Topic: "incompatible logger" error

[latitudehopper]

I have moved my official weatherlink USB logger from a vantage vue console to a vantagepro2 console and now have an "incompatible logger" error.  Any ideas why?

[dalecoy]

I have moved my official weatherlink USB logger from a vantage vue console to a vantagepro2 console and now have an "incompatible logger" error.  Any ideas why?

Davis made some changes, and you have a "new" VP2 console, and an "old" logger (that matches your "old" Vue console).  

The fix is going to involve the seller of your components and/or Davis.  From what seller(s) did you purchase the Vue equipment and the VP2 console?

For the long discussion, see http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=17198.0

Please please do keep us informed of your progress toward a solution.

[d_l]

Your incompatibility case will be of great interest to many here.  Unfortunately you do not appear to reside in the US so the handling of it won't necessarily be the same as it would be for a US purchase.

[dalecoy]

Oh - reading your other posting in "for sale", I see that you are selling your Vue, so you have presumably just purchased a new VP2 and want to use your old logger. 

[latitudehopper]

Thank you for your quick replies.

All of the Davis Kit I have I bought in the USA.  I currently live in the UK, however.  The VP2 is new as you suspected, the Vue and logger are just under two years' old.  I have a bad feeling about all of this as I cannot see anyone moving to help me on this.

[dalecoy]

Thank you for your quick replies.

All of the Davis Kit I have I bought in the USA.  I currently live in the UK, however.  The VP2 is new as you suspected, the Vue and logger are just under two years' old.  I have a bad feeling about all of this as I cannot see anyone moving to help me on this.

[For the moment, let's ignore the legality/distributor/support issues]  And I'm assuming that the seller of your VP2 may not want to get involved.

Do you have a good friend who lives in the USA?  You need a "middleman" who can correspond with Davis.   

Otherwise, I believe your only option is to purchase a new logger for your VP2.

[latitudehopper]

I have a middle man. What an absolute pain. Thank you for pointing me to the long thread.  I am very disappointed in Davis - what a silly move.  If you are outside of the USA you really are a 2nd class customer, pity.  The loggers are a fortune (as is all DI kit) here.  What do I need to ensure the new one has to avoid this issue?

[PaulMy]

I have a middle man. What an absolute pain. Thank you for pointing me to the long thread.  I am very disappointed in Davis - what a silly move.  If you are outside of the USA you really are a 2nd class customer, pity.  The loggers are a fortune (as is all DI kit) here.  What do I need to ensure the new one has to avoid this issue?[/b].  The loggers are a fortune (as is all DI kit) here

I am not sure why you would make that comment that I have put in [bold].  Davis as a company clearly states how it markets their products and that they have a worldwide network of resellers.  Many things are more money in Canada than in USA, and there may be even a greater difference from elsewhere but that is driven by market conditions and local practices - i.e. taxes, profit margin, cost-of-doing-business, etc.  You seem to have been fortunate to find a work-around to obtain your Davis and that may have been a saving at the time but not necessarily in the future.

I hope you get your issue resolved without great consequence and as mentioned please get back with the resolution as that will be helpful to others that visit this great forum.

Paul

[dalecoy]

I have a middle man. What an absolute pain. Thank you for pointing me to the long thread.  I am very disappointed in Davis - what a silly move.  If you are outside of the USA you really are a 2nd class customer, pity.  The loggers are a fortune (as is all DI kit) here.  What do I need to ensure the new one has to avoid this issue?

The "move" and "issue" apply world-wide, so in this case you are not a "2nd class customer" - you would have the same problem if you were in the USA and had moved your old logger to your new VP2.  Feel free to be disappointed in Davis, of course - but please don't incorrectly attribute the problem.

And, as I said, I'm ignoring the apparent fact that you are using Davis equipment with frequencies that are illegal where you live.  I understand why.

Now - what to do?  I suggest having your "middle man" contact Davis, act as if he is you, and describe the situation - "Purchased a VP2 but my Davis logger that I purchased with my Vue, does not work".  Request that Davis exchange the logger. 

We do not know what Davis' policy is, but are hoping they will do the exchange, since the "problem" is "their fault". 

Your middle man can handle the exchange for you, of course.  [You are fortunate to have a person to do that]

If Davis does exchange the logger, then you should be willing to say "Davis provides great support", rather than criticizing their policies.

[latitudehopper]

Perhaps the comment was misplaced - I think it is just frustration from having spent money and time only to have to do so again for what feels like avoidable reasons.  Thank you for your points, I will update the forum when I have more.

Regards

Jamie

[latitudehopper]

I seem to have touched a nerve here. It was not my intentions - I am open minded to this being resolved by Davis and will praise them in due course.  Again, poor phrasing in a moment of frustration.

[dalecoy]

.... frustration from having spent money and time only to have to do so again for what feels like avoidable reasons.  

We understand your frustration - and I personally believe that many more customers will be similarly frustrated in the future, world-wide.  

And I don't know how Davis can now avoid some of this.  But they certainly should document and advertise the situation, and encourage all of their dealers and distributors to do so.

[latitudehopper]

Does anyone know if mystery option 2 may work -  would the current weatherlink i have work in an envoy?

[johnd]

Does anyone know if mystery option 2 may work -  would the current weatherlink i have work in an envoy?

Not sure why it's a mystery option, but the simple answer is that an older logger will work in any console that does NOT have rev 3.00 firmware or later (ie which has not been manufactured in the past 3 months or so).

(And, sorry, but no, you cannot 'downgrade' v3.00 console firmware to an earlier version.)

[latitudehopper]

Question 2.  I have a US VP2, would a UK Envoy work with it?

Regards, J.

[latitudehopper]

Ignore - I have looked it up. No is the answer

[DeKay]

And I don't know how Davis can now avoid some of this.

• They could admit they screwed up
• They could stop putting V3 on new consoles
• They could allow firmware downgrades to 1.9 with a new updater or offer a factory downgrade option

My guess is that the logger change will be reverse engineered sooner rather than later and everyone will be back to square one, making this change a pointless exercise besides frustrating their best customers.  More in my latest blog post linked at the top of my sig.

[dalecoy]

And I don't know how Davis can now avoid some of this.

• They could admit they screwed up
• They could stop putting V3 on new consoles
• They could allow firmware downgrades to 1.9 with a new updater or offer a factory downgrade option

My guess is that the logger change will be reverse engineered sooner rather than later and everyone will be back to square one, making this change a pointless exercise besides frustrating their best customers.  More in my latest blog post linked at the top of my sig.

I'm not sure that we know the hardware details of "new consoles".  It might be possible for Davis to offer a firmware UPgrade for both old and new consoles, that once again ignores (whatever is unique about) the logger model.  On the other hand, perhaps that's impossible or impractical.  AFAIK, Davis has been totally silent in public about this entire production change and issue.

You may recall that early-on, I predicted that this would be a "support disaster" for Davis.  I believe they made a "reactive" management decision to chase a perceived "proprietary" problem, without thinking about the support and customer-satisfaction issues.  ("screwed up").

Having done that, they now have a significant population of new consoles and new loggers in the field, so there is no way to go back.  Perhaps they will figure out how to go forward - or at least try to explain the compatibility issues to their current and future customers.

[d_l]

Having done that, they now have a significant population of new consoles and new loggers in the field, so there is no way to go back.  Perhaps they will figure out how to go forward - or at least try to explain the compatibility issues to their current and future customers.

This switch strikes me more as part of an evolutionary change to the VP2's logger protocols rather than some reaction to homemade dongles.  The revised loggers were available well (late summer-early fall, '11) before the first SLOWeather connectors were available here.  Now that Davis is offering a subscription service to their weather network, they could well offer their own connectors without memory at deeply discounted price from their loggers.  Anyone wanting storage (in the cloud) of their data can subscribe and upload 24/7 with WL.

[johnd]

This switch strikes me more as part of an evolutionary change to the VP2's logger protocols rather than some reaction to homemade dongles

Completely agree with this - the timing wouldn't be right for this to be a deliberate attempt to block 3rd party interfaces (though admittedly Davis might not shed too many tears if this was a byproduct of any changes). Let's see what other announcements might be forthcoming during 2013.

[DeKay]

Having done that, they now have a significant population of new consoles and new loggers in the field, so there is no way to go back.  Perhaps they will figure out how to go forward - or at least try to explain the compatibility issues to their current and future customers.

This switch strikes me more as part of an evolutionary change to the VP2's logger protocols rather than some reaction to homemade dongles.  The revised loggers were available well (late summer-early fall, '11) before the first SLOWeather connectors were available here.  Now that Davis is offering a subscription service to their weather network, they could well offer their own connectors without memory at deeply discounted price from their loggers.  Anyone wanting storage (in the cloud) of their data can subscribe and upload 24/7 with WL.

This doesn't add up.  rdsman already demonstrated that the flash chip in the new logger is EXACTLY the same as in the old one in this post.  They HAVE to use the same protocol to talk to the same chip, with some extra stuff thrown on top simply to distinguish old ones from the new (again, see rdsman's post).

And while the new logger might have come out before SloWeather's interface, it came out well after my discovery.  The timing makes perfect sense.

As for deeply discounting prices for units without memory, I'm afraid you don't understand.  The memory chip in those dongles costs under a dollar each in quantity.  Alternatively, they could have offered units with 4x the memory for an extra half dollar and didn't.

[d_l]

The design for the logger is "ancient" (maybe 10 years or more ago I think).  When the first loggers came out, I'll bet those component chips easily cost 10X their current prices. 

Davis doesn't cut the MSRP prices of their products over time as other electronics makers do. Nor have they raised the prices for inflation.  They only seem to change prices when they offer a new item.

That pricing model would tend to make the profits back-end loaded over the life of a product assuming its primarily an electronic device.  Who knows, perhaps the profits from the loggers are carrying (helping to subsidize) the inflated manufacturing and material costs of the ISS.

I know you discussed the method of accessing the console/Envoy computer port well before these green dots appeared, but how just fast do you think Davis can react to something like that?  The Envoy PCB layouts also changed about the time the first green dot loggers appeared.  The new layout makes the board almost identical for both Envoys and 8Xs.  From what I've read, the PCB in the old Envoys were used in the old consoles so I'd guess that that the new board is also used in the latest consoles as well.

To me there is too much of a coincidence that they would change both the receiver boards and the loggers at the same time.

[DeKay]

The design for the logger is "ancient" (maybe 10 years or more ago I think).  When the first loggers came out, I'll bet those component chips easily cost 10X their current prices.

Then you would be wrong.  The 4 megabit chips with 4x the capacity of the 1 megabit parts used in the console were not 10X as expensive as the parts used now when they first came out in 1997.  Price is tied strongly to memory capacity, so the 1 megabit parts would have been significantly less.  See here.

Davis doesn't cut the MSRP prices of their products over time as other electronics makers do. Nor have they raised the prices for inflation.  They only seem to change prices when they offer a new item.

That pricing model would tend to make the profits back-end loaded over the life of a product assuming its primarily an electronic device.  Who knows, perhaps the profits from the loggers are carrying (helping to subsidize) the inflated manufacturing and material costs of the ISS.

Semiconductor prices fall faster than inflation pushes prices up and so almost everything electronic gets cheaper over time (see your comment above on the flash memory prices).  Overseas manufacturing has driven prices down there as well.  Davis is simply trying to protect a cash cow, pure and simple.

I know you discussed the method of accessing the console/Envoy computer port well before these green dots appeared, but how just fast do you think Davis can react to something like that? 

If all they did was start writing the security register in the flash, then they could have reacted in days or weeks.  I'll remind you that Belfryboy laid out his first version of his interface board over his lunch break.  PCB turnaround times are on the order of a week to a month.  No problem, hardware wise

Where they have been slow is getting the V3 firmware out based on the incompatible loggers.  They'd have to be careful making sure they got this right, so I can see this taking longer.  So this all rolled out just as I would expect.

To me there is too much of a coincidence that they would change both the receiver boards and the loggers at the same time.

Believe whatever you like.  The facts seem to indicate otherwise.

[rdsman]

I personally think that Davis should have went with a uSD card solution while they were changing things.  Question:  What do you get when you cross the RF Bee with an intelligent color display?  Answer:  The Color Vue!

Yes Dekay, I used your formulas.

 

[johnd]

I'd suggest that the point to ponder is why Davis have few or no direct competitors, offering stations of comparable specification that are (usually) well-supported in what is, for electronic devices, a relatively low volume market. The only answer that I can think of is that no-one else has been able to make the economics stack up. You have to look at the profitability of the whole operation and not of individual parts.