Author Topic: Hello and 'please help' :-)  (Read 4483 times)

JosBaz

  • Strong Breeze
  • ***
  • Posts: 232
    • INBRSON2
    • Weatherstation Son en Breugel, The Netherlands
  • Station Details: Davis Vantage Pro2 Wireless, WeatherCat on Mac OS X 10.13.6
Hello and 'please help' :-)
« on: March 04, 2012, 12:47:37 AM »
Hi,

I live in the Netherlands and am very pleased to see someone is writing some good weather station s/w for the Mac. I've used Weatherlink, Cumulus and LWC in the past and am very interested in Weathercat.

Want to try the beta but need to get past this issue before I can... ???

I've had LWC2 2.1.1 build 50 running on a Mac 10.6.8 using an IP connection from a Windows XP machine which has a serial connection to the VP2. The Windows box is running Virtual VP (and Weatherlink 5.7.1). This worked fine, until I upgraded my Mac to Lion, i.e. 10.7.3. Since then I can start LWC2 (or Weathercat) but during initialisation get a window popping up with the message:

"Invalid Rain Collector Configuration
Your Vantage is reporting the rain collector is set to 0.1mm. This is an invalid configuration. Please change it to either 0.01 inches or 0.2mm's."

... and I have to Quit LWC.
Obviously the Rain Collector config is correctly set to .2mm on the VP2, so seems there is an issue with the Autodetect? I'm aware of the Termincal command to force LWC2 to .01 inch and this prevents the error message but of course results in wrong data.

A clean install, and replacing LWC2 with the latest Weathercat beta makes no difference. Same problem occurs.
Not sure if this is a bug.

Any tips/hints/ideas?

Many thanks,

Jos

P.S. I realize this may not be the right topic to post this but it seems I have no access elsewhere. ::)


elagache

  • Global Moderator
  • Storm
  • *****
  • Posts: 6494
    • DW3835
    • KCAORIND10
    • Canebas Weather
  • Station Details: Davis Vantage Pro-2, Mac mini (2018), macOS 10.14.3, WeatherCat 3
How does this work on the Mac side? (Re: 'please help' :-)
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2012, 01:26:37 AM »
Hi JosBaz and WeatherCat fans,

I've had LWC2 2.1.1 build 50 running on a Mac 10.6.8 using an IP connection from a Windows XP machine which has a serial connection to the VP2. The Windows box is running Virtual VP (and Weatherlink 5.7.1). This worked fine, until I upgraded my Mac to Lion, i.e. 10.7.3.

Well now . . . certainly a fancy setup!!  For other's who also are scratching their heads, you'll need to do know what Virtual VP is.  This is software that allows a PC to share the serial connection from a weather station with other PCs.

However, that's as far as I can manage to understand.  From the Virtual VP website, it claims that it creates virtual COM ports.  However, you are connecting to a Mac via IP.  So how did LWC "find" this IP serial device?  Were you using USB drivers which is normally what is used to connect to a Davis station?  If so, what did you do on the Mac side to get the Mac to recognize these virtual COM ports?

If you are using the standard "Davis" (Silicon Labs) drivers, did you update them to the versions that work on Lion?  That could be a problem if those drivers are used.  There is more information on MacWeather.net in the Davis hardware troubleshooting section: http://www.macweather.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11.

However, we may not be able to help you much more than that without a little more information on how you made this work in the first place!

Please do help us by describing how the Mac used-to get data from the Virtual VP link.

Hope there is something here that starts the troubleshooting process.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

Tornado Tim

  • Strong Breeze
  • ***
  • Posts: 125
    • Matangi Weather
  • Station Details: Davis VP2 with Solar and WLIP Datalogger (via VVP)
Re: Hello and 'please help' :-)
« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2012, 02:14:57 AM »
I am using WC via VVP as I have a windows box which talks to the station, this problem came up only in LWC and not in WeatherCat.

VVP put simply creates a second virtual VP console which copies the data from the actual VP to the software buffer and then sends it out virtual COM ports and IP ports.
It isnt just splitting the VP connection up multiple ways, since it contains its own memory buffer, some weather station software could ask for the archive memory it will grab it out of the software buffer so it doesnt need ask the actual VP for the archive of data so multiple software packages can ask data from the virtual VP at the same time.
It is essentially a VP but in software format.

The IP option under VVP essentially acts like a WLIP, I have had no problems running WC under VVP unlike LWC.

If you should come across a problem with the weather station connection (which you shouldn't) just reset the IP connection under VVP and reopen WC.

PS: I would strongly advise that your Mac runs on a static IP address, or Manual DHCP override.

JosBaz

  • Strong Breeze
  • ***
  • Posts: 232
    • INBRSON2
    • Weatherstation Son en Breugel, The Netherlands
  • Station Details: Davis Vantage Pro2 Wireless, WeatherCat on Mac OS X 10.13.6
Re: Hello and 'please help' :-)
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2012, 08:50:42 AM »
Thanks Tim and Edouard,

Yes, how Tim described it is exactly how it works, and it is a cool - and so far reliable - way to try out multiple Weatherstation s/w products without having to disable the one that is updating your website.

For the purpose of this exercise, we can consider it a WeatherLink IP connection to WC (or LWC2). So Tim, are you seeing the same issue but only with LWC?
The Windows machine with VVP has been restarted and IP connection has been reset more than once without luck.

The WC manual says about this (p. 53):
"Normally WeatherCat reads the rain bucket resolution direct from the hardware, but it appears Virtual VP does not pass this information through (WeatherCat defaults to 0.2mm)."

What I am seeing is that there is communication, and WC does NOT default to 0.2mm, so something is read from VVP (V1.2.5) but it is not what is should be.

Jos

WCDev

  • WeatherCat Developer
  • Administrator
  • Storm
  • *****
  • Posts: 2911
    • CW9739
    • ISCOTLAN25
    • Trixology
  • Station Details: Main Station: Vantage Pro-2, 24hr fars, solar, soil/leaf station, extra temp stations, no U.V. WeatherLink IP.
Re: Hello and 'please help' :-)
« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2012, 10:48:20 AM »
Hi Jos,
If you set the bucket to .01" does it then run normally? I'm wondering if all data is corrupted or just the bucket resolution data. If it's just the bucket then I can put something in the next build to get it going for you.

Thanks,
Stu.
[Edit: you should be able to post in the WeatherCat Development forum - give it a go with a test post, if not let me know and I'll take a look why)

JosBaz

  • Strong Breeze
  • ***
  • Posts: 232
    • INBRSON2
    • Weatherstation Son en Breugel, The Netherlands
  • Station Details: Davis Vantage Pro2 Wireless, WeatherCat on Mac OS X 10.13.6
Re: Hello and 'please help' :-)
« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2012, 01:53:41 PM »
Hi Stu,

Many thanks for your response. No, to whatever I set the bucket, I always get the error message.

The only way I can prevent the error message is by using the terminal command:
defaults write com.trixology.weathercat VantageRainCollectorOverrideToInches YES

Now WC will pass startup and run normally.

So what I did then was set the units in WC preferences to degrees C, mm, hPa etc, quit the program, restart --> still works
Now quit WC again, open Terminal window and enter:
defaults write com.trixology.weathercat VantageRainCollectorOverrideToInches NO

Restart WC and the problem/error message is back again. Weird...
I also tried putting back a backup of the STATION.CFG file on the Windows machine to see if it maybe got corrupted but no luck.

Again, this started happening consistently after I upgraded to Lion. Behavior on LWC2 and WC is the same.
Prior to going to Lion, all was fine and I never had this issue.

Thanks,

Jos

P.S. The VPP activity log reports receiving unsupported commands from LWC/WC:
15:02:07:843 Info         - LWC: Connected to client from 10.0.1.5
15:02:08:546 Info         - LWC: Received Get EEPROM Data binary
15:02:08:640 Info         - VpConsole: Sending Get EEPROM Data binary
15:02:08:656 Info         - VpConsole: Received Get EEPROM Data binary response
15:02:08:671 Info         - LWC: Sent response for Get EEPROM Data binary
15:02:09:140 Info         - LWC: Received Unsupported Command
15:02:09:156 Info         - LWC: Sent response for Unsupported Command

WCDev

  • WeatherCat Developer
  • Administrator
  • Storm
  • *****
  • Posts: 2911
    • CW9739
    • ISCOTLAN25
    • Trixology
  • Station Details: Main Station: Vantage Pro-2, 24hr fars, solar, soil/leaf station, extra temp stations, no U.V. WeatherLink IP.
Re: Hello and 'please help' :-)
« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2012, 02:14:59 PM »
Thanks Jos, I'll expand the command in the driver to force it to one or the other - should be in the next release.

Cheers,
Stu.