I’m not sure why this is happening, but my data freezes. It happens at least twice a day and lasts about an hour. They usually happen around the same time. The attached graph shows one event. When this happens, WD appears to lock up. The davis console works normally. But all data just freezes at the last value. My webcam continues to run with no problems. When I check the data files, the data is frozen also. I’d like to be able to restore all the data, but I’m not sure of the procedure.
It’s hard to tell if it’s the data logger since weatherlink has no real data storage that I can see. The CWOP site which is forwarded from weatherlink seems ok, but the updates are every 60 minutes.
I have a Davis IP data logger…not USB. But in the meantime, I’d like to figure out how to restore the data after these gaps happen. I just don’t know where to start.
How do you manually load the data from the Davis Console?
The reason I was asking this question is because the action → extract data was NOT working. I’ve been getting gaps in my data and WD was freezing. Even after a data logger reset, the problem still existed. As a matter of fact, after the reset, WD/data froze for an entire day, even after a complete computer restart and router reboot.
It looks like my router was/is causing the problem. I use the IP data logger and for some reason port 22222 port forward in the router got unselected. OR…my host computer static IP got reset OR both. I did some previous network re-configuring here and that may be why some of the router settings got all balled up. I’m not sure as I have been fumbling through this for days. I made a call to Davis tech support and he was seeing the same gaps. But once I got the ports/computer IP’s straightened out, I was able to get all the data extracted and the gaps filled back in. Not sure if this will prevent future data freezes, time will tell.
Now I need to figure out why there’s data SPIKES at the time of the data extraction. Or how to get rid of them.
For what I understand, you cannot retrieve data if you are on W7.
The third party program that does this is not compatible with W7.
So maybe that’s what the ‘personal log file’ is all about? Who knows. I have XP and was able to get the data extracted. But not without leaving a big gash on my graphs.
There’s no third party program involved in the Davis VP data download, I think you may be confusing this with a LaCrosse station.
It has never worked with my setup, maybe it’s a Vue problem then.
More likely a WLIP thing would be my guess.
I’m seeing problems with router/computer re-assigning IP addresses. This is an area that drives me batty.
OK, so if you have not set the WLIP to a fixed IP address, that would be the first step.
The trouble is that I’m not getting very far trying to figure that out. I had Linksys on the phone and they got my router so screwed up that nothing was working anymore (webcam and WD). They seem to think that if you have an internet connection, everything is fine and I should call my ISP. So I just reverted back to the way it was…waiting for the IP addresses to change. I’m using port forwarding and port triggering. When it comes to fixing an IP address, I get lost in a hurry. And to make matters worse, all this data extraction is doing is removing data from my monthly report.
These gaps (or data freezing) seem to be coming from changing IP addresses that eventually resolve…hence the frozen data for an hour at a time. That’s the only sense that I can make out of it.
I’ve had this data freeze too. For me it happens when I resend a lot of data to Weather Underground. I was trying to fill in missing data on the wunderground site but re-sending a month at a time. This caused no data to be extracted from the VP2 serial logger.
Your problem may be down to a device trying to assign an IP address already in use (or in the DHCP pool). I suggest that you set all of your devices for static IP addresses as you can keep a note of which is on what IP address. But don
Thanks for the ‘how to’ Welly. That is what Linksys did yesterday…I think. They went into my network adapter to TCP/IP properties and assigned a static IP. They went into the router and got the DNS numbers and whatnot and had me enter those into the fields in the network adapter. They went back into the router and made some entries in DMZ (whatever that is…I only remember it as the demilitarized zone) We cleared the fields for port range forward/triggering and everything worked. While we were still on the phone, I saw that my web cam image disappeared from my website. I use dyndns to resolve my dynamic ISP address. This is when he started telling me to call my ISP. But my question to them was, “If this router is your latest and most sophisticated piece of hardware known to humans, then why are we jumping through all these hoops to get it to do what your $35 dollar router did just a day ago?”
Feeling nothing but defeat, I fired up my recently purchased win7 laptop. As the laptop found it’s way on to the network, WD went into a complete freeze…no data coming in. I decided to try to reset my data logger to no avail. Remembering what Davis told me on the phone on Friday, I loaded WIP to see whatever it was that I could see. It was there that I saw that my data logger’s IP address changed from .101 to .146 Obviously, WD had .101 in the com port settings of control panel. I changed that to .146 and presto. WD came back. Still no webcam image on my site. I could see the image here on my pc, in the 3rd party software, and in the third party software’s web server out on the web. But no image getting to my site. None of this makes sense as I’ve had this stuff up and running since Oct 2010. I’ve been noticing the gaps for the last 2 or 3 weeks with the old router.
Out of pure frustration, I went back into the network card and put everything back to automatically obtain IP address. I went into the router made the correct entries in port range forward and port triggering, and everything came back. All webcam images where I want them and data streaming in to WD and out to my website. I went to bed and got up expecting to see gaps at ~2:30am. No gaps this morning.
I just bought a new router. I’m in the process of buying Win7 machines and I wanted to switch out the router first. I’m switching from a WRT54G to an E4200. I had the same issues with the old router. The E4200 is their latest and greatest high giga speed wireless N. Linksys says that I must contact my ISP and get a fixed IP address. I’m getting a mixture of information that has me wondering which way is up.
Ok, so here’s where I get lost with all this static IP business. My cam has and IP address, my data logger has an IP address, my computers have an IP address…then there’s the ports. I have other things on my network that have an IP address. After running through the process of setting the computers’ IP adress to static, that makes a little more sense now. But how does one make static IP’s on all that other stuff without making changes to the router? I don’t get it. Where on the pc can I make static IP’s for everything hanging from the router? I’m not trying to be a wise guy. I just have trouble with the flow chart of all this. And when the lingo starts flying around like DNS and DHCP, it just makes it all that more confusing. And then there’s the text field in this forum that keeps jumping around when the text runs tooo long.
Great job Welly, just to add a couple of points to respond to jdeff’s post.
It’s best in my opinion to stick to old fashioned defined port forwarding for what we are doing, many routers offer application specific automated forwarding/triggering for gaming etc. but I would not use that.
Some consumer routers do not play well with port forwarding, the 2wire ones that AT&T supplies for home DSL here are a good example, so choose your router wisely.
Thanks again for the info. I definitely have more to learn in that area.
I’ve begun an experiment that was recommended by Davis tech support. I shut down WD and I’m going to just run WIP to check for data freezes. WD just froze up again for an hour. NONE of the IP addresses changed before, during, or after. My webcam continues to work. It unfroze by itself. I’m having a hard time nailing this down as to what to blame on this. So I’m just going to try to attempt to collect data from the data logger and see what happens.
While we’re on the subject, would you say that checking the boxes on this screen in the router config, will prevent them from being re-assigned or changed? Or do I have to make them static somewhere else prior to reserving them? I’m going to learn this if it kills me.
Note: the entry with no client name is my data logger. The one marked wireless is the computer where WD and the webcam software resides.
Without your full router config I’d say that your DHCP pool starts at 192.168.1.100 upwards
I’d choose addresses much lower than that for manual configuration. Don’t disable anything in your router, just use addresses which you deem safe.
A good program to use to see your local network is look@lan. It will “ping” every available address on your local network and show any device that has responded. It gives a good view of what’s connected, but because it repeats the test every 30 seconds or so, it alarms you of new devices or devices that have droppped out. It could help you in find a particular device causing problems.
Regarding your main problem - use the ping command to see what is working when you have the error. When flat lining - ping the davis logger - if you don’t get a response, then you can summise that the logger has locked up. If that responds OK then ping the PC that WD lives on.
I will refer back to my comment earlier that WD does seem to lock up when updateing wunderground - so that may be the cause.
When the error occurs I’d ping the Davis IP logger. If that replies, then it is OK. Then ping the PC which WD is running. If that is OK then you’re screwed!
(Sorry. I was trying to be light hearted. If you feel completely stuck then I could look at your config - just PM me. But I do think you need to do more testing to try to isolate the problem first).
Here’s one for the archives. As it turns out, my router was creating the data freezes. I contacted Linksys and got a second level tech who straightened the issue out. I’ve been running for the last 48 hours without a data freeze. Prior freezes were occuring at at least 2 per 24 hour period.
Seems as though the new router config gives the option to reserve IP’s as seen on the screenshot in my previous post in this thread. Once the tech had me reserve the ip address of the data logger and the WD computer, the problem cleared. I’m not sure, but it looks like the DHCP reservation page helps take alot of the guess work out of fixing IP’s. This option was not available on my older Linksys router…I don’t think.
I just hope Brian et al is proud of the fact that I never once blamed his software for this issue 
