Hi Everyone
I
the problem is with the 3600 and its unusual data protocol (non standard), where I have had to use a 3rd party program , fetch3600.exe, to get the data…its that program that sometimes hangs (but there is program available to check for that and kill off that process)
so the problems are not actualy weather displays in itselfs problems
I then tried using Heavy Weather Pro to interface with the weather station and configured Weather Display to grab the data from there. This was certainly much more reliable although it would still eventually stop collecting data and cause the weather station to loose comms about once every 3 days.if the sofware that comes with the station is not woring reliable on your PC, then why so you think the fetch3600.exe will be any more reliable? I really think this is a hardware issue more than a software issue
is it serial or usb to serial you use?
I agree that the problem seems to be related to fetch3600.exe as this seems to be the process that hangs. As to whether it is a hardware problem, I think that’s unlikely as I’ve now tried it on 3 different machines, all of which have the same problem. One of the machines was my laptop which I use my com port extensively for work and it has never shown any problems before or after.
I’ve done some more reading and found an interesting topic where someone else was having a very similar problem:
http://discourse.weather-watch.com/t/17547
If you go to the third page of the topic…
http://discourse.weather-watch.com/t/17547
the person has made available a kill process program which has been developed which you can use to monitor fetch3600.exe and kill it off if it isn’t responding.
You can download it from:
http://www.eatherman.co.uk/programs/killer2.1.zip
It’s early days so far, but it seems to be working quite effectively and when fetch3600.exe stops responding for the period that you set in the configuration of this program, it kills fetch3600.exe off.
I’ll let it run a few days and update this topic with how it goes.
Regards
Richard
Hi Richard. I have a WS3600 and run Heavy Weather to get the data into WD and find it very stable. I can’t remember it ever flat lining in the last 9 months.
In WD control panel>com port, set the com port to a port that does not exist like com 12. WD is not using a com port when running heavy weather. At times I had WD set to com 1 ( same as heavy weather) and did not have a problem but seems to me I saw a post where someone did.
Under control panel>station type>WS3600 set the data logging interval to 1 minute and make sure Heavy Weather is also set to 1 minute. Hope this helps.
Bill
Hi
If you use Heavy weather, WD has no contact with the consol at all, so it can not be the problem.
There has been many posts about bad wiring on other Lacrosse stations, maybe you should try wireless.
The comport cable provided with the station is not shielded, was it that one you replaced?
My Consol froze sometimes (screen went blank) and sometimes rain doubled. 8O 2 months ago i replaced
the cable from the consol with a shielded cable (com–>rj11) and rain doubling then stopped and the
consol works fine. 8)
My consol is wireless, ~80m between consol and thermo/hygro
I use Heavy weather to feed data to WD.
When using Heavy weather History.dat make sure you have unticked fetch3600
Maybe try a lower comport speed.
Krister
Hi Richard,
I have a WS3600 and use fetch3600 to get the data. I had similar issues that you are having (last year). One IMPORTANT program to use is the http://www.eatherman.co.uk/programs/killer2.1.zip killer program. The fetch3600 program needs to be monitored all the time. If you stick with WD and use close to the current release you should be fine. I have very few problems now and you will enjoy all of the features that WD has.
Good luck,
John
Hi Everyone
The Kill Process program that I refered to in my previous post worked well and at least kept things from hanging. Having having said this however, it doesn’t fix the underlying problem and in the short period between when something goes wrong and the kill process program kicks in, I was still loosing data (I’m yet to get WD to successfully restore data from the WS3600’s internal data logger, but at this stage I haven’t focused on that so I’m not preprared to point the finger in any direction on that one as it could just be a configuration issue on my part!).
Given my background in Electronics Engineering, I began to look more closely at the cable run from the console to the PC, which was roughly 10m. Despite having installed shielded serial cable, I was continuing to experience the problems. I decided to run a new length of Cat 5e Shield Twisted Pair (Cat 5e STP), so not only was I shielding the cable, I was also taking advantage of the twisting in the pairs to cancel out any noise that managed to penetrate the shielding or couple across from the other lines in the cable.
It’s early days and it’s only been running for about 2 days now.
SO FAR THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THIS APPEARS TO HAVE FIXED THE PROBLEM!!!
Now to talk about how
The WS3600 console cable uses the following pins on the DB9:
Pin 3 - TX (Transmit Data)
Pin 4 - DTR (Data Terminal Ready)
Pin 5 - GND (Ground)
Pin 6 - DSR (Data Set Ready)
Pin 7 - RTS (Ready To Send)
Pin 8 - CTS (Clear To Send)
Unfortunately Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) only has 4 pairs, so I was not able to run each line with a Ground wire as it’s pair which would have been the ideal way to do it. After some analysis using a small hand held oscilloscope to look for the lines that had the most activity and therefore the most capacity to generate noise (apart from the TX line) I decided on the following lines to be paired with a ground wire:
TX
RTS
CTS
I decided to run DSR and DTR together in the same twisted pair.
I’ve included below a small wiring map to assist those who are interested in trying this themselves, I’ll produce a more detailed diagram when I get some more time.
The description is based on a Shielded Twisted Pair cable with Brown, Blue, Green and Orange pairs.
DB9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RJ11
Pin 1 - Not Used
Pin 2 - Not Used
Pin 3 - Blue ------------------------------------------------------- Blue - Pin 2
Pin 4 - Orange ----------------------------------------------------- Orange - Pin 3
Pin 5 - Blue/White, Brown/White, Green/White, STP Sheild Wire ------ Blue/White# - Pin 1
Pin 6 - Orange/White ----------------------------------------------- Orange/White - Pin 5
Pin 7 - Brown ------------------------------------------------------ Brown - Pin 4
Pin 8 - Green ------------------------------------------------------ Green - Pin 6
Pin 9 - Not Used
The Blue/White, Brown/White, Green/White and STP Shield Wire should all be connected together at the DB9 end, however only the Blue/White wire needs to be inserted into the RJ11 connector at the other end, the other ones should be terminated together but left unconnected to anything else at the RJ11 end.
The colours of the pairs are based on the cable I purchased, this may vary depending on the brand of cable you buy. The colours aren’t important and you can substitute them as required so long as you keep the pairs matched, the key is to ensure that all of the lines that are marked as being connected to GND are grounded or alternatively connected to the negative wire of the power supply for the WS3600. It is also VERY important that the unshielded wire that runs with the foil shield is also connected to the same ground point.
I took advantage of the space inside a DB9 shell to allow me to connect the multiple wires to the Ground Pin (5) rather than trying to do it at the RJ11 end.
Hopefully this helps a few others with WS3600 weather stations.
Richard
good idea to replace the cable, the same thing has to be done with the 2300 station too
Hi Everyone
Just a quick update. After a week or so of running with the new shielded twisted pair cable, everything is still running perfectly.
Richard
Hi
I have a problem with a WS3600 and WD. I am trying to use the fetch3600 program. What happens is that the values showed in WD main windows seems to be wrong and every minute or so, the screen black out for a half a second or so, showing a message about the fetch3600 which is difficult to read (0,5 sec…). It seems to be a communication problem. I have tried to deactivate/activate the com-port. is there anyone who has an idea what this can be?
Ottar
make sure the com port seting in the setings file, open3600.conf, is set correctly?
also, the fetch3600 does cause a cpu hit (because of the non standard communications with the 3600 station (there are now new station products that use USB (eg irox), gets away from these problems)…i.e what speed is the pc?
Hi Brian. Ottar is trying to help me with this problem.
All we have done is go to settings and ticked the LaCrosse WS3600 station type and ticked to run the Fetch3600 program. The WD readings are not in accordance to what is being shown on the display base and what’s more, every minute the whole screen goes black with a message about the Fetch3600 program (ending in .txt but I can’t read it all because it is for a split second only).
ComPort 1 is selected.
That’s all I know! If you can help in any way, I’m all ears. But you must explain things simple as I am not a computer expert at all— and no jargon!! Cheers.
try now restarting the whole PC
I tried that Brian. I am trying to research the problem but am getting nowhere. I know Ottar was trying to contact you earlier. Maybe he sent an email?
The resdings in WD are not only wrong, but they appear not to be running at all. They are identical to that from this morning.
When the screen goes black, this message appears:-
c:/program files/wdisplay>"c./program files/wdisplay/out3600.txt
Ani ideas… anyone? So frustrating!! 
did you reboot the pc?
( to clear out any already running fetch3600 programs)
and also the restart of WD will let WD release the com port needed by fetch3600
also did you open up the open3600l.conf file (found where you have wd installed) and check the com port number set there?
use notepad.exe to open that
Have rebooted the whole computer but to no avail.
I have opened the 3600config file as you suggested.
A snippet from the file:-
Set to your serial port and time zone
For Windows use COM1, COM2, COM2 etc
For Linux use /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1 etc
SERIAL_DEVICE COM4 # /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1, COM1, COM2 etc
TIMEZONE 1 # Hours Relative to UTC. East is positive, west is negative
But I guess this isn’t important in any way?
My selection is comport1.
SERIAL_DEVICE COM4 # /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1, COM1, COM2 etcis that the correct com port number that your station is set to? i think it most likely should be 1 instead so change that to 1 and then save that file (click on save in notepad) that should fix things
I will give it a go Brian. That’s why I posted that snippet - I suspected it but didn’t want to announce anything in case I was way off the mark.
I will post in 10 minutes or so and let you know if this fixes the problem.
Damn! Still no joy. I changed the comport to number 1 in the 3600config file and saved it as you said. I also rebooted the Pc again.