Trixology
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: dfw_pilot on April 07, 2016, 07:13:57 AM
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Since January 2016, Weather Underground has a serious flaw and it has been driving me crazy. See the screen shot below to see what I mean. Under my PWS Current Conditions page, the elevation, and all relevant data (except my soil station data) is from an adjacent station! To make matters worse, the adjacent station is often times offline. So what does WU do then? The use yet another station to fill in data in the Current Conditions section of my PWS page. The indignity!!
Sadly, I've been round and round with "customer service" and all they can say is that they are looking into the problem. The stick in the eye is they then ask if it has been resolved. Hello? Can you not see it isn't fixed yet? Has anyone dealt with anything like this? When one clicks on my station from the WunderMap (what a wonder, it's working!) it shows the correct data. When one sees my PWS data via API in WU apps and third party apps, the data is correct. The Data is correct in my Table data below the Current Conditions section. But by golly, they can't display the correct Current Conditions to save their lives. It's frustrated me enough that I really want to just stop uploading to them.
[rant]
I've worked hard to provide accurate data. I use UPS's to keep my uploads going 24/7. I run my computer 24/7. I've invested in a Davis Vantage Pro II and a freaking soil station. I've even labored over a personal website (http://www.castlehillsnorth.com) and Twitter page (https://twitter.com/castlehillswx). I send them free data 25/8/366 and how do they thank me? The put the data from a crap station that is adjacent to me that isn't even good enough to be online half the day. It really makes me want to ask, why freaking bother?
[/rant]
See the corruption on this Wunderground page (https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KTXLEWIS26).
Anyone experience this before? Anyone have any answers? Thanks.
Seriously P/O'd in Dallas,
dfw
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I see what you're saying, when I pulled up your station it gave me the info from the station on the other side of the highway. Out of curiosity, have you tried logging off WU, clearing the cache(s) associated with WU and then logging back in?
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I have not experienced this particular problem, but, over the years, have had many other issues with WU. They will usually sort out the bugs, but they take their time and not one minute more.
I sort of look at it like this: it's a free service to upload to and free to browse. You get what you pay for!
Still, it would be nice if they kept on top of things better than they do.
Good luck.
Alan
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I haven't seen this issue with my account, but have had other issues with WU. They are less responsive to PWS owners since they were purchased by The Weather Channel.
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dfw, you probably won't like what I'm about to say. That's OK, I can take it, that's just part of being a "parent"! [lol]
I fear that you are confusing your relationship with WU as being a "customer". You are no more a "customer" of WU than you are of Google, Facebook, Twitter, et all. You, and especially everything you send them, are their "product". Your supply it to them at absolutely no cost to them.You are the one who invested time and money to produce the data. They have thousands of other free data suppliers.
They have very little incentive to work on your concerns since they are getting similar product from so many others. If you stop providing it, they have not lost much in the big picture.
Millions of people come to their site daily. Those who visit any one particular PWS page might reach into the hundreds in a few rare cases. Most of those pages may not even get daily hits!
Please remember, WU (Google, FB, Twit, et all) are businesses. Their primary concern is profit. If you are not a major profit center, you are not going to get very much attention or concern. Lastly, try to remember that you are providing them with the data they use toward creating their profit without any monetary reward. If you don't get enough "reward" from seeing your info (correct or not), that is not their concern. They are not and never have been in business to provide you with anything of value.
Their only purpose is to provide advertisers with hits and eyeballs. When and if they start to lose their free data or it becomes so inconsistent/reliable that their advertiser fees start to decrease, they will then attempt to correct problems like yours.
My personal (and therefore unarguable) opinion!: A "customer" exchanges something tangible for another tangible item. WU's "customer" is any one who is willing to give them money (a tangible item) for displaying that some one's ads.
We are customers of Stu's great software. We have some leverage over how it operates. He wants to give us as much as he reasonably can to help create new customers. It's a two-way relationship, each side wants the best for the other side. WU and it's data suppliers (us), is not a two-way relationship. Period. They make money, we get to see our 'name' on the WWW! And we spend a good deal of money and time to do it! [banghead]
BTW, here's a handy [rant] smiley, please send a cashiers check or a crisp $50 bill to my home address. (http://i1327.photobucket.com/albums/u666/xAirbusDriver/rant_zpsctcao228.gif) Please upload it to your own space as I may at any time remove it from its current location.
Thanks you so much for doing "business" with me. :P
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I see what you're saying, when I pulled up your station it gave me the info from the station on the other side of the highway. Out of curiosity, have you tried logging off WU, clearing the cache(s) associated with WU and then logging back in?
Stopping the upload
Felix, thanks, I quit uploading for most of a day, to see if that would reset anything, but all that did was put a gap in my data graphs. Do you know of a longer time period reseting or working? I'd be happy to stop for a longer period if I knew that would work.
Nuclear option
My nuclear option would be to delete my station, start a new one, and then try and figure out if I can upload my historical data to my new station. Does anyone know if that would work?
I fear that you are confusing your relationship with WU as being a "customer".
xAir, Sadly, I've been painfully aware that I am not the customer since January 8-ish. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose, putting me in a bad spot. You are right, of course, that until more trouble brews and people leave, there isn't much incentive to get little niff-naff stuff like this fixed.
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Dear dfw, Felix, Alan, Blick, X-Air, and WeatherCat data submission junkies, . . .
Since January 2016, Weather Underground has a serious flaw and it has been driving me crazy.
It is certainly no comfort I suppose, but I just checked your and my Weather Underground station pages and at the moment they are both correct. Will this last??? Your guess is as good as mine . . . . (http://www.canebas.org/WeatherCat/Forum_support_documents/Custom_emoticons/confused_do_no.gif)
Like everyone else, for the moment I don't see Weather Underground benefiting from the purchase by the Weather Channel. It might change someday. I'm sure they are still in the process of merging, but in the meantime they are leaving us personal station owners out the the cold .. [freeze]
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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You gotta look closely! The main temp may match, but that is a coincidence - look at dew point, pressure, elevation, etc. and compare it to the graph data below. It's still wrong.
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Err? It is all IBM as of October28, fellers. You'll have to refer all complaints to Watson.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47952.wss
[cheers1]
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Dear Watson, I have a request of you:
01010000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100110 01101001 01111000 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100101 01110010 01110010 01101111 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01000011 01110101 01110010 01110010 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101110 01100100 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01110000 01100001 01100111 01100101 00101100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101111 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101001 01110100 00101100 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100011 01100001 01110101 01110011 01100101 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01001101 01100001 01100011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00101110
Thank you,
dfw
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[lol2]
I can't wait to see the answer!
[cheers1]
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Nuclear option
My nuclear option would be to delete my station, start a new one, and then try and figure out if I can upload my historical data to my new station. Does anyone know if that would work?
1. Enter your new Wunderground station details into WeatherCat and check real time data is being uploaded OK.
2. Make sure the historical uploads is enabled in WeatherCat's Wunderground preferences (you might also want to switch on the historical logging so you can check the progress).
Then see http://wiki.trixology.com/index.php/How_to_force_WeatherCat_to_submit_historical_data
Note, depending on how much data you have, it could a while!
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Another thought DFW, before you go the "nuke" option (which was going to be my next suggestion), do the readings WU displays for your station make a difference whether or not you are signed in to the WU webpage with your e-mail & password?
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Thanks Stu!
Felix, thanks, that was one of the ideas from Wunderground; to be logged out. I even used a different browser to make sure I was fully out and no cookies were involved and I still had the same result. When you get a second, could you confirm it's still off? The way to tell easily is my elevation should be 521, not 568. Another way to tell is to check the current conditions temp/dewpoint with my charted numbers down below. The charted numbers down below have always been correct. So if the charts differ from the Current Conditions, the current conditions are still being taken from another station.
Thanks!
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When you get a second, could you confirm it's still off? The way to tell easily is my elevation should be 521, not 568. Another way to tell is to check the current conditions temp/dewpoint with my charted numbers down below. The charted numbers down below have always been correct. So if the charts differ from the Current Conditions, the current conditions are still being taken from another station.
Your elevation says 522. Your current conditions are very close, but still not exactly tracking the current charted numbers.
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Thanks for looking at it, Blicj.
You are saying that you see a 522 elevation on the Current Conditions page (The PWS Dashboard page) here (https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KTXLEWIS26)? Even with a logged out browser, I'm seeing 568 or 577 depending on which station is feeding data to my Dashboard page. However, other places of Weather Underground have it correct. This is a shot taken at Noon central time:
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OK. I see 577 on the page in the link. I see 522 when I click on About This PWS.
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I'm seeing the same as Blick. Somehow there's a crosslinked file pull on WU's end. If they are unwilling to engage and fix, I'd just delete the station and start over. Chances are you can even keep the same station name when you fill out the new station request. Now that Stu has detailed how to upload your historical data to the new station ID, you won't lose much but some time waiting on the new station to be activated/promulgated throughout their network.
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One other thing first though, shut down WC and delete the software, pull all the current version's data files and pref files and store where WC can't find them. Restart the computer, download the latest stable WC, start the latest download and let WC generate from scratch and start sending data again, just to ensure there isn't something corrupted on your end. If the same problem still exists, delete the station per the earlier discussion.
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This may be anathema to some, but I upload to all my networks, including WU via a Meteobridge. I actually do that for redundancy, because it's easier to keep it running than the iMac, just in case. I feel like the data isn't corrupted because it's good everywhere else: my website, other wx networks, even on most places at WU, just not on the main place it's displayed: on the dashboard. I've sent some more screen captures to "Kari" at Wunderground, and I'll see what happens next.
This is one of the crazier errors I've seen go unfixed on their site for a long time . . .
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I agree with your conclusion. Error is on their end and has nothing to do with WeatherCat or your uploads via Meteobridge.
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I have stopped watching my PWS on WU allthough I haven't stop uploading data. WU is not recognizing my webcams ot they are waiting for approval, so the service is not reliable. I prefer Weathercloud.
Cheers,
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WU is not recognizing my webcams ot they are waiting for approval
Same here, but they don't want QuickTime movies. I suppose I could get some app (Evocam?) to upload a jpeg/mpeg movie to some web space but I never got that app to work, either. [banghead] Too spoiled by 'stupid-easy-apps' like Terminal! At least they show the most recent snapshot, I think, I rarely visit their site, either. [rolleyes2]
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Greetings All
Weathercloud is not bad but does anyone know that the Rain plot means and how it is calculated? Seems wrong to me. Also it does not seem to automatically update, at least not the webcam.
Irving
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They might have some explanations and even an API that would help. Check their sitemap, if they have one.
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Irving:
Weathercloud is really getting better all the time. I like what they have done with the site snd they have been making nice improvements all along.
They are really good about responding to email. They have always replied to me within 24 hours. I suggest you ask your question to them. To send them an email, go here and leave a comment at the bottom. They will reply.
https://blog.weathercloud.net/?p=2220