bug report

[raym]

Hi,

Not been here for a while, no need everything seemed to be working, even the rain monitor seemed to start up (after about a year).

Anyway, a few month's ago cumulus stopped working - bug report shows a date error - easyweather seems to carry on regardless. I restored the data from a backup from a few days before, new readings entered OK, but next day it failed again, so I've attached the bug report from today, I hope.

Perhaps, given the info, perhaps I can edit the data to remove/reformat the correct date.

Best wishes,

Ray

[steve]

There are two possible causes of this, both of them result in Windows not being able to parse the timestamps in Cumulus .ini files; in this case it's the timestamp value in today.ini.

The first possibility is that the date and/or time format on your PC has changed such that Windows can no longer parse the 'timestamp' in the today.ini file. You can edit the file to change it to the format that your PC is currently using, but you will likely find that other date/time fields in other .ini files are also now invalid, so the best approach is to put your date and/or time setting back to what it was when the today.ini file was last written.

The second possibility is that your date and/or time format is now non-standard and Windows cannot parse the timestamps that it wrote itself using the same format. The only solution to this is to switch to a 'standard' date/time format.

[raym]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your prompt reply. I do not recollect anything wrt date/time having been altered by me, but that may not mean much. Now where do I begin looking? Nothing else seems to be effected. I do remember having to replace batteries in the weather station receiver unit - I wonder if that is where the problem lies. It has not effected the easy weather program, that still reads everything. The inbuilt lcd display has always been an hour out, however. So, should I poke around in the receiver unit settings?

I think I do not have the latest cumulus software installed. Will it install OK and pick up existing data, assuming I can get this time thing corrected?

Best wishes,

Ray

[steve]

It's nothing to do with the station, nor Easyweather. It's about how Cumulus stores timestamps in its own files, and it uses Windows system routines to do that. You're using a reasonably recent version of Cumulus - you should sort this problem out before you think about installing the very latest version.

If you zip up the diags folder and attach it, together with the today.ini file, I'll take a look.

[steve]

Actually, it appears that you have gone back to a very old version of Cumulus.

On 3rd June, you were using 1.9.4 build 1095, but today you are using 1.9.2 build 1032, which is over two years old.

[raym]

hi Steve,

thanks, files attached

I hope..

Best wishes,

Ray

[raym]

Hi,

I've just seen your missive re. old version. Do you think that may be the problem? Any way I've sent the requested files.

[steve]

You appear to have had a very strange date format set in Windows:

Date=Fri/06/06/2014
Timestamp=Fri/06/06/2014 02:00:00

It looks like you changed the date setting on your PC some time today, so it should be OK now.

You need to install 1.9.4, and edit today.ini to change those lines to

Date=06/06/2014
Timestamp=06/06/2014 02:00:00

[raym]

Thanks Steve,

seems to be OK, in the middle of updating - processing data.

I'm thinking the old version was from when I first installed cumulus - because the various measuring bits of the wh2080 often fail, I'm not into putting it up a web site, so there hasn't been a problem until i guess June 6th - (I think it was before then, initially, but probably related to changing the system date format/whatever). Bit of a job to remember exactly what happened, any way seems to be fixed. Pity I can't seem to get the receiver to show the correct time.

Best wishes,

Ray

[raym]

When it was processing the backlog of data, (about 20 minutes worth)the error 'light' was flashing on main screen, clicking on it gave a date format error message for a couple of other ini files. Anyway, restarting cumulus, that seems to be OK now, I guess when it closed it rewrote the correct formats.