Fine Offset Refresh

[Frank02]

Hello All,

I have downloaded and installed Cumulus yesterday and it worked great for a few hours.

Then it suddenly stopped refreshing the screen data from the station (using Fine Offset National Geographic 256 on USB).

Since that time, I haven't been able to make it work. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing Cumulus with no success. I am using the latest build (488)

Cumulus reads the data from the station when I load it but then after that, nothing, no refresh. Sometimes I don't even get an initial reading.

When I use Easyweather, everything works fine.

Any clue on what can cause this?

Thank you.

[steve]

Possibly invalid data from the console causing the entire data to be discarded. Turn on the debug log, wait 5 minutes and have a look in the debug.log file to see if it says anything about data being discarded.

[Frank02]

Hello Steve and thank you for the quick reply.

I did as you said and coudn't see anything in the debug log about bad data. I wonder if the problem didn't start with one of the last updates. I guess that I should have kept my previous downloads.

Here is what the devug window shows:

Request EW data block, addr = 000000
Request EW data block, addr = 0001D0
Data: 03 2C DE 00 40 18 00 8D 27 00 03 00 04 F1 01 80
Request EW data block, addr = 000000
Request EW data block, addr = 0001D0
Data: 04 2C DE 00 41 18 00 8D 27 00 03 00 0C F1 01 80
Request EW data block, addr = 000000
Request EW data block, addr = 0001D0
Data: 04 2C DE 00 41 18 00 8D 27 00 03 00 0C F1 01 80
Request EW data block, addr = 000000
Request EW data block, addr = 0001D0
Data: 04 2C DE 00 41 18 00 8D 27 00 03 00 0C F1 01 80
Request EW data block, addr = 000000
Request EW data block, addr = 0001D0
Data: 05 2C DE 00 41 19 00 8E 27 00 0A 00 0A F1 01 80
Request EW data block, addr = 000000
Request EW data block, addr = 0001D0
Data: 05 2C DE 00 41 19 00 8E 27 00 0A 00 0A F1 01 80
Request EW data block, addr = 000000
Request EW data block, addr = 0001D0
Data: 05 2C DE 00 41 19 00 8E 27 00 0A 00 0A F1 01 80

And it keeps getting refresh with those data.

Thank you.

[Frank02]

Sorry, here is part of the debug.log:

0439.281 : Non-zero status!!!
0439.281 : 2:14:41 PM EW data line 07 0A 2D D1 00 46 18 80 54
0439.297 : 2:14:41 PM EW data line 08 27 00 03 00 0E F0 01 80
0454.219 : 2:14:56 PM USB device is plugged in
0454.219 : 2:14:56 PM request EW data block, written = 9, addr = 000000
0454.234 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 01 00 00 00 0F 2E DB 00 44
0454.234 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 02 06 80 07 27 00 0E 00 0F
0454.266 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 03 0A 20 02 53 11 00 00 00
0454.266 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 04 85 80 00 0D 00 0E D0 01
0454.266 : 2:14:56 PM USB device is plugged in
0454.266 : 2:14:56 PM request EW data block, written = 9, addr = 0001D0
0454.281 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 05 06 2C DE 00 40 19 00 8D
0454.281 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 06 27 0A 14 00 0C F1 01 80
0454.281 : 2:14:56 PM Data: 06 2C DE 00 40 19 00 8D 27 0A 14 00 0C F1 01 80
0454.281 : Non-zero status!!!
0454.297 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 07 0A 2D D1 00 46 18 80 54
0454.297 : 2:14:56 PM EW data line 08 27 00 03 00 0E F0 01 80
0457.438 : 2008-10-30 2:15:00 PM Minute timer 15

[steve]

It was really the debug log that I was wanting, but never mind, I see what the problem is. The last byte of the data is a status byte and should normally be zero. If it's non-zero I ignore the data. Bear in mind that the only details I have for these stations are those that others have reverse-engineered; Fine Offset won't give me the protocol.

I believe a value of 64 in the status byte indicates that contact has been lost with the sensors, but I don't know what 128 means, I had assumed it was indicative of some other problem. It's definitely working 100% OK with Easyweather? if so, maybe I should should check for sensor-lost bit and ignore the others.

Edit: Thanks for the debug log - as you can see that confirms what I was saying.

Steve

[Frank02]

Yep. No later than yesterday it was working perfectly.

I am really not sure what has caused it to cease working. What is one of the last updates? The fact that I did change and save some settings (such as 20 minutes recording to 10 minutes recording) with Easyweather ? That I cleared the memory? or something else?

I'm in the dark on that side.

Thanks again.

[steve]

Possibly the x'80' status bit just indicates that the memory has been cleared. Maybe I should ignore it. I'll make a new build tomorrow with that change in.

Steve

[steve]

New build now available:

http://www.nybbles.co.uk/downloads/beta ... sSetup.exe

[Frank02]

Nice!

I am back on track.

Thank you very much Steve.

[steve]

Excellent. I wish I knew what the status values meant, though.

Steve

[Frank02]

At this time my memory graph on the console is empty. I can always check if the status byte changes once the memory graph starts to fill.

So you think that it stops working for me because that status byte changed? (because I had it work 2 days ago with the previous version(s)).

Thanks.

[steve]

Actually, I think the clearing of the memory can't be the cause, because others have done that without problem.

Before I did this change, Cumulus just checked the status bit and discarded the data if it was non-zero. I have now changed it to only check the X'40' bit, because I am told that bit means that the sensors have been disconnected. I don't know what the X'80' bit means, so I'll ignore it for now.

Steve

[Frank02]

Ok. If I can figure out something I will let you know.

As I said before, I did some changes such as clearing the memory and installing new versions of Cumulus when it started not working. It also started raining around the same time and the console started recording rain data. I have it setup to display the amount in the past 24 hours.

So, it's a bit hard to really figure out what happened for the byte to change at this time. One thing I know for sure is that the sensors didn't stop working or were not disconnected.

Thanks.