[wxqc] Weather station crash

[Steve]

I'm a little hesitant to make this suggestion since it may smack of promotion since the program is shareware. But since the program's freeware mode allows monitoring a single application, and you're having a problem with just a single application, I'll go ahead. You can try my program StartWatch http://www.softwx.com/windows/startwatch.html 
StartWatch will start up and then monitor a program for hangs, crashes, etc., and if that's detected, the application is terminated and restarted automatically. This works most of the time, but there is a rare situation where nothing can kill a hung program, and it is due to a design issue of Windows itself, and in this case the computer must be rebooted. 

I'm guessing that if WeatherLink is hanging, it started recently, and it seems to do it while sending APRS data, then it is probably hanging while attempting to communicate with the CWOP2 server that's been down a fair amount lately. This is a different problem from the USB issue. In the USB issue, the WeatherLink program loses communication with the VP data logger because of a failure in the USB to Serial driver that gets installed with WeatherLink. I have seen this problem myself, and for those who have it, it can be troublesome. All that fixes it when it happens is to unplug and replug in the USB cable or reboot the computer. I wrote a program that will solve the problem programmatically by resetting the driver, but in order for this to be automated, it has to be initiated by the program that is connected to the data logger port. I built this feature into my shareware program VirtualVP and my freeware program VPLive, both of which are also on the softwx website. I know this fix works because I've been able to test it on my setup, and also because numerous people have told me these programs fixed the problem for them too. It's really more a workaround than a fix. The davis driver will still hiccup from time to time, but this gets detected, the driver is automatically reset, and the communication re-established. The best solution though, is to use the serial data logger, not the USB data logger. If all you have are USB ports, little adapters are available for well under $10 that allow you to plug a serial device into a USB port.

Steve
SoftWx

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Robert Pick 
  To: wxqc at lists.gladstonefamily.net 
  Sent: 04/09/2008 8:02 AM
  Subject: [wxqc] Weather station crash


  Six days ago when I checked the status of the local weather (my station). Windows had left a message that Weatherlink 5.7 had a fatal error and had to close. I've checked everything, even deleted the software, reloaded , rebuilt the station, checked the internet settings and still no go. This all happens when the program opens the window to show the progress of the download to aprs. and when it gets to the step "down load images" it freezes, and completely shuts down. My internet connection is working fine. The other programs I run all work fine. I do number crunching for BOINC ( Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing ) This program is moving data on and off my computer all day long and has been for longer than I've had my weather station. Everything has been working in fine harmony up until 6 days ago. I've been on the phone with Davis half a doz. times this week to no avail. Can anyone help or suggest where I can get some.
  Respectfully, Robert Pick


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