OurWeather board freezing up and 0 value for lightning dist.

Richard,

Are you hitting the REST interface a lot during these four hours? Especially from a browser. Browsers (and some software) will hang that.

Is the system totally hung (the OLED is not working either) or is it just the WiFi interface?

BP

Richard,

OK. Sounds like the whole OurWeather board is hung. Run an experiment for me. Turn off the DataLogger and see if it still hangs after 4 hours.

BP

I've decided to change the order of my troubleshooting:

1. Replace the Weather Board running v32 with my backup board that is running v31. I know this is changing 2 variables at once, but it should be a quicker way to determine if the DataLogger process is the culprit.

2. Stop the DataLogger process for 4 days (I have not gone more that 2 days without a freeze since update to v32).

3. Stop the nightly reboots.

Again, I will report back what I find.

So the results of my testing are in, and as I expected, it was not the DataLogger or nightly reboots of the OurWeather Board that was causing the freezing issue. The Lightning Extender Kit that I added back at the start of April 2018 was causing the problem. This has been reported in another tread here and my findings support their issue. When I switched to my backup OurWeather board running V031, I had the Lightning Extender kit attached. After the 12am reboot, it froze at 1:30am. I woke up for some reason around 1:40am and decided to see if it was working. I went outside at 2am to work on it. I removed the Lightning Extender kit from the OurWeather kit and it has been running with zero issues with the DataLogger and nightly reboots for a week now. Before, it was freezing if not every day, every other day.


So here is where I stand. Given that we are still waiting on any type of documentation in regards to how to tune the ThunderBoard when connected to the OurWeather Board, I have zero desire to troubleshoot the problem. I'm really disappointed that the Lightning Extender Kit was released for people to spend good money on and is seemingly not supported in any way at all. There has been talk of a video on how to tune the ThunderBoard using the OurWeather Admin page since it was released, however, we are still waiting. I've asked for even a few tips on some basic tuning methods while waiting for the video and nothing but silence. Now that the tuning section of the Admin page is actually working (that was down for 3 to 4 weeks), trying to tune the ThunderBoard with no documentation at all is literally like trying to figure out a combination lock without knowing the combination.

I'm one of the seemingly growing number of frustrated customers of SwitchDoc Labs. I have spent in the neighborhood of $500 to probably north of $600 on kits and parts in the last year. I have 2 OurWeather Kits, 1 GroveWeatherPi kit (with all sensors except solar - I have all the solar parts but don't want to add to my frustrations) and the Lightning Detector kit. The only kit that has ever worked as described in the description of the product is the Lightning Detector kit.

GroveWeatherPi
I have had a fully built and ready to go GroveWeatherPi sitting on a shelf since the start of the year because of the following issues:
1. The sunlight / UV sensor does not work.
2. The Air Quality sensor does not work.
3. The AM2315 reportedly has the same reliability / accuracy issues that it had with the OurWeather kit. It was fixed for the OurWeather kit last February and there was mention of either fixing the driver or starting over with the driver for GroveWeatherPi.

It was mentioned somewhere that the next version of the GroveWeatherPi software to address these issues would be out in June 2018.


OurWeather Kit + Lightning Extender Kit
As mentioned above, the ThunderBoard is causing the OurWeather board to freeze up. It was working for a while on V031, but it is now freezing on V031 and V032.

Since there appears to be little or no support for the ThunderBoard Extender kit on OurWeather, I have no desire to spend any addtional time trying to get that to work. The last time it froze, I was working on it outside at 2am.

When I saw the launch of the new LED project, I was a bit disappointed because I knew that with a new product coming out, there would be even less chance of getting the other products working as there would be less time available to work on existing issues. There is a thread with the 2 (or more) very frustrated LED project users trying to get the LED project to work and the documentation to be a large problem.

I'm actively researching other vendors or solutions to get the weather data I'm looking for. As mentioned in another thread, you guys make very interesting products. There is an implied level of DIY with your products, which is fine. However, based on the product description on your website selling the product, they don't work as described. The consistent question or complaints about documentation should be something that I really hope you guys hear and can address. If you don't, there will be others like me that get fed up and move on.

I think you guys are good people and are trying to provide a good product. Please find someone to help you with support and documentation.

Thank you,

Richard

Hi BP.

I hate writing things like I did above, I really do. There are additional factors at play in what I'm going to do going forward. I have not mentioned this yet, but my rain amount is always lower than anyone else's in my area. Unfortunately, I don't have a great, or maybe not even a good location to place the weather station. However, a few days ago, we had a slow drizzle, straight down, no wind. My station (OurWeather) reported .002" of rain. There is a weather station about 1/4 mile from me that I compare my readings to. His station reported .004". While I know that rain can differ in short distances, this happens 100% of time. Rain is the data point I am most interested in and I have diligently watched for this and compare my totals to others in the area.

I'm at a cross roads with my project right now. I just found a way to get all the data I'm looking for to build my dashboard without having to have my own PWS. This would eliminate all my issues with the systems, however, I would be relying on a PWS that I don't control or have access to to evaluate the accuracy.

I don't need the Lightning Extender on the OurWeather kit since my Lightning Detector system is working great. So for my issues above, as of now, there is no testing that you need to do for me.

I will give some thought about working on the GWP side of things. The biggest question for me is how much time and effort do I put into this when I know I don't have a placement location that will provide a good chance for accurate data. If I can get the data from other PWS's, that's good. However, I've invested a lot of time and money into what I have.

I do apologize if I have come off as a jerk in all of this. I appreciate you getting back to me on these issues.

Thanks,

Richard