"The weather station is currently offline" error

[DanielF]

I'm getting some puzzling behaviour on my SteelSeries gauges web page...

The 'LCD' banner at the top says: "The weather station is currently offline. Last update 2 hours ago." But the Vantage Vue is running (though it says Tx1 battery is low), updating readings every 2.5 seconds. Cumulus is running, though the forecast (supposedly from the station, not Cumulus) says "Forecast requires 3 hours of recent data". But the Cumulus graphs show continuous data for the past 12 hours at least!

What's going on?? Cumulus says 'Uploading' every 5 minutes, though a friend who uses my wind data on another site says my realtime files are not being uploaded regularly. I checked the Internet configuration, and nothing has changed - realtime update every 9 seconds, with the two SteelSeries files specified in the Files tab.

Can anyone suggest what might be causing this misbehaviour, or how to diagnose it? Any help appreciated!

Cumulus 1.9.2 on a Win 2000 Pro machine, serial interface to Vantage Vue.

[robynfali]

Sounds stupidly simply am sorry but have you tried restarting cumulus

[steve]

I looked at your gauges just now, and they updated correctly for a couple of minutes, and then stopped, because the realtimegauges.txt file wasn't being updated, and neither was realtime.txt. So you probably have ftp problems. If you turn on ftp logging, the realtimeftplog.txt file may show what's going on.

[DanielF]

If you turn on ftp logging, the realtimeftplog.txt file may show what's going on.

Steve,

I turned on logging, but it doesn't seem to be working either! I presume the log file should appear in the Cumulus directory of Program Files (there was an old one there), but no new file is appearing there (I renamed the old one first).

Perhaps I should try reinstalling Cumulus?

PS (Robyn): Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I not only tried restarting Cumulus, but also rebooting the PC (standard practice when things don't work as expected )

[steve]

Yes, the log is created in the Cumulus folder. Note that the file is only created when there is ftp activity, so that looks like a clue as to what is happening. Try this: turn off realtime ftp - untick all three boxes, then 'OK'. Restart Cumulus. Turn on ftp logging. Turn on realtime ftp again - tick all three boxes, then 'OK'. Run until the realtime updates stop and then check the realtimeftplog.txt file.

[DanielF]

Steve,

I finally got FTP logging to run, and left it going for a day or so (it's a big file!) - attached.

There are errors in it, but I don't know what they mean - are they from my end or the website end? And what might cause them?

I'd appreciate any help you can offer.

[steve]

The errors are timeouts, i.e. the server doesn't respond, so after 15 seconds the connection gets aborted and reconnected.

[DanielF]

Thanks Steve, I'll see if we can find something at the server end for those errors.

But what about the thousands of 'Aborting' messages, presumably from Cumulus? Are they significant?

[steve]

Many of the aborts are because of the timeouts. Cumulus also does an abort when it disconnects; it would only normally disconnect the realtime ftp connection if you had set an RTdisconnectcount value in cumulus.ini.

[DanielF]

...it would only normally disconnect the realtime ftp connection if you had set an RTdisconnectcount value in cumulus.ini.

I didn't consciously set a value, but the .ini file has a value of 80 for RTdisconnectcount. Is there some Cumulus configuration setting that would have created that value? What does that actually mean? Should I change it to something else?

[steve]

The only way that value can get in there is by editing the file. Presumably you thought you needed it to resolve an ftp problem. A setting of 80 means that after every 80 realtime ftp uploads, Cumulus will disconnect the realtime ftp connection, and then re-establish it. Without the setting, it leaves the connection open permanently.

[DanielF]

...Without the setting, it leaves the connection open permanently.

Thanks for the speedy reply, Steve.

Strange, I certainly don't remember ever editing the .ini file! Anyway, do I delete that whole line, or just change its value to '0'? (And, of course, restart Cumulus afterwards.)

[steve]

do I delete that whole line, or just change its value to '0'? (And, of course, restart Cumulus afterwards.)

Either.

[DanielF]

Thanks again, Steve; I'll give it a try with zero value.

[steve]

You should also look at using ftp rename instead of 'delete before upload'. Assuming your ftp server supports ftp rename...