Author Topic: Weird station reporting drops (Read 3204 times)

madkiwi · « **on:** December 19, 2018, 12:46:03 PM »

So beginning Monday afternoon (5:35pm 12/17) I have noticed my WS-2902a has stopped reporting for various periods (I have an alert set for reporting lapses of 20 minutes).

I happen to have other wifi enabled devices in the 2nd home so I checked to see if they were reachable. They were. I was close enough to the house to swing by and check, the base station was connected to the internet and functioning correctly. At 6:26 pm I got a text that it had started reporting again. Figured all was good again.

Wrong. Since then it has been out:

12/18 4:58 am to 5:23 am
12/18 10:00 am to 10:25 am
12/18 1:20 pm to 1:45 pm
12/19 4:35 am to 5:00 am
12/19 8:00 am to 8:33 am.

I am guessing this isn't a hardware issue or anything wrong with my internet, but something weird at Ambientweather.net.

Anyone else seeing a similar pattern?

Mark

Sir_MAK · « **Reply #1 on:** December 19, 2018, 02:29:59 PM »

I have been seeing this on my WS-2000 for over a month now. I lose either WU or Ambient or both. The icons on the display will go out indicating the issue, however the WiFi icon stays on and the "signal strength" indicator shows good. I am still tracking this down as it may be an equipment issue in my home.

madkiwi · « **Reply #2 on:** December 19, 2018, 04:17:51 PM »

My icons on the display were all good. Display was completely normal. All online data is missing, if Ambient isn't receiving data there's nothing for them to feed to WU or PWS.

There is only a limited number of failure points- base station, router, internet or ambientweather.net. I looked at the base station while there was no reporting. It seems fine.
Checked other online items (2 thermostats and 2 wifi outlets) and they are all good, so my internet and router are performing nominally.

Only thing left is the cloud side.

madkiwi · « **Reply #3 on:** December 19, 2018, 09:31:55 PM »

So far it has stopped reporting 3 more times today. For 30-45 minutes each time.

A phone call to Ambient is going to happen in the morning.

Richieg · « **Reply #4 on:** December 19, 2018, 10:42:46 PM »

Same problem here for about a month also. I would have times where It would report for about four hours without dropping out and then it would start dropping out every half hour. Last week I got so tired of my phone alerting me that I had to turn the alerts off. Based on the symptoms to me it appears to be in ambient weather problem

Sir_MAK · « **Reply #5 on:** December 20, 2018, 06:52:16 AM »

I also have a WS-2902a in a different location and it has not had any issues.
The WS-2000 display has three status icons in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. One for WiFi, one for WU, and one for Ambient. These will display when connected to the respective sites. The WS-2902a display does not have the WU or Ambient status icons I believe.
I have both my WS-2000 and WS-2902a displays configured to send directly to WU instead of having the Ambient site relay it to WU. This is because the display sends data to WU more often then it sends to Ambient, so they better supports the WU rapid fire updating.

I finally went and disable the AP that I think is the cause of my issues with the WS-2000. So far so good, but I have gone a day or two without any connection issues.

madkiwi · « **Reply #6 on:** December 20, 2018, 02:41:03 PM »

I downloaded my data from Ambient for the last 24 hours. There are a lot of data gaps beyond the 8 times I received alerts (threshold was for 20 minutes), looking at the raw data I had numerous periods of 5-15 minutes as well.

I went back through the data, the first skip was Dec 17th at 2:15 am. Then 4:40 am, 6:15 am, 7:40 am, 8:10 am, 9:10 am, 9:30 am, 11:35 am... then progressively more and longer duration until the hour-long outage that triggered the first alert I received on Monday (mentioned in my first post).

I looked for a week before that and found 6 gaps of 5 minutes. Now I have had 64 in the last 24 hours.

Nobody else is experiencing anything like this?

kbellis · « **Reply #7 on:** December 20, 2018, 08:28:38 PM »

Quote from: madkiwi on December 20, 2018, 02:41:03 PM

I downloaded my data from Ambient for the last 24 hours. There are a lot of data gaps beyond the 8 times I received alerts (threshold was for 20 minutes), looking at the raw data I had numerous periods of 5-15 minutes as well.

I went back through the data, the first skip was Dec 17th at 2:15 am. Then 4:40 am, 6:15 am, 7:40 am, 8:10 am, 9:10 am, 9:30 am, 11:35 am... then progressively more and longer duration until the hour-long outage that triggered the first alert I received on Monday (mentioned in my first post).

I looked for a week before that and found 6 gaps of 5 minutes. Now I have had 64 in the last 24 hours.

Nobody else is experiencing anything like this?

Mark, is this happening to the 2nd WS-2902a? And, are you able to examine the data from the first unit?

madkiwi · « **Reply #8 on:** December 20, 2018, 09:43:55 PM »

Quote from: kbellis on December 20, 2018, 08:28:38 PM

Mark, is this happening to the 2nd WS-2902a? And, are you able to examine the data from the first unit?

I only have had 1 base station. The replacement part that Ambient sent was a sensor array.

*EDIT*
I have been comparing my WU data and Weather Underground is missing the same data. (which I realized is relayed from ambientweather.net)
*END EDIT*

Did not call Ambient today (too much actual work) but thinking I should.

kbellis · « **Reply #9 on:** December 21, 2018, 02:48:08 AM »

For those who have observed missing data related to the Ambient website, have the times all been different or the same?

kbellis · « **Reply #10 on:** December 21, 2018, 07:50:10 AM »

And maybe a related question for George and others using weather bridge and IP observer, or whatever is the correct names of that assemblage, that I believe leaves out the display console's role in data transmissions to remote servers: Have you likewise seen data drop issues?

Sir_MAK · « **Reply #11 on:** December 21, 2018, 08:03:26 AM »

In my case I have confirmed that the issue I am seeing with my WS-2000 is being caused by one of my APs. I disabled the AP and I have not had any missing data for over 36 hours now. Looking at the past history on Ambient I was missing data every day for the last two weeks, but not always long enough to send a notice.

As for the WS-2902a I have at another location, it only has one 5 minute period missing data in the last week. However this may have been caused by a short term outage with my cable provider as another WiFi device at this location had issue around the same time.

Sorry if my posts caused any confusion, but thanks for the OP as it motivated me to dig into this.

galfert · « **Reply #12 on:** December 22, 2018, 07:10:04 AM »

I have a few recommendations....

1- Don't use Ambientweather.net to upload to WU. You are better off having the console send directly to WU instead. More instantaneous data on WU.

2- Compare missing data to another service to see if the problem is your station or only with one weather service. This is another reason my #1 recommendation above is important, so that you can have a different service to compare.

3- Check your batteries. You may have depleted them because of poor station location where you are not getting enough sun to charge the super capacitor and then the station is reverting to using the batteries. Batteries may have been depleted prematurely caused by bad location. Check not just how much energy they still have but check for good and proper insertion direction and contact.

4- If you have WS-2902A display console check signal strength of outdoor sensor array. What is the distance? Can you at least temporarily move the console closer for testing for signal loss?

5- Check WiFi signal strength. Are you using mesh WiFi? I've heard this can be a problem. Test with just main WiFi close by and temporarily disable other mesh access points. Some WiFi access points or routers like to jump frequencies from time to time to deduce interference with neighbor's WiFi, so try at least for testing to disable this feature in your WiFi router if possible. But before testing all this WiFi stuff that can be more complicated rule out previous points I mentioned, especially to see if the whole issue is just unreliability with just one service provider like ambientweather.net.

FYI - I have a working display console and an ObserverIP with a WeatherBridge (Meteobridge) but my console is stilll uploading to WU. I don't like the Meteobridge uploading to WU. So for me it helps troubleshooting when I see that the console is uploading and if there are problems with other services on the Meteobridge I can easily rule out array sensor or signal issues if WU is working. But just because I prefer it this way doesn't mean you can't have both devices sending to WU to compare and test. So I use a separate WU ID and set its location at a slightly different place near me in the woods where my Meteobridge uploads to WU. I did the same with ambientweather.net (both devices upload) since I have a licensed WeatherBridge.

I haven't bothered to download data from ambientweather.net to see if data is missing. But I can tell you that from uploading to ambientweather.net on my Meteobridge I see errors often of missed uploads with that service. The Meteobridge gives me this added information where the display console doesn't. So I can say that ambientweather.net is not always up. But I've not noticed a problem with data graphs (the only thing I look at there). They must connect the lines even when data is missing. But I think it only happens every now an then and not like there are long outages. More like timeout server upload issues randomly.

My PWSweather uploads are done only by the Meteobridge as it does a better job than doing it through ambientweather.net. I have PWSweather uploads on Meteobridge set to 10 minutes which makes the graphs look better. Ambientweather.net does not give you this control and it makes PWSweather graphs look terrible with 1 minute uploads.

kbellis · « **Reply #13 on:** December 22, 2018, 08:13:36 AM »

Thanks George, this is good information.

madkiwi · « **Reply #14 on:** December 22, 2018, 01:12:10 PM »

Quote from: galfert on December 22, 2018, 07:10:04 AM

I have a few recommendations....

1- Don't use Ambientweather.net to upload to WU.

2- Compare missing data to another service to see if the problem is your station or only with one weather service.

3- Check your batteries.

4- If you have WS-2902A display console check signal strength of outdoor sensor array.

5- Check WiFi signal strength. Are you using mesh WiFi?

1) The base station uploads to WU independent of ambientweather.net now.

2) Missing data blocks on Ambient only.

3) All data is missing, including the indoor readings (indoor temp, humidity and pressure). Nothing gets transmitted during these outages (62 times in the last 24 hours lasting from 5 to 40 minutes). Battery on the outdoor array is irrelevant (but fyi new Eveready Lithiums on November 8th).

4) Sensor array shows 5 bars every time I look. But as mentioned I am not missing array data, it's everything.

5) Base is about 20 ft from the wifi router. No mesh. When looking for wifi networks only our one is found as nearest neighbor is 250 yards away.

Further- internet is working just fine during these data blackouts. Verified this many times already.

Mark

galfert · « **Reply #15 on:** December 22, 2018, 02:22:06 PM »

Seems like it might be your WiFi router. Even if you have no issues with Internet with other devices. Are you using your own decent WiFi router or are you using the junk that ISP companies give you?

Richieg · « **Reply #16 on:** December 23, 2018, 10:50:01 AM »

Just to let everyone know as per my previous post of losing data for about a month it has been 36 hours now and no dropped data. I have not done anything to change this problem. Maybe somebody in the cloud got it fixed

madkiwi · « **Reply #17 on:** December 23, 2018, 03:29:15 PM »

Quote from: galfert on December 22, 2018, 02:22:06 PM

Seems like it might be your WiFi router. Even if you have no issues with Internet with other devices. Are you using your own decent WiFi router or are you using the junk that ISP companies give you?

Not using an ISP router, it's a Netgear N600. Not the latest/greatest, but still sold and we replaced it at home with a Nighthawk AC2300. Remember- 2nd home.

I have an update. Last week I thought all the missing uploads were matched on WU and Ambient. On Thursday I realized that I had it configured with Ambient relaying data to WU, and changed the settings to do it independently.

Since 4pm Thursday afternoon (when I configured the base station) on Ambientweather.net there were 21 data blackouts on the 20th, 62 on the 21st, 61 on the 22nd and 29 so far today (with the 5 minute display intervals any single missing block could mean the transmissions stopped for 1 to 9 minutes, there were many periods with no data for 30-45 minutes too). I just went through all the data tables on Weather Underground for my station since then and there have been zero missed uploads.

I do not have it linked to WeatherCloud yet, just set up the account and will configure the base station later today. If that works with no problems then it'll confirm the problem is with Ambient's website.

So it is ONLY Ambient that is not receiving data. I will edit my post above for anyone dropping into this thread from the beginning.

madkiwi

galfert · « **Reply #18 on:** December 23, 2018, 04:22:20 PM »

Quote from: madkiwi on December 23, 2018, 03:29:15 PM

Quote from: galfert on December 22, 2018, 02:22:06 PM
Seems like it might be your WiFi router. Even if you have no issues with Internet with other devices. Are you using your own decent WiFi router or are you using the junk that ISP companies give you?

I have an update. Last week I thought all the missing uploads were matched on WU and Ambient. On Thursday I realized that I had it configured with Ambient relaying data to WU, and changed the settings to do it independently.

Well that changes everything, and it now starts to make more sense. It is an ambientweather.net outage issue. I'm not sure why ambientweather.net even offers this feature to upload to WU, as every station hardware console is capable of doing this better. About the only benefit I see is to use it as a bandwidth saver and only send to ambientweather.net and still have the data get to WU also.

The worst part is that it confuses some people I've helped, that have it badly configured where both their console and ambientweather.net are both sending to the same WU ID....just want to say to everyone reading this to never have two things sending data to the same weather service ID.

madkiwi · « **Reply #19 on:** December 24, 2018, 01:40:03 PM »

Update- I set up Weathercloud yesterday at 4:34 pm using AWNET. That was the only change I made.

Since then Weathercloud is working perfectly, as is Weather Underground AND Ambient!

I was getting ready to call Ambient so I looked at all the data logs since 4:34 pm and no data is missing... after a week of errors. It isn't like it was the first time I had used AWNET to edit the settings either because I had to set up WU for direct uploads on Thursday. But I had not touched AWNET since initial setup in November so it isn't that I inadvertently changed something last week.

Nothing about this makes any sense... intermittent glitches are not usually software errors, they are more likely to be caused by external factors or failing hardware.

I will check my data periodically to see if it is really resolved.

Mark

kbellis · « **Reply #20 on:** December 25, 2018, 07:54:58 AM »

Just wondering:
What version of Android was used for both AWNET app sessions?
Were both AWNET app sessions using the last AWNET app version of November 6, 2018?

madkiwi · « **Reply #21 on:** December 25, 2018, 01:47:16 PM »

Quote from: kbellis on December 25, 2018, 07:54:58 AM

Just wondering:
What version of Android was used for both AWNET app sessions?
Were both AWNET app sessions using the last AWNET app version of November 6, 2018?

Had to be the same version of AWNET as I only got my station on Nov. 8th.

Android 8.0.0, don't know when it was updated.

Last 24 hours Ambient is missing one dataset at 4:20 am, but WU has one at 4:19 am, Weathercloud also has one at 4:20 am so perhaps a conflict?

So still looking great. I'm almost ready to call it closed.

kbellis · « **Reply #22 on:** December 27, 2018, 08:42:28 AM »

In case you missed this:

https://ambientweather.net/help/graphs-not-loading-highs-and-lows-not-retrieving-missing-data-in-the-database-and-response-issues-from-amazon-alexa-starting-november-10-2018/

madkiwi · « **Reply #23 on:** December 27, 2018, 01:58:55 PM »

Quote from: kbellis on December 27, 2018, 08:42:28 AM

In case you missed this:

https://ambientweather.net/help/graphs-not-loading-highs-and-lows-not-retrieving-missing-data-in-the-database-and-response-issues-from-amazon-alexa-starting-november-10-2018/

Nope, my problem was from the base station somehow. I was getting so many "station has stopped reporting" alerts from Ambient that I ended up turning off the alerts. Plus nobody else was confirming the behavior so I don't believe it was Ambient database issues.

As a form of update, the base station stopped reporting to all services yesterday morning between 4:30 am and 9:05 am. I thought the problem was back but had a conversation with my ISP this morning and they confirmed they had an outage yesterday during that period.

Mark

galfert · « **Reply #24 on:** December 27, 2018, 04:41:10 PM »

What is this "base station" you speak of? With the WS-2902A there are two parts, the outdoor sensor array and the display console.

News:

Author Topic: Weird station reporting drops (Read 3204 times)