Please Wait - Dowloading Data - why?

[mooba]

I have this pop up box in the mddle of my screen. It appears to have been there at least since the FTP upload at 21.30 yesterday. have tried stuff, rebooting things etc. I comes back each time I restart? I can't make it go awway?

[steve]

Your station may have stopped responding to requests for data; a number of people are finding this happens with Fine Offset stations. You may need to reset it to get it going again. If you zip up the diags folder and attach it, I'll take a look.

[mooba]

Thanks. Diags attached. For info the USB connection is now direct not via a hub.

[steve]

Your station has stopped responding to requests for data. A reset may get it going again (remove batteries and USB cable).

[mooba]

Thanks Steve. Now working again. I thought had already tried your suggestion, however I eventually re-established communication following this sequence of events.
1. Shutdown PC.
2. Un-plug USB & Remove batteries.
3. Restart PC.
4. Retire to the pub for a swift pint.
5. Re-insert batteries, plug in USB.
6. Cup of tea.
7. Re-start Cumulus.
8. Success!

I think I will go and talk to those nice people at Maplin.

[steve]

I think steps 4 and 6 were the important ones; I should add that to the documentation somewhere.

[water01]

Personaly I would have repeated 4 rather than do 6!!

[Feek]

Mine is doing the same, diags attached.

Same thing?

[steve]

Yes, exactly the same. Cumulus asks for data, gets nothing back.

[Feek]

Thanks Steve - I pulled the batteries and it seemed to carry on OK after that.

I noticed yesterday afternoon that my data had been flatlined for nearly 24 hours - I called home and asked them to reset the computer, which my daughter did but when I got Cumulus and the console talking again, it only downloaded data from when my daughter did the reset. That makes sense because I suspect Cumulus still thought it was receiving data albeit flat.

Is there any way to alert to these flatlines? ie if Cumulus sees all figures unchanged for [say] ten minutes, it can trigger an alert, be it audible, email, whatever?

[steve]

Is there any way to alert to these flatlines? ie if Cumulus sees all figures unchanged for [say] ten minutes, it can trigger an alert, be it audible, email, whatever?

It should flash the error light and report a 'data stopped' error, unless you've told it not to (via ReportDataStoppedErrors=0 cumulus.ini setting). You can also get it to restart on data stopped errors (station settings); it most likely won't be able to read any data, but at least it won't flatline.

If you have to reset the station to get it going again, don't you lose the data from the logger anyway, though?

[Feek]

The error light was flashing but I suspect many people will be running Cumulus on headless computers and won't be watching it to see. A subtle low beeping could alert on certain errors. I don't think it's needed for ftp errors as I generally get one or two of those a day but they're nothing to worry about. I certainly don't keep an eye on my website all the time and so that's why it was nearly 24 hours before I noticed it had flatlined.

I thought that I was going to lose all the data when I pulled the batteries from the console but that wasn't the case. When I restarted Cumulus after doing that, it pulled a couple of hours worth of data out of the console, back to when my daughter reset the computer. I'm guessing that Cumulus assumed it had good data up until that point and so it didn't go back any further.

[Super-T]

When you removed the batteries did you also unplug the USB?

[Feek]

Yes. I had to reset the pressure to the correct local value once I put the battery back and plugged the USB back in.

I only removed one battery, the very top one. The display went blank and I had the beep when I put it back in after a few seconds.

[pete_c]

Steve,

Curious.

I have to remove and install the batteries now about twice in the last 3 weeks. I never had to do that with the previous before the 1030 build. (over 8 months or so on previous versions).

Could the issue be related to the USB communications and application causing the "hiccup'?

The reason I am asking is because I was going to move the Fine Offset weather station to FL. That said if it hiccups when I am not there I would have to find a remote means of removing the batteries/USB cable. For the cable piece I could just reboot the computer remotely.

I guess I could remove the batteries and use some sort of AC to DC adapter on a remote power switch. Its 4.5 VDC via batteries. Anyone out there doing this today maybe with a 5VDC PS?