Cumulus Support

Hi Guys.

I bought a WH2081 off ebay a few months back, a few days before i went on holidays the outdoor transmitter stopped working, no more blinky lights, tried different batts etc, dead, sent it back to get replaced, got a new one back today, powered it up, blinky light is back now, however on my console i get nothing.
just -- for temp/ rain/ wind . I can see every 28 odd seconds the RF indicator on the console stay solid for about 2 seconds.
Have tried holding down the Down Key, to resync, as well as the up key to do a full reset. Still no luck.
Any ideas ? or do i have another faulty RF transmitter, or is it possible that its a different version ? not sure if they are interchangeable
might have to drag out of the hand scanner and see if i can hear anything near 433mhz when the light blinks and if the console indicates at the same time.

Any other ideas ? to resync the new rf radio to the console ?

Remove the batteries from the console to completely reset - then put back in. This is what I sometimes have to do with my console.

Trev

teg wrote:Remove the batteries from the console to completely reset - then put back in. This is what I sometimes have to do with my console.

Trev

Yep. And if it's connected via USB, unplug that too. as it powers the console when the computer is on.

left the console unplugged and no batts.
still no joy this morning

any ideas what the numbers mean on bootup reset ?

Above rain it shows 280
and under pressure seems to change each time 3059 , 3079, 3057, 3081,
if i plug the usb in rather then the batts seems to get different numbers... not sure if its a code or just the 3v bus reading ?

will climb back on the roof and grab the unit and see if i can see it blink and register at the same time and listen with a scanner to hear if there are any tones, or just static noise. Maybe they have sent me a 800/900mhz rf unit, rather then 433mhz ? no sticker on the RF unit to indicate the frequency from memory, but there is a sticker on the console saying 433mhz

Well got the RF unit off the roof, when the unit blinks red, it doesn't register on the console. though the console does seem to indicate RF now and then but not every 30seconds, maybe every 5mins, so may be some interference around or the unit trying to resync ?
Using the the old police scanner scanning around 420~440mhz i cant hear anything, where as the old RF unit i could hear something around 433.4 mhz pulsing every 30seconds.
Tried to scan around 860~870MHz / 910~920MHz and couldn't hear anything either. If anyone knows the rough channels that are allocated for the RF units that would be handy, else i may try just scanning a 1Mhz chunk for a while and see if i jag something.

Try 433.920 MHz (am), the data burst is very short. Unless you have a 800+ MHz unit then I don't know the frequency.

Good luck!

Getting these re-synced after a battery change can sometimes be tricky. I've found it best to get the units close together (take the console outside), remove all the batteries, then put them back in the transmitter first, then put them back in the console. They should sync within a couple minutes.

The TX symbol for low transmitter battery voltage has been showing for a while now on my console, and I had a hunch I could replace the batteries without having to power down the station and reset the console (a hassle!)
I surmised and hoped there was a capacitor across the supply lines which would keep the circuit alive for a short period between transmissions with batteries diconnected. If not, nothing lost, just do the normal resetting.
Waiting until the TX LED flashed, as quickly as possible I flicked out one cell and replaced it with a new one. I then waited until the LED flashed again before repeating the exercise for the 2nd cell.
Everything continued without missing a beat, except the TX voltage symbol is still showing on the console - might require a reset to turn that off!

Ned

Could you capture a debug log for a short period when this indicator is show?

I'm hoping Steve could implement a low battery warning for the FO stations

Hi Ned,

Yes the FO transmitter draws hardly any current for 44 seconds after the LED flashes. But I expect that FO fit quite small decouplers so you probably do need to work quickly.

Ned wrote:the TX voltage symbol is still showing on the console - might require a reset to turn that off!

Yes, but it would be interesting to wait for a few days to see if the low battery icon does spontaneously disappear. When I tested my FO kit, I found that the Low TX icon ONLY updated when the receiver batteries were re-inserted (reported in this thread) and several users have said that they have never seen the icon. Maybe the icon is updated during some regular "housekeeping" (e.g. at midnight) or perhaps just occasionally the receivers spontaneously "crash" but can reboot themselves automatically (e.g. using a "watchdog timer") and thus update the icon.

So sadly, Mark, I doubt if a debug log will be useful (unless someone can identify something like a midnight housekeeping event). It's not possible to create a debug log whilst the logger is booting; I did try comparing the memory mapped data from the logger both with the low TX icon on and off, but I could not find any bit which appeared to correlate. My suspicion is that the low TX flag is communicated directly from the receiver/decoder to the LCD driver software/hardware and is not written to the memory which Cumulus reads.

Cheers, Alan.

Cheers guys - happy to report the TX icon is not showing this morning
I switch the PC off overnight, but I don't think that is relevant. Put it down to console 'housekeeping' as Alan suggested.

Yes, I think speed is the essence. Each cell replacement took about 4 seconds at a guess, with a 'recovery' period allowed between them (just to be safe)

Hi,

mcrossley wrote:Could you capture a debug log for a short period when this indicator is show?

Thanks to Ned's observation I thought I'd try a few more tests on my system. The transmitter is currently running with NiMH cells and the Low battery icon has been ON for some time. So I charged up the cells in situ and my icon also vanished overnight.

Today I pulled the battery voltage down below the 2.5 volt threshold and started a Cumulus debug log just before midnight. Promptly at midnight the icon re-appeared.

However, I can't see any bit changes in the data at the rollover (for reference my PC clock is currently 45 seconds behind the FO time, but the log appears to show FO time?). Some bits do change in the few minutes of the recorded file, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with the memory map to know if any is significant.

Of course even if a "low TX battery" flag is stored (which personally I doubt), it might be set by the incoming data rather than the icon driver, so I also recorded a debug log whilst raising the TX battery voltage. Again I can't see any significant bit changes, but attached are the two logs in case anyone else wants to try.

Cheers, Alan.

The 'known' status byte is the last byte of the data, but that's zero:

3708.6063 : 23:58:02 Data: 03 2F DC 00 37 DB 00 7B 27 00 00 00 06 2B 03 00

It's not in the first 16 bytes of the memory, either; the only difference there is the current memory location address:

3708.6016 : 23:58:02 EW data line 01 55 AA FF FF FF FF FF FF
3708.6016 : 23:58:02 EW data line 02 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
3708.6032 : 23:58:02 EW data line 03 05 40 08 32 11 80 00 00
3708.6032 : 23:58:02 EW data line 04 00 00 00 F0 0F 00 E0 7E

It might be in the next eight bytes of the memory (the part containing the pressure offset) but Cumulus only reads that at start up (and logs it to the diags file).