Cumulus Support

First let me say that Cumulus is really fantastic software and thanks for making it available!

We have Cumulus running on a computer in the office, the weather station is connected over TCP/IP. The computer has UPS, other equipment doesn't.
Today was a power failure, the whole network was down, but the computer stayed up and Cumulus kept running. But there was an error popup that blocked Cumulus even after the network and station came up again. Screenshot.

It would be really great if Cumulus could overcome the loss of connectivity.
Edit: Cumulus version 1.9.2 build 1019

The error message is telling you that Cumulus (or, rather, the Davis DLL which Cumulus uses) cannot communicate with your station. So you need to investigate the reason for that.

aluga wrote:Today was a power failure, the whole network was down, but the computer stayed up and Cumulus kept running.

It would be my understanding that if a network goes down, then the address assigned to the TCP/IP (I presume that you are writing about the WeatherLink IP adaptor) also goes down (the address just vanishes).

Once the power is restored, more likely, the router assigns new IP addresses to all the computers on the network, including the WeatherLink IP adaptor - so when Cumulus tries to get the data from the WeatherLink IP adaptor ... the WeatherLink IP adaptor is (more likely) not at the IP address that was previously setup in Cumulus...

aluga wrote:It would be really great if Cumulus could overcome the loss of connectivity.

Cumulus can handle loss of power quite well ... as long as the WeatherLink IP adaptor has been assigned a fixed IP address in the router setup (not all router have that facility) ... if a fixed network IP address is assigned to the WeatherLink IP adaptor, then, when the network is back in operation, that (same) IP address will once again be re-assigned to the WeatherLink IP adaptor.

I'm sorry I wasn't specific. Both the computer and the other side have static IP addresses. On the side of a weather station is a Planet ICS 100: a RS-232 to Ethernet converter.

The error message is telling you that Cumulus (or, rather, the Davis DLL which Cumulus uses) cannot communicate with your station. So you need to investigate the reason for that.

The reason was a power failure.
Would it be possible for Cumulus to periodically re-check if Davis DLL is able to restore the communication?

aluga wrote:Would it be possible for Cumulus to periodically re-check if Davis DLL is able to restore the communication?

Possibly; I'd have to look at what was required.

I am not too sure by what you meant when you wrote "Both the computer and the other side have static IP addresses" ... the other side of what?

OK, the error image you posted in your first message indicates that Cumulus cannot communicate with the weather station console.

I have just created a power-loss situation in my office, the network was down while the computer running Cumulus was still powered on - I got that same error number (-32701)

The PLANET ICS-10x adaptor allows communications between a serial RS-232/RS-422/RS-485 interface (such as the one provided by WeatherLink serial port adaptor attached to a weather station) and the network - it is not a network nor a router but relies on the network - the PLANET ICS-10x adaptor needs to be connected to a 'live' network in order to provide communications - as I wrote, if the power goes down, more likely the router managing the network goes down - sure, the computer running Cumulus might still have power (through a UPS) - but what about the PLANET ICS-10x adaptor (connected to the weather station console), where does it gets its power when the power goes down (is it also connected to a UPS)?

steve wrote:

aluga wrote:Would it be possible for Cumulus to periodically re-check if Davis DLL is able to restore the communication?

Possibly; I'd have to look at what was required.

Steve, what is the present behaviour of Cumulus when it cannot read the data through the Davis DLL - does Cumulus just try once and gives up or does Cumulus try a few times before displaying the error message "-32701" (and if Cumulus tries for more than one time, how many times or for how long)?

gemini06720 wrote:Steve, what is the present behaviour of Cumulus when it cannot read the data through the Davis DLL - does Cumulus just try once and gives up or does Cumulus try a few times before displaying the error message "-32701" (and if Cumulus tries for more than one time, how many times or for how long)?

At start up, it just tries once; I don't know whether the DLL retries.

While running, it just keeps retrying. But from what you've said, that seems not to be the case?

gemini06720, the setup is like this:
1. Office: computer and UPS (Cumulus), network equipment (no UPS), wires, incoming Internet connection from ISP.
2. Port: wires, network equipment (Ethernet, no UPS), ICS-100 and weatherstation (both have UPS).
Between 1 and 2 is some distance, but the computer in the office and an ICS-100 are in the same network and share a router. Both have static internal addresses 192.168....
When the power went town, the network went down and the sides lost contact.

Cumulus picks up after power loss very gracefully: it reads the logs and even updates the charts accordingly. That's really very nice.
It would be fantastic if Cumulus could overcome this kind of errore without human intervention.
Obviously the loss of connectivity is very serious error and has to be communicated very visibly.
Perhaps the error dialog could close after x minutes. If the error persists, the dialog could be displayed again for x minutes.
Therefore the error is visible if somebody glances at the screen, but normal work resumes, if error goes away and there's nobody around to press "OK".

I think I have misunderstood the original request. I thought you were talking about what happens when you start Cumulus again after the power is restored. But what you are saying is that you get this error while it's running?

It should just keep retrying. However, there is another issue here, and this applies to Cumulus in general, whatever the station type. It would keep logging the same data, and it would be a large change to Cumulus to avoid this.

steve wrote:what you are saying is that you get this error while it's running?

Yes. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear.

It would keep logging the same data, and it would be a large change to Cumulus to avoid this.

No problem, Cumulus is great with current behavior too!