Problems with station communication: USB locks up completely

[muellerr64]

OK, is is possible that the manufacture has changed the code and those bytes mean something different or nothing at all anymore. Is there an option or a possibility that Cumulus could ignore the two bytes and continue on as EW does. EW has been working perfectly for days, it would be great to see Cumulus doing the same.

I'd be willing to test a version that would ignore the status bytes and continue on...

I'd really hate to have to reset the device every time it locks up...

ron

[sfws]

see http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#When_I ... ialised.22

[steve]

see http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#When_I ... ialised.22

Indeed, as mentioned in my earlier reply

[muellerr64]

Nice...I need reading lessons, I complete skipped over the part where 'to ignore this check'...

thanks a ton; gladly donated to keep this stuff going.

ron

[steve]

I'd be interested to hear whether you're getting good data (both 'live' and 'archive') using this option. Some people have found that using it doesn't really help as the 'initialisation bytes' not being set to the expected values means that the station isn't working correctly anyway.

[steve]

Post about initialisation bytes moved to separate thread: https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8780

[rwilliam99]

Just an update on my "experiment" of using EasyWeather to interface with the station and then using Cumulus to read the EasyWeather data.

It has been almost two weeks (tomorrow will be two weeks) since I changed the configuration and did the hard reset and things have been working perfectly. The only issue I have is the gross overstatement of rain, which I have no idea why. The data file looks OK. I've got it set to poll every 5 mins and Cumulus is set to read every 5 mins, but the totals are WAY over what they should be. Other than that, things look good thus far.

Maybe it isn't a hardware issue? But some weird anomaly in how the data is read?

Rob

[steve]

I've just uploaded a new beta build of 1.9.3 which attempts to work around the 'USB lockup' problem using Jim's method of avoiding communication while the console is writing to memory.

Note that this is only for the USB lockup problem, i.e. where the station doesn't respond at all. It is not for any of the other problems which have been posted in this thread, e.g. 'sensor contact lost' or 'station not initialised'. If you click on the error light, or look in the diags files, you should be able to tell whether you have this particular problem. Recent versions of Cumulus give 'station not responding' as the error message for this problem.

See the announcement in this thread for download details: https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7341

[muellerr64]

So far so good, after adding the config setting to ignore the initialization bytes, the device has responded properly for days. The only thing that has happened are a few sensor lost errors, but recording just fine otherwise.

ron

[ejay]

Thanks Steve. This is quite timely, as I will be leaving my setup unattended for a few months.

It's always a matter of time before the station stops responding. For me, sometimes it can go for two months, sometimes two weeks. But when it does happen, losing a chunk of readings is always annoying when needing to reset my station.

I'm hoping this will fix the problem for once and for all. I don't mind the lost sensor contact errors, as it always recovers from these situations.

I'm wondering whether EasyWeather has the same protection built-in to prevent reading data when the station is receiving sensor data.

[jim-easterbrook]

I'm wondering whether EasyWeather has the same protection built-in to prevent reading data when the station is receiving sensor data.

I doubt it. My USB snooping of EasyWeather shows it downloading all new logged data, then reading data every 15 seconds after that, with no suggestion of any pauses, or attempts to determine when sensor data is being received.
And I believe EasyWeather users have also experienced lockups.

[steve]

I'm hoping this will fix the problem for once and for all.

Note that this isn't a fix, it's a work around. And because the process of synchronising the reading of data necessarily involves reading the data - at a higher rate than normal - there is always going to be the risk that the problem will occur during the synchronisation process itself. The risk of the problem occurring overall should be greatly reduced, however.

[rwilliam99]

I've run the beta for a bit now, and yesterday it locked up on me. I reset the console and all is well again, but this change didn't seem to have much effect for me.

One request - would it be possible to add a simple "email me" option if Cumulus detects the station not responding? The error message I got was very specific, and it definitely sensed that the console was non responsive. It would greatly help in reducing the time from when I see there is a problem until I reset the console, minimizing any lost data. If you can't add an option to email, maybe you could write out some sort of semaphore file that would signal there is a problem like this, and an external program could email.

Thanks for considering the request.

Rob

[steve]

I've run the beta for a bit now, and yesterday it locked up on me. I reset the console and all is well again, but this change didn't seem to have much effect for me.

Could you zip up the diags folder and attach it, please?

One request - would it be possible to add a simple "email me" option if Cumulus detects the station not responding? The error message I got was very specific, and it definitely sensed that the console was non responsive. It would greatly help in reducing the time from when I see there is a problem until I reset the console, minimizing any lost data. If you can't add an option to email, maybe you could write out some sort of semaphore file that would signal there is a problem like this, and an external program could email.

An email facility is something I may add at some point, but it's not something I can do quickly. Could you not use the <#LatestError> web tag in conjunction with Toolbox or similar?

[rwilliam99]

I haven't really looked into the templating stuff - I've used other templates for that. I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.

Attached is the diags folder zipped up