Topic: Update times

[mmorris]

Mine is now doing well 1min or under updates. Thank to the person that got in touch with IT or the software people. And thank to those people for there work.

[TNWeatherGuy]

Hi Victoria,

I believe you are correct about the time.  I checked my station and found it 3 mins ahead.  Once I corrected it, my update times on WU were less than a minute.  Too bad my station doesn't support NTP.  However, I did make the correction yesterday (12/23/20), so that's not to say you guys made a correction which solved some of the lag.

[galfert]

It is unfortunate that the station time becomes a problem for some. Especially when NTP is not part of the station design. I say unfortunate but there is a solution. There are two ways to send data with the WU upload protocol. The station can upload data with a time stamp or it can just say time=now which then would present no problem for the ingesting server. If the station without NTP used time=now then there wouldn't be a need for time keeping on the station...and if the clock is off so what. Well I say so what as far as real data is concerned on WU but then would would happen is that data would be different at the station console than what is realized online if the clock is far enough off. Especially noticeable would be things like total daily rain if it is raining during the date change and other metrics like temp high/low could also be affected. But there likely is little recourse for the station owner to change the time stamp over to time=now as these things are hard coded in firmware. But you could write to your station manufacture and ask them to update the firmware so that the WU upload does change to use time=now instead of a hard time stamp.

The actual variable in the upload protocol though is not time= it is dateutc=. So it would need to be changed to dateutc=now for the data upload packet.

Some station owners though might be able to modify the WU upload. Some might be able to turn off a dedicated preconfigured WU upload and then instead configure a custom formatted HTTP upload. If your station allows it then you may want to consider looking at the WU upload protocol to manually configure the upload. Here is the relevant information to do that:
https://support.weather.com/s/article/PWS-Upload-Protocol?language=en_US

Another option if you can't change the upload protocol is to augment your station to use some 3rd party software and then you upload to WU via that 3rd party software instead. Many stations can be made to be compatible with software like Cumulus MX, Meteobridge, Weather-Display and WeeWX and you can then gain much more control over your weather upload. I would say don't get into all that just for the sake of WU...but rather because using such software will also increase the potential of your station do send data to more places than just WU. If you use such a system then your station that doesn't have NTP capabilities to synchronize the clock then does gain it via the system running this software. Because then your local software and its data will have proper time keeping. Then your display console becomes less relevant. Realize that by using this 3rd party software to solve the dateutc=now problem you've come full circle and also solved the NTP problem so then your station can use a proper dateutc= date/time stamp, so there would then be no need for dateutc=now.

TL;DR
Add 3rd party software to your station so that you can solve the time stamp problem if your station doesn't have NTP time sync capabilities.

[TraderGary]

This has been very interesting indeed. I have been wondering why my WU works when others do not. And the answer is apparently the time stamps.

I don't use the VP2 Console. The VP2 Console requires setting the time manually and even then it is never accurate and continues to be less accurate as time goes on.

My data is retrieved from my Davis VP2+ ISS using the Davis WLL 6100 which feeds my Meteobridge Pro which then feeds WU (and several other sites you can see in my signature below). My Davis WLL 6100 and my Meteobridge Pro apparently use an accurate time standard.

[modean987]

It's good to see that for some, tweaking the time fixed the issue. For me, it didn't work -- Kubuntu uses systemd for timekeeping (no more ntpd), and using timedatectl set-ntp 1 didn't work. Regardless, temoprarily installing chrony showed that my system clock difference to NIST was negligible, so I don't know why my system was one of the affected ones.

Regardless, thanks Victoria for getting getting on it right away and working with the engineers to get the issue resolved and keep us informed. Your efforts are much appreciated.

[TraderGary]

It's good to see that for some, tweaking the time fixed the issue. For me, it didn't work -- Kubuntu uses systemd for timekeeping (no more ntpd), and using timedatectl set-ntp 1 didn't work. Regardless, temoprarily installing chrony showed that my system clock difference to NIST was negligible, so I don't know why my system was one of the affected ones.

modean987,

Your WU is working fine here. There doesn't seem to be a problem at all.

Holiday Greetings from Loganville, GA,
Gary

[modean987]

modean987,

Your WU is working fine here. There doesn't seem to be a problem at all.

Holiday Greetings from Loganville, GA,
Gary

Aye, now it is. Before.... notsomuch

Have a Merry one!

[cbull23]

My dashboard has been having issues over the past week or so. It is taking about 40-48 seconds to update with rapid-fire and it doesn't always go back to 0 seconds ago or whatever it is. It usually goes from something like 40 seconds ago to 34 seconds ago or to 13 seconds ago back up to 48 seconds ago. My Davis Vantage Pro2 does not have any time issues. It's time is being synced through the internet by my Ambient WeatherBridge (Meteobridge). I haven't changed anything with my setup or network recently, so I don't know if this is an issue on my end or on WU.

[galfert]

My dashboard has been having issues over the past week or so. It is taking about 40-48 seconds to update with rapid-fire and it doesn't always go back to 0 seconds ago or whatever it is. It usually goes from something like 40 seconds ago to 34 seconds ago or to 13 seconds ago back up to 48 seconds ago. My Davis Vantage Pro2 does not have any time issues. It's time is being synced through the internet by my Ambient WeatherBridge (Meteobridge). I haven't changed anything with my setup or network recently, so I don't know if this is an issue on my end or on WU.

It's a WU problem ...not you. I'm seeing the same issue across various types of weather station upload software.

[TraderGary]

Thanks for the confirmation, George.

I'm seeing the same inconsistent behavior. It can go from 13 seconds to 44 seconds and then to 28 seconds and down to 7 seconds and then back up to 41 seconds. It's totally erratic.

I'm using a Davis VP2+ feeding a Davis WLL 6100 feeding a Meteobridge Pro.