Topic: Davis Vantage Pro 2 ---> Weatherbridge ---> Starlink

[casa manana]

Not sure this is the right thread to post this, so please redirect me if there is a better thread.

I have been successfully operating my Davis weather station through a Weatherbridge, using Starlink to upload data to WU.  It has been working just fine for over a year, but now the Weatherbridge device won't establish a connection with my Starlink router.  I have tried re-booting everything, and even went the step of buying a new Weatherbridge, suspecting that the old one failed.  But, no, I have the same issue with the new Weatherbridge.  When I try to boot it, it flashes it's startup blinky light, but never gets to a stable connection.

Oh, by the way, I have an identical setup at another location, except using Suddenlink as my internet provider there.  So far, no issues with the Weatherbridge link on that setup.

Any ideas or suggestions welcome.

And again, if I should be posting this elsewhere please let me know.  Thanks in advance.

[Mattk]

The logic in two Weatherbridges not connecting to the same Starlink but a Weatherbridge connecting to Suddenlink tends to point to Starlink being the issue?

[casa manana]

I agree with the logic pointing to an issue with Starlink.  On the other hand,  all of my other devices (e.g., multiple webcams) are still working fine through the Starlink router.  And the Weatherbridge had been working with it for over a year. 

I suppose the Starlink folks might have uploaded an update to their routers that somehow is now giving the Weatherbridge fits.  That would be bad since Starlink is notorious for having no support.

[bjp]

I'm not familiar with the Weatherbridge but I am familiar with the VP2 and Starlink.

From a quick search it looks like the Weatherbridge only supports 2.4Ghz wifi, not 5Ghz. The Starlink router's access point by default uses the same SSID for 2.4G and 5G wifi, some 2.4G-only devices have a problem with this. You might try going into your Starlink router configuration in the app and splitting the 2.4G/5G wifi bands. You'll have to give one or both of them a new name which will also mean reconfiguring your other devices, but you can also just do it temporarily as a test to see if that will get the Weatherbridge online.

Alternatively if you have the round V1 dish (or buy/own the ethernet adapter for the V2 square dish) you can attach your own third party router/access point which the Weatherbridge might have better luck connecting to instead of the Starlink wifi.

[casa manana]

I'm not familiar with the Weatherbridge but I am familiar with the VP2 and Starlink.

From a quick search it looks like the Weatherbridge only supports 2.4Ghz wifi, not 5Ghz. The Starlink router's access point by default uses the same SSID for 2.4G and 5G wifi, some 2.4G-only devices have a problem with this. You might try going into your Starlink router configuration in the app and splitting the 2.4G/5G wifi bands. You'll have to give one or both of them a new name which will also mean reconfiguring your other devices, but you can also just do it temporarily as a test to see if that will get the Weatherbridge online.

Alternatively if you have the round V1 dish (or buy/own the ethernet adapter for the V2 square dish) you can attach your own third party router/access point which the Weatherbridge might have better luck connecting to instead of the Starlink wifi.

tHANK YOU FOR THE SUGGESTIONS, i'LL GIVE THESE A TRY.

[Mattk]

That might be the case if StarLink has changed their 2.4/5GHz WiFi in immediate recent times since the system was working for the past year?

I suppose since WiFi has come up I didn't see anything specifically mentioned where WiFi was being used or in fact what the VP2 connection is, RF or Logger etc, but if in fact WiFi is being used between the Bridge and the router have you tried connecting via Ethernet to check the WiFi theory?   

[casa manana]

That might be the case if StarLink has changed their 2.4/5GHz WiFi in immediate recent times since the system was working for the past year?

I suppose since WiFi has come up I didn't see anything specifically mentioned where WiFi was being used or in fact what the VP2 connection is, RF or Logger etc, but if in fact WiFi is being used between the Bridge and the router have you tried connecting via Ethernet to check the WiFi theory?

The connection between the Weatherbridge and Starlink is via ethernet, not WiFi.

[Mattk]

OK that eliminates WiFi issues. Considering things have worked for 12 months then what has changed and by whom?

Are the Weather Bridge/s config with DHCP or Static IP's?     

[bjp]

My apologies for assuming a wifi connection here.

At this point I would try connecting another wired device to the ethernet cable the Weatherbridge is using, to rule out issues with the cable itself or the switch port the other end is connected to. Have you confirmed that other devices are working properly with the Starlink internet connection? Do you have this plugged directly into the V1 Starlink router AUX port, or are you using the V2 Starlink with the ethernet adapter, either directly wired or with another switch or router in between? Definitely the DHCP vs static IP config Mattk mentioned is worth looking into.

[casa manana]

First of all, thank you to Mattk and bjp for the ideas and advice, I really do appreciate it.

Here are some more answers to your questions, and some results of some new diagnostics:

The Weatherbridge is (was) configured for DHCP.  It is connected to an ethernet hub (since Starlink only provides a single ethernet port).  There is only one other device connected through that hub, it is my Dish satellite TV (Dish downloads its TV Guide schedule through this link).  The Dish link has continued to work fine.

I tried the following, with no joy.  I swapped the internet cables between the Weatherbridge and the Dish TV.  The Dish continued working, the Weatherbridge continued not working.  So it's not a cable problem.

I removed the ethernet hub from the system and plugged the Weatherbridge directly into the Starlink's single port.  Nope, still no work.

All of my other devices are still working ( 2 Ring security cameras, and one Foscam weather webcam, and my Ooma IP telephone system) -- they are all connected via WiFi.

Now, here's an interesting new piece of data.  I went back through the Weather Underground data to see exactly when the link stopped.  It appears to have stopped at midnight on May 25th.  Now that's really suspicious.  I am really starting to suspect that Starlink pushed out some over-the-air update that is messing with the Weatherbridge.  If that is the case though, I would expect that we would be seeing a lot more discussion of this type of problem somewhere on this forum, since I can't be the only one using this configuration.

If it is a Starlink issue, that's bad since it basically obsoletes my setup. 

Thanks again for the advice.  I will probably next be looking for advice on finding another setup to get data flowing.  I really liked the Weatherbridge system for both of my locations, especially this one which is pretty remote up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.  The way it was set up, the system would reboot itself autonomously after power outages (which are frequent up here).

[bjp]

Something else you can try: If you disconnect both cables (Dish and Weatherbridge) from your hub, power cycle your hub and Starlink equipment, then ONLY plug in the Weatherbridge, does it work?

Have you tried to reconfigure either Weatherbridge to connect using wifi instead of ethernet?

Without a packet sniffer on the network it will be hard to determine exactly what's going on, but it sounds like you are not getting a DHCP response. You could also try reconfiguring the Weatherbridge to a static IP. Find out what IP addresses your other devices have and assign it a static IP on the same network. I think Starlink gives out 192.168.1.x addresses, perhaps pick some high number like 192.168.1.200 to assign static to the Weatherbridge, plug it in and see what happens.

Can you please confirm if your dish is round or square? If you have an actual hub and not a switch, then your wired devices may be asking Starlink's remote network for a DHCP address instead of asking your local Starlink router. Starlink used to provide multiple DHCP addresses but at some point changed to only one (but I think that was well before your issue began). Replacing that hub with a third party router capable of answering DHCP queries may help.

Can you describe the full network layout from the Starlink dish?

The round V1 dish would be:  Dish -> POE brick -> Starlink router POE in port, what order are things connected downstream of that?

If you have the V2 square dish, have you enabled bridge mode on the router? I have the round V1 dish so I'm not experienced with the V2/ethernet adapter setup.

[casa manana]

Hi bjp, here is some additional info...

Something else you can try: If you disconnect both cables (Dish and Weatherbridge) from your hub, power cycle your hub and Starlink equipment, then ONLY plug in the Weatherbridge, does it work?

Trued this, no work.  Weatherbridge stays in "connecting" mode, but doesn't establish connection.

Have you tried to reconfigure either Weatherbridge to connect using wifi instead of ethernet?

No, the Weatherbridge startup sequence requires a cabled connection to initialize the device.  (https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1210196/Ambient-Weather-Weatherbridge.html?page=5#manual)

Without a packet sniffer on the network it will be hard to determine exactly what's going on, but it sounds like you are not getting a DHCP response. You could also try reconfiguring the Weatherbridge to a static IP. Find out what IP addresses your other devices have and assign it a static IP on the same network. I think Starlink gives out 192.168.1.x addresses, perhaps pick some high number like 192.168.1.200 to assign static to the Weatherbridge, plug it in and see what happens.

I don't think I can -- the Weatherbridge device never establishes itself on the net, so I can't access it until it does (it doesn;t appear on an ip scanner)'

Can you please confirm if your dish is round or square? If you have an actual hub and not a switch, then your wired devices may be asking Starlink's remote network for a DHCP address instead of asking your local Starlink router. Starlink used to provide multiple DHCP addresses but at some point changed to only one (but I think that was well before your issue began). Replacing that hub with a third party router capable of answering DHCP queries may help.

My Starlink dish is the new square one, I think they refer to this as V2.

Can you describe the full network layout from the Starlink dish?

The round V1 dish would be:  Dish -> POE brick -> Starlink router POE in port, what order are things connected downstream of that?

My setup is Square Dish --> POE brick (this includes one ethernet port and a Starlink OEM cable that goes directly to the Starlink router.) --> I have an ethernet cable from the Starlink ethernet port into my Netgear 5-port ethernet switch) --. Ethernet cable from Netgear ethernet switch to the Weatherbridge.  (note that the Netgear ethernet switch is probably irrelevant, since the issue continues even if I eliminate it from the setup and connect the Weatherbridge directly to the Starlink ethernet port.

If you have the V2 square dish, have you enabled bridge mode on the router? I have the round V1 dish so I'm not experienced with the V2/ethernet adapter setup.

I'm clueless about this.  I don't know what bridge mode is.  The Starlink setup page doesn't include anything about bridge mode.

[bjp]

I'm unfortunately running out of ideas at this point. I've never heard of updates causing a device being unable to connect to a physical ethernet port unless something was physically broken or somehow misconfigured. Page 13 of the manual you linked to has a link at the bottom under 'Advanced Network Settings' that goes to http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Setup_Network#Type_Of_Connection - at the very top of that page is a link to http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Getting_Started#Cloud_Simulator_for_Network_Configuration that says "To get you around the bootstrap problem (how to configure networking when you need networking already configured to be able to do changes in the configuration?) there is a Meteobridge simulator in the Internet, which works as described here" - that page goes to a online simulator of the Weatherbridge that it says will allow you to configure network settings, download a config.tgz file that you can place on a USB stick and then reboot the Weatherbridge with the USB stick installed in its USB port, and it should read and use those network settings.  That might be worth a try - enter your wireless connection in there, download the file and see how it goes.

Otherwise I'd probably try the factory reset steps on page 13. I don't know why anything would have changed on the Starlink side but this is probably what I'd consider my best bet if I were in your position and didn't want to buy additional hardware.

[casa manana]

Thanks again bjp.

I managed to contact the Ambient Tech Support, and started exchanging the relevant information with them.  We're supposedly going to arrange for a phone call next week.  I'll report here how that goes.  I think I'll wait to try that "simulator" trick until I chat with them, just so I don't get things screwed up any further.

I'll report back here any outcomes.

[casa manana]

An interim update:

The Ambient tech support set up a phone call with me today to troubleshoot the Weatherbridge.  I was shocked that she spent over an hour with me, trying literally dozens of different approaches  at getting the Weatherbridge to connect.  Still no joy.

However, she said she was going to follow up with Starlink to see what sort of firmware updates they might have done, and try to figure out a workaround if that turns out to be the issue.  She said that they were committed to helping find a solution, and if they couldn’t get it to work they would buy back the Weatherbridge.

So, even though I’m still dead in the water, I have to say that the responsiveness from Ambient has gone beyond any expectations.  I’ll post another message if there’s a next step.

[kobuki]

Just out of curiosity: can you access the Weatherbridge online service (upload URL) from other devices behind your Starlink? If not, it would indicate that they somehow blocked accessing the service on your device/range of devices. If you can, it might have issues with the communication data to the services (false malware/virus alert, etc.) or maybe the mac address or mac address range of the Meteobridge (another dumb security precaution). A packet capture would have been handy...