Following up with way more detail than probably any of you want, in case it's useful to anyone:
summary) old battery was low there seems to be some strange console behavior where txBatteryStatus is sticky, resetting at midnight. console appears not to communicate with weewx when in setup mode going into setup mode and staying for a while seems to cause weewx to exit because after delaying and retrying it still can't connect. Maybe this should change, but I realize it's a tough call. archive records read from the logger (vs live) do not have battery values. Reading the driver, this is obviously well known to the author because loop packet battery values are inserted into normal archive records. 0) old battery was at 2.09V. (new 3.23V). After messing with config mode, console is no longer claiming low, and archive records no longer say low. Remember to clean your solar panel once a year; mine was dirty. 1) LOOP packet contents and sticky txBatteryStatus For no good reason, I save the output of weewx onto files for a while, so I have the recent LOOP data. Summarizing the data (other than txBatteryStatus, the LOOP data is unremarkable): 2020-01-19 13:02:30 EST LOOP: 0 (had been 0 since midnight) 2020-01-19 13:02:32 EST LOOP: become 1 2020-01-18 23:59:59 EST LOOP: still 1 2020-01-19 00:00:04 EST LOOP: became 0 2020-01-19 00:02:10 EST LOOP: became 1 2020-01-19 14:34:40 EST LOOP: still 1 Unable to wake up console... sleeping Unable to wake up console... retrying [apparently weewx exited] I had replaced the battery around 1345. But loop packets showed 1 after that. This is a 1-bit battery low indication in LOOP packets. Almost certainly this is measured by the control module (Davis says SIM) on the outside sensor package (Davis says ISS). It is normally 0. (I wonder how LOOP packets correspond to the on-air bits. Probably if there is better data in the console it would be sent in LOOP.) Once txBatteryStatus goes to 1, it seems to stay there the rest of the (local time) day. Then at midnight, it reverts to 0 (a loop packet with 0), and on many days, it goes back to 1, around 0500 at first, and then closer and closer to midnight. We had a warm spell on 11th and 12th (high almost 70F, overnight low in between of 59 F )and on those days there was no low battery indication. (This makes sense that the battery would do better then.) Then, the ok times shrank and today, it went back to 1 after only 2 minutes. Putting the console into setup (after replacing tx battery) seems to cause the console to start sending 0 in loop packets. My theory is once the console gets a txBatteryStatus=low message from the ISS, it sets the txBatteryStatus loop value to 1 and leaves it there, and at midnight, it is cleared back to 0. This is not important to really understand, as almost always once you get a battery low warning once, you really do need to change it. But it is curious. 2) NULL battery values in database I found NULL values for battery values in my database, and these are in archive records read from logger storage (vs live). From the source code, archive packets do not have battery values, only loop packets, and in normal operation the most recent loop values are spliced into the archive records. On startup and reading saved archive records, this can't happen. Nothing mysterious in the end -- just something I had no idea about. 3) setup mode and weewx communication failure I put the console into setup to see if I could figure out anything before venturing out with a new battery (I did not). I think this was around 1300, and logs show: Jan 19 12:59:27 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #1; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 12:59:31 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #2; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 12:59:35 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #3; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 12:59:39 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #4; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 12:59:39 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP max tries (4) exceeded. Jan 19 12:59:39 weewx[1951]: engine: Main loop exiting. Shutting engine down. Jan 19 12:59:39 weewx[1951]: engine: Shutting down StdReport thread Jan 19 12:59:40 weewx[1951]: engine: Caught WeeWxIOError: Max tries exceeded while getting LOOP data. Jan 19 12:59:40 weewx[1951]: **** Waiting 60 seconds then retrying... Jan 19 13:00:40 weewx[1951]: engine: retrying... Jan 19 13:00:40 weewx[1951]: engine: Using configuration file /usr/weewx/weewx.conf Jan 19 13:00:40 weewx[1951]: engine: Loading station type Vantage (weewx.drivers.vantage) and then after coming in from putting in the new battery: Jan 19 14:34:31 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #1; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 14:34:35 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #2; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 14:34:39 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #3; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 14:34:43 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP try #4; error: Expected to read 99 chars; got 0 instead Jan 19 14:34:43 weewx[1951]: vantage: LOOP max tries (4) exceeded. Jan 19 14:34:43 weewx[1951]: engine: Main loop exiting. Shutting engine down. Jan 19 14:34:43 weewx[1951]: engine: Shutting down StdReport thread Jan 19 14:34:44 weewx[1951]: engine: Caught WeeWxIOError: Max tries exceeded while getting LOOP data. Jan 19 14:34:44 weewx[1951]: **** Waiting 60 seconds then retrying... Jan 19 14:35:44 weewx[1951]: engine: retrying... Jan 19 14:35:45 weewx[1951]: engine: Using configuration file /usr/weewx/weewx.conf Jan 19 14:35:45 weewx[1951]: engine: Loading station type Vantage (weewx.drivers.vantage) Jan 19 14:36:02 weewx[1951]: vantage: Unable to wake up console Jan 19 14:36:02 weewx[1951]: engine: Import of driver failed: Unable to wake up Vantage console (<class 'weewx.WakeupError'>) Jan 19 14:36:03 weewx[1951]: engine: Unable to load driver: Unable to wake up Vantage console Jan 19 14:36:03 weewx[1951]: **** Exiting... It seems that when in setup mode, the logger is not talking to weewx. Not shocking, but not mentioned at: http://www.weewx.com/docs/hardware.htm#vantage_notes although not clear where it fits or if it fits. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "weewx-user" group. 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