Help to setup Weatherlink USB on iMac

[wellsweather]

Try as I have I just cannot get the mac to recognise the weatherlink USB cable coming from my Davis Vantage Vue.

What am I doing wrong - help please - anyone?

Sunny at Wells Weather
A really green newbie...!

[Steve]

Hi there! I just replied to your post over on the MacWeather forum. Take a look and see if that helps.
http://macweather.net/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=609&p=3627#p3626

Steve

[rcnz]

Steve, Hi.

I tried your link (in desperation - my USB data logger has just become unrecognisable), but it went here (screenshot - has it been updated?)

Thanks,

Robin..

[elagache]

Hi Robin and WeatherCat troubleshooters,

I tried your link (in desperation - my USB data logger has just become unrecognisable), but it went here (screenshot - has it been updated?)

I'm afraid MacWeather.net no longer exists.  There wasn't enough visitors to make it viable.  Most of the troubleshooting tips were saved on the WeatherCat Wiki:

http://wiki.trixology.com/index.php/Davis

It sounds like your setup was working and just stopped.  Did you make any changes before the problem started?  Commonly, there is some change in your system that causes these sorts of things. 

One obvious thing to check is to make sure you have the latest versions of the Silicon Labs driver for the Davis data logger.  Instructions on obtaining the loggers can also be found on the WeatherCat Wiki:

http://wiki.trixology.com/index.php/Obtaining_the_latest_drivers_for_use_with_Davis_data_loggers

Let us know if either of those resources gets you unstuck.

Cheers, Edouard 

[rcnz]

Thanks very much for the rapid response, Edouard!

It turns out that in all my restarting**/changing power, etc, I'd turned off my USB hub power: simple old-fashioned finger trouble (the physical change I'd forgotten was my moving the USB feed to the hub, as my other USB sockets were for devices that needed direct connections). Since the hub was inserted, the Data Logger has performed perfectly.

Thanks for your sound advice - I was wondering what else I'd have to do...

Now to work out why WeatherCat has begun crashing since Mavericks, but worse with Yosemite. **From almost no restarts needed, to almost daily restarts (this Mac is never "off")

Cheers

Robin..

 

[WCDev]

Good to know you got it going - I've seen cases over the years where the logger physically pops out of the console - sometimes difficult to spot!

For the crashes, first start with general maintenance such as disk utility to check over the hard drive and permissions (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility).

Secondly, try deleting WeatherCat's preferences file (~/Library/Preferences/com.trixology.weathercat.plist where '~' is your home directory - note this will clear most settings so make a note of the important ones first, such as lat/long/altitude etc). After deleting it, restart the machine then run WeatherCat and set it up again. When launched it should be asking you to set up your location etc. - if it doesn't the preferences weren't successfully cleared and you'll have to do it again.

Finally, create a new user and run WeatherCat as that user for a few days - if the problem goes away, it's something in the old user's environment that's awry.
 

[Blicj11]

Secondly, try deleting WeatherCat's preferences file (~/Library/Preferences/com.trixology.weathercat.plist where '~' is your home directory - note this will clear most settings so make a note of the important ones first, such as lat/long/altitude etc). After deleting it, restart the machine then run WeatherCat and set it up again. When launched it should be asking you to set up your location etc. - if it doesn't the preferences weren't successfully cleared and you'll have to do it again.

It is a good practice to delete the plist, then empty the trash, then restart the computer, then relaunch WeatherCat. This sequence insures that your original plist file is gone.

By the way, I had the same experience with WeatherCat crashes after upgrading to Yosemite and rebuilding my plist file fixed it.

[rcnz]

Thanks, Blick.

On my list.

I'm also running BOINC stuff; it seems to contribute to the WC memory woes.

Cheers

Robin..

[elagache]

Hi Robin, Stu, Blick, and WeatherCat troubleshooters,

If you are having problems with Yosemite one more thing to monitor is how much memory is free and how much memory WeatherCat is using.  If it looks like your computer is running out of memory very quickly, you might try the procedure that was posted on the Apple Support Forum that is referred to in this thread:

http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=1478.0

Also, I cannot be too sure, but I have a feeling that there still memory leaks in OS 10.10.1 which I describe in this thread:

http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=1500.0;topicseen

On second thought, I'm wondering these memory problem I'm seeing could be caused by some old software I run, but I haven't had a chance to double-check on that with all my other problems.  Fortunately, there is always a cure for memory leaks.  Just reboot as often as is needed to keep the amount of free memory usable.

Best of luck in getting your Mac to run well with Yosemite and WeatherCat.

Cheers, Edouard 

[rcnz]

Thanks, Edouard.

I don't have any scripts running.

I see a few posters have a "WeatherCat Memory" pane: that would be very handy! My only memory usage gen comes from Activity Monitor. WC hovers under the 400MB mark; doesn't vary much. This has been the norm for the last few months, before even Mavericks.

What IS tedious, though, is a recent (last few days, after re-install of WC/drivers, etc) nuisance: the Preferences pane will open, but immediately freeze (see attachment) - I can't access any buttons/options. I get a brief respite if I restart it, but it has run for weeks in the past, untroubled.

WC has been up for 24 hours (with this niggle throughout), and where I used to get isolated (i.e. 0 0r 1) errors, the Gauges pane shows 1 Data error and 40 Sensor errors out of 94K total. Same connections; new Console batteries; long sunshine hours.

Cheers,

Robin..

[WCDev]

Preferences file issue - freezes in the Preferences window are a sure sign of this as changes are written to the file immediately - if it can't write, you get a pause until the write goes through.

See my previous post in this thread for fixes.