Important Info for Davis VP USB data logger users and potential users

I think it sounds like a good solution

I recently bought a Davis VP & have experienced the same lock up problems. I have followed all the advice on this forum. Ferrites on the premium USB cable & the AC adaptor. I have also installed the latest drivers for the UART from Silicon Labs. I did notice that my cheap & nasty computer speakers locked the data logger within minutes so they have now gone in the bin. Everything is a lot better now but it still locks up after about 36 hours. The computer I am running is a two year old Dell Dimension with windows XP. Has anybody got any more ideas?

Rumour has it that Brian is going to come out with a version of WD that supports Davis USBXpress. Is this true & if so when?

even usbexpress mode has the same problem they have discovered (it was done to see if it got around the problem)
davis said they were going to update the dll to have support for that

the solution is to use a serial data logger instead, and then a good quality usb to serial adaptor

Thanks to scirocco for the tip about kitchen foil on the male/female USB connection. I’ll give it go & let you know how I get on.
Cheers, Simon

It is a question of the extent of the dropout problem though. All USB solutions suffer from the issue to some extent (and that includes using a serial logger with a serial-to-USB adapter - I’ve encountered at least a couple of verified instances where this has happened with a serial logger, though fortunately both cured by attention to the leads, ferrite cores, sources of RFI etc). USBX does sometimes perform acceptably where the standard VCP driver fails, so it is definitely a useful tool in this context.

I know that Davis did look at other USB chipsets, such as those used in some of the serial-to-USB adapters, but although some performed somewhat better than the SiLabs one it wasn’t by enough of a margin to make it worth switching the production process. But ultimately, if you have an environment where there’s a significant amount of RFI around, then no solution connecting via a USB port is guaranteed successful - USB just does seem inherently more sensitive to RFI than straight RS232 when used continuously 24/7. Fortunately, a better understanding of the role of RFI in causing the problem, more recent drivers etc have reduced the incidence of the problem considerably - just as well really since very few serial loggers are purchased nowadays - but obviously a few unlucky users still do see the dropouts.

Having put silver foil over the USB connection I was chuffed to bits when everything worked non stop for 3 whole days! Then bang, & back to where I was. #-o

I live really close to an electricity substation & have some pretty beefy power lines over the garden. Might this be part of the problem?

Hi,

I doubt the power station is an issue.
Make sure you have both the power cable and the USB cable as far apart as possible. Make also sure not to use their cheap USB cable but a good USB cable.
Make also sure not to wrap the cables around the little pins inside the station but isolate them already inside the station.

Cheers
Scirocco

Thanks for your helpfull suggestions Scirocco. I have tried everything you mentioned. Working in the electronics industry means I can get some fancy cables cheap. The USB cable I am using is double screened with ferrite’s fitted & 24 carat gold plated contacts!

I have now given up & having talked to my helpful supplier am going to swap out the USB data logger for a serial one.

Hi Slead,

I’m sorry it doesn’t work for you.
I never had a crash again since I did the changes.
Can you post a photo how it looks like with the changes?
Maybe I see something which is not correct.

Cheers

At the risk of cursing my weather station I am going to give an update. I tried the cheap solution above and so far all is working well. I separated the cables by as much as possible and added aluminum foil to the connection. My usb connection has not had a problem for almost 2 weeks now (w/in a couple days of a record). The only other time it lasted this long was when I left the continental United States for almost 2 weeks. Yeah, I thought leaving the mainland for Hawaii was the fix, but I ran out of money and had to come home, everything crashed w/in 2 days of my return.

Thanks for the advice and I’ll report when and if everything crashes again.

Hi Scirocco, Hopefully there is a picture attached of the current setup. Let me know what you think.


Envoy.JPG

Hi Simon,

Pull the 2 outgoing cables a bit further apart and don’t shield both cables together in the silver foil.
How far apart are the cables inside the station (which is different to mine)? Separate them there as far as possible too.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

I have now received the serial data logger & it’s installed & running. One thing I have noticed straight away is that I am no longer getting red data quality indicators. Any way it’s early days yet but cross fingers & hope for the best.

I thought I might do an update on the Davis USB logger. I read many threads about the difficulty a lot of people were having with lock up when using the USB data logger. I did get a new Davis Vantage Pro2 with the usb logger. I installed it on a new HP X18-102us laptop running Vista 64 bit and it has so far been running flawlessly for 7 days. I am hoping that Davis may have worked the bugs out of the USB logger. I installed Weather Link 5.8.1 and Virtual Weather Internet. If I do run into some of the same issues I will post the results.

Dennis

Just reporting some anecdotal bits to suggest that the USB issue has not gone away with a new Davis Vantage Pro and Weatherlink 5.8.1 - out of the box. Not asking for help at this time - I have now read all the USB hints here and will try them out when able to next trek out to my remote station.

Just bought a new Davis Vantage Pro (wireless) with 6510 USB data logger from Ambient. Worked without fail for two weeks, 24/7, in my backyard while using Meteohub/Weatherhub as the USB and Internet interface between the station console and www.wunderground.com. Since I was using the Meteohub I did not need to use the Weatherlink software.

I then moved the rig to my remote location. Once there a power failure revealed that the Meteohub solution was not going to work as the Meteohub does not automatically restart itself after power failure - gotta manually press a button on the front of the device. Thought briefly about just adding a UPS but then another issue surfaced with the Meteohub approach and I decided to dump it and change over to using a PC 24/7. Set up a brand new Windows Vista (32 bit) machine, installed WeatherLink 5.8.1, and opened up a good book. Three hours later the USB connection to the console hung/dropped. Pulled the plug, put it back in and all was well - for four hours. Over the next 24 hours, the USB connection dropped every three to five hours. Was always correctable by simply pulling the USB plug and reinserting it. OK - I figured probably a Vista thing. So I pulled a dependable, two year old Windows XP Home Edition PC notebook out of the trunk of the car and set it up. Worked fine for two days and I went home happy except for missing my favorite notebook PC. A day and a half later, the USB dropped. A neighbor reset the PC for me and data flowed for maybe 18 hours before stopping again. I don’t want to bother the neighbor again so the next round of experiments will have to wait until I can travel to the remote location.

Throughout the adventures above, a Panasonic IP network camera (connected to the router by ethernet) chugged along without incident, cheerfully uploading its view once per minute.

Best regards, Major H, [email protected].

the PC will be putting out more electrical inteference than the HUB box was

I know you’ve now dropped the Meteohub idea, but had you seen these
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/ForcePowerAlwaysOn
ideas for auto-starting an NSLU2 on power restore? All unofficial and likely to affect warranty…

I had not seen those items on the Meteohub. Thanks.

I should also have mentioned that within the last couple of weeks the Meteohub software has also become available for hardware other than the NSLU2, including ‘generic x86’ and a VMware virtual machine. At least some of the other hardware does do auto-on.
http://www.meteohub.de/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=68

You are probably aware of this, but maybe others aren’t so lest anyone should think I’m directing anyone away from WD with my Meteohub talk I’ll point out that WD can still be very relevant even with Meteohub involved, since data can be pulled from Meteohub into WD either via export as ‘logfiles’ or via the ‘logging protocol’ (which is what I use) to gain access to the vast array of features that WD offers.

If pulling in large (days or months worth) of backlogged data, the logfile route is probably more efficient, if pulling in data from overnight or a WD PC power failure then the logging protocol is better. For pulling in live data the logging protocol is the obvious choice.

Hi all. All week has now gone by since installing the serial data logger without one glitch let alone a crash. So to anyone out there contemplating buying a Davis VP system, follow Brian’s advise and order a serial data logger. It will save an awful lot of time & head scratching.

Thanks to everyone for all your help. :smiley: