Sandaysoft

Hello,
Weather newbie here, just got my first wx station, Davis Vantage VUE, which is really nice. I'm an amateur radio operator and am sending my reports to the ham APRS/CWOP network using Cumulus. I keep the console downstairs in the family room (for everyone to enjoy), but run Cumulus and other APRS software (APRSISCE) upstairs in my hamshack. So I have a wireless link that I designed my self which uses a pair of XBee wireless serial modems, plugged directly into the console box and the weather radio (Yes, I know I could do this with WeatherLink/Envoy, but that was too much $$$ for me).

[Details on my serial interface at WXForum: http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=10721.0 ]

I've only had this set up running for a few days. The problem that I'm reporting is that for the past few days Cumulus has been crashing at night and stops sending to APRS/CWOP. Actually I think it's because my computer goes into standby mode. Not a big problem. I can restart it myself and everything is fine again. And I know that I can set the computer to not go into standby. But I (and probably you) would like to know why Cumulus doesn't handle this more gracefully?

Would it be possible to add a flag that would allow Cumulus to prevent the computer from falling asleep?

So far I'm very pleased with my setup and hope to customize my web page some more.
http://www.qsl.net/af4ex/wx

Thanks for making Cumulus available to the world!

John/af4ex
Palm Bay, Florida

_________________
Palm Bay, Florida
(EL98PA)

It normally wouldn't crash, it would just not be able to collect data while suspended, and hence you would have a gap in your data. I'm afraid I didn't allow for anyone allowing their PC to go to sleep while Cumulus was running. It's quite hard to cater for it properly (i.e. to make it realise that it had been asleep and catch up again) for all types of weather station. Maybe one day when I've run out of other things to do I'll look into it.

As for the crash, it seems it was closing down and trying to put up the 'are you sure' dialogue. Do you have both 'close on suspend' and 'confirm shutdown' set?


I don't think that's possible; I don't think a user program can over-ride the suspension. But even if it is, it's not really something I'd want to consider adding - too much scope for causing problems!

_________________
Steve
Sanday Weather
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@steve
> Do you have both 'close on suspend' and 'confirm shutdown' set?

Yes, I did. Now I see that these are somewhat contradictory settings!

I suspect you'll see more of this kind of problem, because the computers sold nowadays (e.g. from WalMart) tend to have the 'sleep after long activity' turned on by default.

Thanks for the quick response!

John/af4ex

_________________
Palm Bay, Florida
(EL98PA)