Sandaysoft

I followed David's advice on unticking the box for the computer to save power on the root hubs. Since doing this yesterday I only have had 1 comm. error I feel this is awesome considering I would get the error and it would last up to 2hrs. I will inform everyone in this post in a couple of weeks to see how many comm errors I get. Thank you so much David for this great advice.

Jim Laursen
Melita, Manitoba Canada

Note that this thread has become confused by people talking about different problems. The problem I started the thread for is related to communication between the PC and the station, and David's USB power management suggestion is relevant to that.

It sounds to me like you are talking about 'sensor contact lost', which relates to communication between the outdoor sensors and the station, which is a different problem and unlikely to be helped by any USB power management settings.

It's possibly my fault that the thread became confused as I mentioned the 'sensor contact lost' problem. I wanted to see whether there was any link between getting that particular problem and then getting the problem where the station stopped responding to Cumulus.

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Steve
Sanday Weather
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Yes; it would be nice if there was some sort of firmware upgrade. But then again if its purely a hardware design flaw then the Fine Offset firmware upgrade wouldn't probably fix the issue.

I have the Fine Offset configured remotely in a second home. That said its been up and running since March, 2012 with only one lockup. I talked someone into removing the batteries and putting them back and and all has been fine since that time. Before that I had it installed here on a test weather mast and it did fine for over 6 months.

Before the lockup I did try remotely booting the PC which didn't work.

Doing some generic USB testing here in the midwest I could remotely disconnect the power on the USB port if I connect to a power USB hub.

That said I don't know if that would work anyways leaving the batteries inside of the unit. It would though probably work taking the batteries out and just powering the unit via USB.

Ideally then would be to not utilize batteries and just maybe an AC to DC adapter on a remote control device (X-10, Z-Wave or UPB).

I'm guessing though there might be a few folks out there with Fine Offsets in a remote location where the "issue" may occur or has occurred and wondering what they did to fix the Fine Offset lockup when it occurred?

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- Pete

http://longboatkey.golffan.us/ - Fine Offset

http://lockport.golffan.us/ - Davis Vantage Vue

I'm far from being the sharpest tool in the box, and after this had happened 10 or 12 times (loss of connection) I realised that the problem was being triggered when ever I transmitted (I'm a radio ham) on the 10m band, other bands okay, just 10m. But that's a problem for me to sort out, unless Sandy can make his software RF proof!


Jeff Cook.

That's interesting, given that quite a few Fine Offset owners appear to be radio amateurs.

But just to be clear - are you talking about the problem that I created the thread for - i.e. where the PC software, including Cumulus, can no longer read data from the station until you do a full reset, or are you talking about 'sensor contact lost' - i.e. where the console isn't receiving data from the transmitter?

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Steve
Sanday Weather
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No, the tablet continues to receive information, but the link to Cumulus is lost. A full reset i.e. rebooting Cumulus solves the problem until the next time I transmit on the 10m band. Just occasionally my transmission causes a 2nd instance of Cumulus to show up in the system tray. This is clearly a sensitivity at my end to 28MHz RF in the shack.

Steve, my apologies for calling you Sandy in my last post, I think that proves the point that I'm not the sharpest tool in the box.


Jeff Cook.

Very odd. But possibly not the problem that others are seeing, as that requires a reset of the station, rather than just a Cumulus restart.



No problem

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Steve
Sanday Weather
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[/quote]That's interesting, given that quite a few Fine Offset owners appear to be radio amateurs.


Steve, as regards quite a few radio hams being weather station owners, this is probably explained by our mindset. There are several digital modes of transmission where voice isn't used, but macros are popular for conveying information, particularly information regarding our local weather. Now then, unfortunately one cannot do this directly from Cumulus, but by outputting ones weather data to for instance Weather Underground, and then using Weather Watcher Live to recapture the information, one can then use a facility from within Weather Watch Live to write a weather file to a location on one's computer. That weather file can then be picked up by the ham radio software in use and converted directly into a macro.

This works okay, but clearly it is a very around the houses way of doing things. If at some point in time when you are sat there twiddling your thumbs, and wondering what to do next, would you consider incorporating such a feature into Cumulus. You would instantly acquire the gratitude (and perhaps even a few donations) from hundreds, maybe thousands, even possibly tens of thousands of radio hams around the world.

Your software and the limitation described above has been talked about a lot from time to time on the Ham Radio Deluxe Forum, and if (pretty please) you do find yourself able to incorporate such a feature I would make sure that it was given the fullest possible airing on the above-mentioned forum.

Jeff Cook, G0AFQ.

You'd have to explain to me exactly what that missing facility is before I could implement it. Cumulus has the ability to generate files in pretty much any format containing weather data, so it must be something other than that?

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Steve
Sanday Weather
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From a vast array of Current Data Tags available within Weather Watcher Live, I use just the four shown immediately below. These are saved to a .text file of my choosing, and appear as shown in the second block of data. It is this block of data which is used by Ham Radio Deluxe to construct a macro weather report for my location. Weather Watcher Live updates and overwrites the information every few minutes. It is Cumulus in the first place that generates the data which eventually appears in my weather macro, but it is a circuitous route and would be much more elegant if Cumulus itself could write this data directly to a .txt file. As of yet I haven't found a way of doing this.

Thanks for your interest Steve.


Condition : [CONDITION]
Temperature : [TEMP]
Wind : [WIND]
Barometer : [BAROMETER PLAIN]


Condition : Scattered Clouds
Temperature : 16.3°C
Wind : 14.48 km/h
Barometer : 1009.5


Jeff Cook.

Cumulus can only do 'condition' if you supply it manually via the 'current conditions' box. Assuming you do that, you then create a text file like this:

Condition : <#currcond>
Temperature : <#temp> <#tempunit>
Wind : <#wspeed> <#windunit>
Barometer : <#press> <#pressunit>

Add that file to the 'local' files list on the 'files' tab of the internet settings, tell Cumulus where you want the processed file to be via the corresponding 'remote' file. Tick the 'process?' box. Choose whether you want it processing at the 'realtime' interval or the 'main' interval by ticking (or not) the 'realtime?' box.

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Steve
Sanday Weather
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Thanks for that explanation Steve, I will print it off and read it several times and then give my turgid brain the time it needs to assimilate the information.

Then I will report back here, and if successful will pass on your advice to those on the Ham Radio Deluxe Forum whom I know will be as enthusiastic about this as am I.

Once again thanks.

Jeff.

That's just the job Steve, I'm unbelievably slow but I got there in the end. Now I can let the other HRD forum members with weather station interests know that there is a direct method of getting Cumulus generated data into HRD's DM780 macros.

Jeff Cook.

You can add me to the list of users with a 1080 and having a comm problem between the station and PC (in my case its a netbook). Everything had been hunky-dory since I set it all up a couple of months ago (I don't have a website yet, but do update WOW and Wunderground plus send out tweets) and then on Saturday evening it just stopped. Tried everything so far to try to re-establish the link but nothing seems to happen. Station seems to be connecting fine in Windows as a USB device, but whenever you fire up Cumulus it hangs on the downloading data bit.

I hadn't made any changes to the settings on the netbook but (given its Windows XP) it was updating with a lot of updates (which I hadn't done for a while as the netbook is on 24/7) so it is possible that a file was updated which the station doesn't like, I suppose...

A tad frustrated!