How to determine if a Davis datalogger is okay.

[RayProudfoot]

I'm trying to determine if my Davis VP2 datalogger is okay or not. I assume that if Cumulus is stopped for 30 minutes when it's restarted it reads the data in the logger to bring the records up to date. When it's doing that would the catch-up light blink? Currently it isn't but the rainfall and other data seem okay and the console readings match those in Cumulus and on my website.

My reason for asking is because I also run WeatherLink - the software that comes with the logger. For the past 5 years WL has been fine but it now cannot show any records later than 00:00 1 June. If I perform a manual download it reports there are 513 pages and all are downloaded without any error message.

I did rename 2014-06.wlk in the hope that the problem lay with a corrupted file but after restarting WL the latest record is 00:00 1 June. Before I renamed the file the latest record was 00:00 8 June. I now have no weather data at all for June.

Whilst I could cease using WL I'm more concerned about whether the data logger is okay. Can anyone reassure me on that please?

[steve]

The 'catch up' light isn't directly related to downloading logger data, but it blinks while it's uploading logger data to WU etc. So if it doesn't blink, and as you do upload to WU etc, it's an indirect indication that no logger data was downloaded. It makes sure that the rainfall total is correct for the current day at the end of the logger download, even if no logger data was downloaded.

If you zip up the diags folder and attach it, I'll take a look at what happened when it tried to download the logger data, but it will most likely just show that there was none to download. I'm not sure what you need to do to get the logger going again - but one thing to check is that the clock on the console and the PC are both correct.

[RayProudfoot]

Thank you Steve. I have checked the time and date on the console and PC and they both match.

It's been a hectic time for Cumulus over the past 30 hours. Alan Sherlock visited me yesterday to clean the ISS so I put it into standby for that but when we'd finished and I came back to the console to reactivate it I found it had already happened. So I had to remove rainfall yesterday and in my haste messed up some rainfall records but those have now been corrected.

This explains why I'm attaching several diag files as Cumulus has been started and stopped quite a few times since yesterday evening.

Everything looks okay on WU but I'm very concerned that there's no data in the logger since 00:00 on 8 June.

[steve]

The station (or is it Virtual VP?) just says that there are no archive entries available, even thought there should be. Despite that, reading live data appears to be OK, except that there are a number of communication errors reported in a couple of the files, between the Davis DLL and the station/VVP.

So the logger appears to have stopped writing archive data to its memory. Or, it's writing the data, but for some reason won't supply the data when requested.

[RayProudfoot]

Thanks for your analysis. Yes, I do run Cumulus, WL and VPLive via Virtual VP. Have done for over 5 years without problem.

I decided to try some simple logic and disconnected and reconnected the datalogger to the console and it’s fixed the problem. So maybe it had worked loose when I was fixing a pressure problem earlier in June.

I’m just relieved it’s not broken as they’re not cheap!