if the PC has front and back sockets, for example).

However, it may well be a faulty cable. The double-ended "USB Male, Type A" is not as easy to source as a "normal" USB cable, but it does at least give the opportunty to try exchanging its ends. If you can't test the cable (e.g. by substitution or with a multimeter) then it might be worth investing in a cheap (but reasonable quality) replacement.

Also, you could try reinstalling the USB driver and/or "Restore" the Windows OS to an earlier date. The sequence of tests that you adopt will depend on how "comfortable" you are with (potential) "software" versus "hardware" solutions.

Cheers, Alan.

[darryls]

Thanks AllyCat, it worked! I had tried plugging it into different USB ports, and even different computers (it worked then), but I hadn't tried switching around the USB cable. When I did that, it failed the first time, but worked the second time!

Update: Ok, after downloading yesterday's figures, now we're getting problems again. It flashed up the red error light again, and gives the message:
"Data input appears to have stopped - check your station and connections"

Now I've plugged it in again, and it has the message "Downloading data" but nothing's happening. I think I might try purchasing a new USB cable and see if that helps.

Any other ideas?

[Super-T]

Sounds to me like a bad solder connection on the USB socket in the console. The fact that it works sometimes and not others.
If you can swap the cable then that is the first thing to eliminate.
The sockets are renown for bad soldering.