Author Topic: VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray  (Read 7988 times)

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Offline Anole

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« on: August 03, 2006, 08:23:08 PM »
I'm currently seeing VirtualVP showing that it's disconnected when minimized to the system tray. Everything is working fine though and if I expand it it shows connected. Minimize it and it shows disconnected, but it's not because everything is working just fine.

VirtualVP 1.0.3.6

Anyone else seeing this?

Offline SLOweather

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2006, 10:25:45 PM »
Nope, but thanks for the tickler. After I read this, I checked mine, and, based on my webpage, it died shortly after 1:59PM PDT today. I've since restarted it.

Offline Mark / Ohio

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2006, 10:39:17 PM »
I've never seen that Anole.

In the past it has only disconnected a couple of times on earlier versions.  I believe both times I had another program running a process that either hung or slowed things way down when it happened.  One time I think was MS aintispyware doing a scan.  I've since blocked it from scanning the directories with weather programs running.  The other I think was due to an AVG update that hung.

FYI...  I'm running a serial connection to the VP.
Mark 
2002 Davis VP I Wireless, WeatherLink (Serial), GRLevel3, VirtualVP, StartWatch, Weather Display, Windows 10


Offline Anole

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2006, 11:19:50 PM »
Restart fixed it. I didn't want to restart earlier because it looked like we were about to get a big storm.

Offline Dragonfly

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2006, 07:46:11 PM »
Had VirtualVP do the same thing to me today for the first time causing system to be down for over three hours, but everything started back up when I clicked on connect.

-Ingo

Offline tinplate

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2006, 09:57:18 PM »
I'm doing some major work the connection code, so I'll keep an eye out for the tray issue. I have not noticed that myself.

On the larger issue of lost connections, that is one I've rolled around for awhile. I need to walk a fine line between VirtualVP being obnoxious, popping things up too often, and being able to convey events that should be noted. For a number of reasons, most outside the control of VirtualVP, connection between the PC and the VP console sometimes get interrupted. Sometimes it's fairly permanent (like the USB issue) and sometimes temporary. The next version of VirtualVP will periodically retry indefinitely if connection is lost instead of permanently giving up after unsuccessfully resending a command several times, and then trying to disconnect and reconnect. The problem though, is that VirtualVP might recover this way, but the connected weather programs likely will give up or lock up if they stop getting data. I'd like to add some other means of optional notificaiton like a single alert message box, or restoring from the tray and turning the VirtualVP window some vivid color. Email notification would also be nice.

I'm running the release version of VirtualVP (same as y'all) for my own weather station. It's running on a dedicated older laptop connected to a VP2 via a serial datalogger. Looking at the log file, it's been about a month since I've a had a connection issue, but I don't remember the details now, and VirtualVP's been running without interruption since July 11 when I restarted the system after installing Microsoft updates. I had more connection problems when I was using the USB datalogger (which I now have on the VP1 console I use specifically for software testing).

I could use the email option because I rarely ever look at the computer screen. I've got it set up for super minimal energy consumption. The screen and disk drive power down after 1 minute, and all the weather programs and data files that get frequent access are on a thumb drive. A nice freeware backup program backs up my data files via ftp to a remote site. So the whole setup sits quietly doing its thing with little intervention or notice (weather here's been really boring).

Steve

Offline Mark / Ohio

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2006, 11:23:27 PM »
Quote from: "tinplate"
..... The problem though, is that VirtualVP might recover this way, but the connected weather programs likely will give up or lock up if they stop getting data. ......
Steve


Glad you found us Steve!   :D

Also some programs probably don't download archive data without a restart even if they do recover after a disconnect.  I'm thinking that would be the case with my VWS for one.

Hey, there's another reason for VVP to be able to restart a program.   :wink:
Mark 
2002 Davis VP I Wireless, WeatherLink (Serial), GRLevel3, VirtualVP, StartWatch, Weather Display, Windows 10


Offline Anole

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VirtualVP showing disconnected in System Tray
« Reply #7 on: August 04, 2006, 11:25:26 PM »
Just to be clear....

My problem appeared to be confusion between what the system tray indicated as the connection status (disconnected) while the reality was that VirtualVP was working just fine. When I "maximized" VirtualVP it showed as connected which it was. It was only when it was minimized to the sytem tray that it provided the false "disconnected" status.