Now things are getting really strange. I'm forced to wonder whether a defective or marginal logger might be my primary problem.
Details:
Last evening I stopped Cumulus to make a quick check of the transmission error log as downloaded and displayed by WeatherLink software. But I neglected to restart Cumulus when I stopped Weatherlink, so no active software program was talking to the logger overnight (though quite possibly the driver was still somewhat active).
On finding neither program running this morning, I first used WeatherLink. I got my first surprise in seeing what looked like my classic 4:05 a.m. 5-minute transmission gap, but somehow it was at 3:50 a.m.! It was a nasty one, fully reaching zero percent success in the center 5 minute sample, with some loss in the two adjacent samples.
A bit curious and dismayed, I shut down WeatherLink, restarted Cumulus, and went on about my morning. A couple of hours later I glanced at the console display, and noticed it looked very abnormal. Local temperature and humidity were displayed, with dashes where received data from the ISS ought to be. I imagined I was in the course of the dreaded extended outage, and quickly went to the diagnostics display screens, and got NOTHING USEFUL. One or two of the fields had abnormal characters. Many simply had zero. I did not even get a signal strength display.
So far I had been running the console on batteries, which I have done successfully (without a logger) on this specific sample for 5 years. Further I had put in freshly recharged (I use NiMH) ones just before this exercise. Still, perhaps the console pulls spikes with this logger installed that are a problem with batteries, so I now have a wall wart plugged in. And for some minutes it has run OK. The Cumulus and the console graph suggest the console stopped receiving data very shortly after I restarted Cumulus (but not immediately, as Cumulus displays the logger archived data it successfully downloaded when first restarted).
In sum: I've seen at least some of the disturbing behavior I detected when this logger was plugged in my Envoy occur now that it is plugged into this particular console. This same console did not have these symptoms when it ran in my kitchen for years, and ran in my study (within feet to inches of the long-term Envoy) location, for days.
On a conventional parts-swapping debugging doctrine, any PC tech would declare the logger proven bad, and seek to replace it. But I'm really shy of imagining what fault in the logger would have my array of symptoms.
For the moment I intend to continue on wall-wart power with the logger installed in my "known-good" console.
Just for extra joy, of course my logger is old enough for the green-dot issue to apply. So on my already stated intention of picking up a new console, it now appears I am on course to pick up a new WeatherLink product as well. The only plus it that I won't have to try to find the old WeatherLink optical disk in order to install on my new daily driver computer.
I am all ears to any evidence, experience, or logic as to how my logger could be, or could not possibly be, at fault in all this.
Does anyone know whether the Envoy has the green-dot compatibility issue? Or is it possible I could buy a new logger and plug it into the (5-year old) Envoy?