Author Topic: Access Connection Issues  (Read 30160 times)

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Offline DrewShock

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #175 on: November 26, 2018, 06:04:05 PM »
Glenn, my Access will on rare occasions recover quickly on it's own but it's usually more like 6+ hours later. I have had it only once back-fill data that I know of out of 20+ lost connections. I think the product is defective at least the ones we have. Most people probably don't pay close enough attention to even notice.

Still waiting for Acurite to reply to my email about getting it looked at. Don't hold much promise though. One gentleman on the Acurite forums (when they were still around) said he got his back with no change, still disconnects. I don't want to put any more money into it. I rather just try a new system from a different company.

Offline Glenn

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #176 on: November 27, 2018, 08:02:49 AM »
There was a power and internet outage in VT this morning. The Access came back online without an issue. I wonder if the duration of the outage has an effect on things? The outage this morning was maybe an hour or so total?
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Offline hdtvluvr

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #177 on: November 27, 2018, 06:13:10 PM »
Well, I've had issues of losing signal for 2+ hours 11 times in Oct and 7 times now in Nov.  They all happened at night and finally came back up on their own.  I figured it was that my internet was down or something.  BUT right now internet is working and it is middle of the afternoon and it has been down for over 3 hours.   I've unplugged the power and ethernet from the access.   I've rebooted my router too for good measure.   The access has a blue light.  I can get to the access splash page but it doesn't show my 5 in 1.

I installed new lithium batteries in July.   I did this when I also installed the remote battery box sold by Acurite.   Not sure if this is important or not. 

WU obviously is also not reporting.   FWIW, My Acurite dashboard shows battery: Normal which I assume isn't right as it also shows my status as Offline.

How do I get this back online?

EDIT:  I just checked both of my displays (which are a lot further from the 5 in 1 than the access and have more walls to penetrate) and the sensor indicator shows all the bars.  So at least I know the 5 in 1 IS transmitting.  It is also 30 deg outside currently.   So if it was a battery issue I don't think the displays would be receiving data either - isn't that correct?
« Last Edit: November 27, 2018, 06:32:25 PM by hdtvluvr »

Offline hdtvluvr

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #178 on: November 28, 2018, 10:24:09 AM »
Now offline for 19 hours   :-x


Just checked and it is now back online.  I didn't do anything so I'm not sure what is happening.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2018, 01:08:25 PM by hdtvluvr »

Offline DoctorKnow

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #179 on: November 28, 2018, 10:31:07 AM »
Have you moved the Access around to try and pick up the 5 in 1 signal again? I've noticed if my access gets moved any at all, the signal can change a lot. Try rotating the mushroom in small amounts and refresh the splash page.

Offline hdtvluvr

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #180 on: November 28, 2018, 01:18:17 PM »
Sorry, I edited my previous post before I saw your response.   It is back online.
The access unit has not been moved.   Well, I probably did move it a few mm when I unplugged/plugged the power and ethernet but nothing substantial. 

Now I'm wondering about the temp and the remote battery pack. 
https://www.acurite.com/remote-battery-pack-for-5-in-1-weather-sensors.html

Wondering if the temp has a more drastic affect on the extra wiring between the pack and the 5 in 1.  But then again, my displays in the house were and are working fine. 

The Access splash page says:
Signal 0
Battery  Normal

My Acurite Dashboard says:
Signal strength   1 Bar  Poor
Battery Strength  Normal
Status  Good


EDIT:  Temp here is now 48 deg and the signal on the Access Splash page says:  1    My Acurite Dashboard still has 1 Bar
AND while I was typing this, the Splash page now has a signal of 0 and it is still online.

What is the amp draw of the 5 in 1 and what is the nominal voltage required?  I assume the battery pack wiring is 16 gauge but may be 18.  I couldn't find any specs.

EDIT 2:  Just got off CHAT with Chris.  He didn't know the wire gauge of the battery pack and when I asked about nominal voltage and amperage for the 5 in 1 he said since there were 4 1.5 volt batteries, it required 6 volts.  I informed him that this was not correct since it has 2 banks of batteries so that 1 bank could be replaced at a time so as to prevent signal loss.  His response was then:

"I wouldn't have access to anything like voltage for the wiring that would be propitiatory knowledge"

« Last Edit: November 28, 2018, 02:49:21 PM by hdtvluvr »

Offline hdtvluvr

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #181 on: November 28, 2018, 06:58:08 PM »
Well, it's been offline > 2 hours now.   Outside temp is 45 deg - so doesn't seem to be temp related.

Any ideas?

Offline DoctorKnow

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #182 on: November 28, 2018, 07:26:29 PM »
I'm thinking it is a chip inside the 5n1 itself. I bought one off of E-bay, and it was DOA.  While I was trying to figure out what was wrong, I would have symptoms like you describe, where my display would work, but my Access would show 0 signal. Then my displays would finally drop off entirely as well. This was happening while I was poking around the board.

If you are comfortable working on circuit boards with a soldering iron, you might try to heat up some of the solder joints on the chips near the battery leads. That is where I found my problem... I assume this 5 in 1 is the new generation?

Offline hdtvluvr

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #183 on: November 28, 2018, 07:40:55 PM »
Well, I won't be able to get to take the 5 in 1 down until the weather gets better - may be a month or more.  I'm not sure if it is a new generation or not.   I had gotten it a couple years ago from Acurite for a backup for when the one installed died.   I put this unit up on July 1, 2017   probably got in in 16.  It has been running well since I put it up.

Offline DoctorKnow

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #184 on: November 28, 2018, 08:59:07 PM »
The newer models don't have all those connection cables inside connecting the different boards for the reed switch etc. There isn't much in the newer ones to work on. Some apparently had cold solder joints on those tiny chips though.

Offline Glenn

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #185 on: December 05, 2018, 07:22:25 AM »
Are you running a SmartHub in tandem? That can sometimes help troubleshoot things. I found that my Access would drop, but the SmartHub would chug right along.
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Offline hdtvluvr

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #186 on: December 05, 2018, 10:14:08 AM »
Regarding the smart hub, I discarded that shortly after I got the Access.  It was due to go dark soon at the time before the extension was made for Feb. 2019.   

After days of moving the Access a little, rotating, raising, lowering, etc.  I've had a signal strength of 4 bars for the last couple of days.   I guess this means that the antenna on the Access is not very good because it is so sensitive that small changes make a HUGE difference.  Shouldn't be this way IMO.    So the Access now sits where the blue light, instead of pointing towards the 5 in 1, is now pointing 45 degrees clockwise from the 5 in 1, about 2 inches south of its original position on the shelf and is now standing on a 5 inch tall box.  It took a lot of time to adjust and check.

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #187 on: December 05, 2018, 10:58:24 AM »
Regarding the smart hub, I discarded that shortly after I got the Access.  It was due to go dark soon at the time before the extension was made for Feb. 2019.   

After days of moving the Access a little, rotating, raising, lowering, etc.  I've had a signal strength of 4 bars for the last couple of days.   I guess this means that the antenna on the Access is not very good because it is so sensitive that small changes make a HUGE difference.  Shouldn't be this way IMO.    So the Access now sits where the blue light, instead of pointing towards the 5 in 1, is now pointing 45 degrees clockwise from the 5 in 1, about 2 inches south of its original position on the shelf and is now standing on a 5 inch tall box.  It took a lot of time to adjust and check.

The antenna is just fine.  I can't account for the particulars of your environment, but with radio moving things around is often normal. 

That's just the way it works.

Offline DoctorKnow

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #188 on: December 05, 2018, 07:36:36 PM »
Regarding the smart hub, I discarded that shortly after I got the Access.  It was due to go dark soon at the time before the extension was made for Feb. 2019.   

After days of moving the Access a little, rotating, raising, lowering, etc.  I've had a signal strength of 4 bars for the last couple of days.   I guess this means that the antenna on the Access is not very good because it is so sensitive that small changes make a HUGE difference.  Shouldn't be this way IMO.    So the Access now sits where the blue light, instead of pointing towards the 5 in 1, is now pointing 45 degrees clockwise from the 5 in 1, about 2 inches south of its original position on the shelf and is now standing on a 5 inch tall box.  It took a lot of time to adjust and check.
The antenna is just more directional and this means that it will hold the signal well once you find the right orientation. WIth the smarthub, sometimes during certain atmospheric conditions, , the signal would become too weak to read at night due to the omni directional nature of the design.

Offline radioman61

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #189 on: December 06, 2018, 11:00:18 AM »
Regarding the smart hub, I discarded that shortly after I got the Access.  It was due to go dark soon at the time before the extension was made for Feb. 2019.   

After days of moving the Access a little, rotating, raising, lowering, etc.  I've had a signal strength of 4 bars for the last couple of days.   I guess this means that the antenna on the Access is not very good because it is so sensitive that small changes make a HUGE difference.  Shouldn't be this way IMO.    So the Access now sits where the blue light, instead of pointing towards the 5 in 1, is now pointing 45 degrees clockwise from the 5 in 1, about 2 inches south of its original position on the shelf and is now standing on a 5 inch tall box.  It took a lot of time to adjust and check.
The antenna is just more directional and this means that it will hold the signal well once you find the right orientation. WIth the smarthub, sometimes during certain atmospheric conditions, , the signal would become too weak to read at night due to the omni directional nature of the design.

Another fine example of replacing what works good with what sounds good.

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #190 on: December 06, 2018, 11:31:09 AM »
Regarding the smart hub, I discarded that shortly after I got the Access.  It was due to go dark soon at the time before the extension was made for Feb. 2019.   

After days of moving the Access a little, rotating, raising, lowering, etc.  I've had a signal strength of 4 bars for the last couple of days.   I guess this means that the antenna on the Access is not very good because it is so sensitive that small changes make a HUGE difference.  Shouldn't be this way IMO.    So the Access now sits where the blue light, instead of pointing towards the 5 in 1, is now pointing 45 degrees clockwise from the 5 in 1, about 2 inches south of its original position on the shelf and is now standing on a 5 inch tall box.  It took a lot of time to adjust and check.
The antenna is just more directional and this means that it will hold the signal well once you find the right orientation. WIth the smarthub, sometimes during certain atmospheric conditions, , the signal would become too weak to read at night due to the omni directional nature of the design.

Another fine example of replacing what works good with what sounds good.

This isn't correct.  The Access has vertical helical antenna.  Very omni-directional.

The SmartHUB had a straight wire antenna, bent in an odd fashion several times.  It's an omni, but not a very good one in practice, with some definite directionality.  The bends make it difficult to theoretically analyze.  The length of antenna that has to run parallel to the main board is also troublesome.  Not only does it tend to pick up noise from the main board, the antenna has be known to short out on the main board for some users.

In another thread here I and John Z did an Access teardown and some analysis, photos included.  I'd love to see some of the "experts" here pick it apart and tell me exactly why they think the SmartHUB antenna is superior. 

However, even though the antenna is an omni, that doesn't mean you don't have to move it around sometimes (particularly indoors) where there are other factors impacting reception.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2018, 11:42:28 AM by nincehelser »

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #191 on: December 06, 2018, 11:38:06 AM »
So you don't have to go searching for the other thread, here are the antennas in an Access and a SmartHUB.

Access:
 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

SmartHUB:
 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]



Offline radioman61

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #192 on: December 06, 2018, 11:53:04 AM »
George, I can't dispute anything you're saying... RF wise it should work better.  Based on experience though, a weak signal was consistent on the old unit. Meaning, a signal that was a 2 would sit there dumb and happy as a 2 forever.  The Access seems to suffer from random changes in signal strength which should be minimal on two stationary units.  I don't think it has anything to do with the antenna but rather the receiver in the Access. It's not like there's any sort of front end in either receiver so maybe the more efficient antenna is causing overload or a high BER?

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #193 on: December 06, 2018, 12:01:52 PM »
George, I can't dispute anything you're saying... RF wise it should work better.  Based on experience though, a weak signal was consistent on the old unit. Meaning, a signal that was a 2 would sit there dumb and happy as a 2 forever.  The Access seems to suffer from random changes in signal strength which should be minimal on two stationary units.  I don't think it has anything to do with the antenna but rather the receiver in the Access. It's not like there's any sort of front end in either receiver so maybe the more efficient antenna is causing overload or a high BER?

Both the Access and the SmartHUB use the same radio receiver chip. MICRF211

I can't say what's happening to your particular Access.  It certainly isn't happening to all of them.

Offline DrewShock

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #194 on: December 06, 2018, 02:28:14 PM »
radioman61, I agree with you. Doesn't matter how the units look on paper but my smartHUB stays pretty consistent with 1 or 2 on the signal strength for my far 5 in 1 (60ft away) than the Access. The Access jumps around no matter how I orient it. The smartHub is happy staying connected with 1 or 2 bars. The Access will loose connection for hours sometimes for no reason I can see. I did add a silk coated very thin copper wire extension to my far 5 in 1 antenna and ran it out of one of the holes for the rain gauge, down the 5 in 1 mount and then pointed the very end in the direction of my Access and smartHUB.  The wire is two to three feet long. That has helped a lot with the Access keeping the signal more consistent. My smartHUB now read 2 to 3 bars instead of 1 to 2.

However I still have the Access losing connection on quick power outage thing. So I have sent it back to Acurite to look at. I will make a post once they send it back to me to update the findings. Both my Accesses exhibit this behavior rendering the battery backup useless. Only once it about 20 power outages have I had the Access back-fill data.

Offline juched

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #195 on: January 01, 2019, 05:45:22 PM »
I am also having an issue with my Acess hub going offline... stops reporting to Acurite, and then 30 minutes later it stops reporting to weather underground.

My status "splash" page also doesn't show.

I have had this happen 3 times now.  No power outage.  I haven't left it long enough to see if it comes back on its own.  Pull power and batteries and then it comes back.

Now, it only started once I setup Acuparse on a raspberry pi.  I think that may introduce some network issues for the Access. which has previously been running for months with no issues.

Edit: I can ping the device but the http service doesn’t reply.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2019, 09:04:54 PM by juched »

Offline juched

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #196 on: January 02, 2019, 11:53:36 AM »
It happened again.

I dug through the logs in AcuParase and I found that when there were delays in the response, the Access would try again, and it seems that the Access code is buggy and gets hung up.  At that point, the splash screen becomes unresponsive as well, even though the networking is still working since I can ping the device.

Examples of issues I found which would lock up the Acurite access:
1. Returning 200 OK with 0 content.
2. Long delays in responding (seems to be a 20-second timeout inside the Access), which seems to hang it.


For now I have reset the Access to talk directly to the cloud service and I hope to see stability again.

Offline rodchev65

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #197 on: January 02, 2019, 08:01:43 PM »
I'm having the same issue, sporadically showing no signal on the display, goes offline, does not update etc. despite that nothing has been changed on the system. Acurite Model #01536.

This has been going on for months but it's getting worse. Two year old unit. I'm set up on a custom built PC that stays up 24-7.

This issue usually fixes itself after a day or so but apparently NOT this time. Something is failing and the same thing appears to be happening to many different versions of Acurite weather stations so we need to find a commonality.

I'm curious, how many of us with this issue are using Windows 10?

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #198 on: January 02, 2019, 10:42:35 PM »
I'm having the same issue, sporadically showing no signal on the display, goes offline, does not update etc. despite that nothing has been changed on the system. Acurite Model #01536.

This has been going on for months but it's getting worse. Two year old unit. I'm set up on a custom built PC that stays up 24-7.

This issue usually fixes itself after a day or so but apparently NOT this time. Something is failing and the same thing appears to be happening to many different versions of Acurite weather stations so we need to find a commonality.

I'm curious, how many of us with this issue are using Windows 10?

This thread is about the Access.  It sounds like you are using a PC Connect system.

If the PC Connect display isn't showing a signal, then that either means radio interference, or your 5n1 isn't transmitting.  I'd put my money on radio interference.

The radio noise sometimes comes from the PC over the USB cable..  I'd try putting ferrite beads on the USB cable.

Offline Jim Ace

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Re: Access Connection Issues
« Reply #199 on: January 03, 2019, 07:05:05 AM »
I'm having the same issue, sporadically showing no signal on the display, goes offline, does not update etc. despite that nothing has been changed on the system. Acurite Model #01536.

This has been going on for months but it's getting worse. Two year old unit. I'm set up on a custom built PC that stays up 24-7.

This issue usually fixes itself after a day or so but apparently NOT this time. Something is failing and the same thing appears to be happening to many different versions of Acurite weather stations so we need to find a commonality.

I'm curious, how many of us with this issue are using Windows 10?

I had the same issue with access, I sent it back and it was replaced with a new unit by Acurite.  I have had no problems since I received the new access. 
KNYEASTR4
Ecowitt WS65
AWEKAS 14894
PWS
WeatherCloud
Windy
Weewx
CumulusMX
CWOP FW3861

 

anything