Wx.Ca News http://news.wx.ca What's up at Wx.Ca posterous.com Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:38:39 -0700 It must be a July thing http://news.wx.ca/it-must-be-a-july-thing http://news.wx.ca/it-must-be-a-july-thing It seems like the only time I post here is in July and something in the weather station has failed. Thank goodness July is almost over. This year, I have had to replace the Tini board and, as many of you have pointed out, it has apparently been pretty bright outside many nights lately??? So obviously, the photo sensor has not been well.

Now the reporting has been out solidly for a few days.

I was hoping it was a cable again. The only cabling on the roof that didn't get replaced last July was a short run from the lightning sensor to the photo sensor. I changed that out, but no go. But interestingly, while I had the photo sensor out to replace its cable, the rest of the sensors were all OK. Put in the new cable and other sensors dropped off again.

It looks like I'll be ordering a new photo sensor to replace this one.

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Until it arrives, there will be no Solar Radiation in the charts. But it hasn't been very useful lately anyway, has it?

Thanks to several followers who have sent messages of encouragement. It sure helps.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:21:02 -0700 Bad couple of weeks for Wx.Ca http://news.wx.ca/bad-couple-of-weeks-for-wxca http://news.wx.ca/bad-couple-of-weeks-for-wxca Well, believe it not, today's outage of Wx.Ca was not related to my continuing cable issues. Today's problem was caused by the Tini having a dead on-board battery, so a power glitch wiped out it's brains. This has happened a few times before. I reloaded it and we are up and running again.

The bad cable is still in place, so that could still be an issue until it's replaced. The lightning chart is reporting very strange numbers. It's sensor is on the bad cable. This evening doesn't look like the kind of weather to be walking around on the roof - nearly the highest point in the neighbourhood too.

Thanks for the offers of some cable from a couple of you - including one just a few doors down the street. I've already bought a 500 ft spool. It's rated indoor/outdoor so I'm hoping the UV won't turn the sheath brittle like on my current cable.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:43:24 -0700 Keep your fingers crossed http://news.wx.ca/keep-your-fingers-crossed http://news.wx.ca/keep-your-fingers-crossed Wx.Ca is working again. I had to run a new Cat 5 cable up to anemometer. The sheath has cracked and it was filling with water. I see the cable running to the solar and lightning sensors needs replacing too, but I'm out of cable. Here's hoping it will hold up until next weekend.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:25:21 -0700 Nope - Wx.Ca Still Down http://news.wx.ca/nope-wxca-still-down http://news.wx.ca/nope-wxca-still-down Guess not.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:34:57 -0700 Wx.Ca Is Back http://news.wx.ca/wxca-is-back http://news.wx.ca/wxca-is-back Wx.Ca is back up and reporting all sensors.

This morning when I started to fix the problem, my best guess at the problem was the 1-Wire hub that interfaces the 1-Wire port on the data acquisition Tini board to four runs out to the various sensors.

I have a spare, sort of. This morning, it was just a pile of parts.

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So I heated up soldering iron and got to it. Soldering those tiny surface mount components is tricky, but there were only about a dozen of them. Here's the after shot.

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After hooking it up to the sensor runs and the Tini board - no change! Oh no.

Some careful isolating of the various sensors showed that when the run to the anemometer on the roof was disconnected, all the other sensors came back.

So, next step was to head up to the roof to get the anemometer. When I brought it inside and opened the case, this is the shaft I found and what should be two bearings.

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The right upper bearing has failed and the whole enclosure interior were coated with brown oxide, including the connections and circuit board. That shaft should be smooth its whole length, so the dip in the middle has been ground away to iron filings. The oxide was likely shorting out something. I cleaned up the board and installed it in spare enclosure with a spare shaft and everything seems be working again.

Thanks to everyone who expressed their concerns for the site being down.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:59:38 -0700 Wx.Ca Unavailable http://news.wx.ca/wxca-unavailable http://news.wx.ca/wxca-unavailable Sorry, but Wx.Ca is sick. It seems to be a hardware problem with one of the 1-Wire sensors or the 1-Wire hub that connects them to the Tini data acquisition board. No ETA for a fix yet.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:48:00 -0700 Love my iPad - Rogers, not so much http://news.wx.ca/love-my-ipad-rogers-not-so-much http://news.wx.ca/love-my-ipad-rogers-not-so-much

I've had a 3G iPad for a little over month now - since launch day in Canada!

The day I got it, I thought I'd try Bell as the 3G provider. Turns out Bell could only do activations over the phone and they were closed for the weekend?!?!

So I got a Rogers SIM instead. Activation was done on the iPad and I was surfing in 5 minutes.

30 days later, things have fallen apart though.

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Rogers billed my credit card for another 30 days - but no 3G connections. In fact they billed the credit card twice - but no connections. Sounds like I'm lucky though. Some people have had their credit card billed 30 times and still no 3G data!  http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=955269 

Lot's of bars, but no network connections.

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This has been going on since June 30, so for 5 days now. It seems the customer reps at Rogers have no way of seeing iPad accounts. I have been forwarded to umpteen different people on 3 different occasions. It usually ends with them telling me to contact Apple. Apple can't believe Rogers has been saying this. They have received quite a few of these calls.

Rogers latest suggestion was to book an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar! I guess that's to keep me off their back for a few days.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:06:27 -0800 Wx.Ca Was Missing Due to IP Address Change http://news.wx.ca/wxca-was-missing-due-to-ip-address-change http://news.wx.ca/wxca-was-missing-due-to-ip-address-change Many people noticed that Wx.Ca was unavailable for a couple of days. The problem was that the IP address assigned by Shaw changed. A quick update to EasyDNS and everything is OK again.

Shaw has only changed our IP address twice before in the last 12 years, so I have never bothered to install one of the clients that will notice when the assigned IP address changes and send the update to EasyDNS. Now that it's the Airport Extreme that gets the address assigned to it, I'm not sure it's even possible.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:49:00 -0700 Wx.Ca readings are missing because the TStik loses its brains. http://news.wx.ca/wxca-readings-are-missing-because-the-tstik-l http://news.wx.ca/wxca-readings-are-missing-because-the-tstik-l

Wx.Ca is missing readings for the past 12 hours. The culprit has been located:

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The little TStik board from Systronix that samples all the sensors every 3 seconds lost its programming. A simple reload of the Java byte code that it runs and all is well again.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:40:14 -0700 Served by Snow Leopard http://news.wx.ca/served-by-snow-leopard http://news.wx.ca/served-by-snow-leopard
The other two Macs at Wx.Ca have been running Snow Leopard for about 6 weeks now. No big issues, so today I upgraded the server as well.
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I did hit one minor snag. It may be related to the OS upgrade also upgrading Java 5 to Java 6.

The server listens for a multicast packet from the Tini board sensor monitor. Previously, this was done just by joining a MulticastSocket to the correct IP address and listening. However, under Snow Leopard and Java 6, the socket only appeared to be listening on the loopback interface, lo0 as reported by netstat -g. The cure was to call socket.setLoopbackMode(true) which disables listening on the loopback interface and then listens on the ethernet interface.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Sat, 19 Sep 2009 08:32:00 -0700 Uh-Oh http://news.wx.ca/uh-oh-119 http://news.wx.ca/uh-oh-119

Last weekend, I dropped my iPhone once too often.

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I'd dropped it quite a few times before, mostly because the Vaja Case I use does not grip it very well and it pops out sometimes. This time, it looks like it took a direct hit along the edge onto a cement block.

We were in Vancouver at the time. It still worked, so I used Google Maps to find we were only 5 blocks from the Apple store. We walked in and discovered that Apple stores are always too busy to do the pop in and expect to get technical assistance.

We flew home that evening and I made an appointment at the Calgary Apple store for the next day.

Yes, they could replace the screen on site, but for $250.00!!! Well, that made it pretty easy to decide to upgrade to an iPhone 3G S instead.

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Faster UI. Better camera with video. And the oh so important compass.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Sun, 30 Aug 2009 08:55:00 -0700 Back To My Mac Fixed By Changing DNS Server http://news.wx.ca/back-to-my-mac-fixed-by-changing-dns-server http://news.wx.ca/back-to-my-mac-fixed-by-changing-dns-server

Wx.Ca has 3 Macs—2 Mac Minis and a MacBook Pro. To try and keep their email accounts and bookmarks and several other things synchronized, we use Apple's MobileMe service. MobileMe also provides Back To My Mac, which is pretty handy. It lets you share files or the desktop screen of a Mac back home from anywhere on the net.

I should really say it would be pretty handy. I'd never been able to get it to work. Googling around, lots of other people were in the same situation. It's a little fussy about network setup and router types, but my configuration should be good. Regardless, this is what the MobileMe preferences aways showed:

Leopardbtmmerr

Not very helpful.

Then yesterday, I upgraded two of the Macs to Snow Leopard. Now checking the same preferences screen:

Snowleopardbtmmerr

Well, that's a better problem description. DNS for Wx.Ca is provided by our ISP, Shaw TV. Googling around, there seem to be other people having 'issues" with Shaw's DNS servers.

I reconfigured the MacBook Pro to use OpenDNS for DNS service instead. It took about 30 seconds. Instant success:

Snowleopardbtmmok

I wonder what Shaw's DNS servers could be doing to keep Back To My Mac from working?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:01:00 -0700 Wx.Ca Now Brought To You By A Mac Mini http://news.wx.ca/wxca-now-brought-to-you-by-a-mac-mini http://news.wx.ca/wxca-now-brought-to-you-by-a-mac-mini

This past weekend, the Wx.Ca server got upgraded. It had been running on a Red Hat / Fedora Core Linux PC since (I think) 2002. That was the second hardware generation. First came an even older and bigger and slower Linux PC. The current one's twin, which was my development server, was getting temperamental and the main server was due for replacement after running 24 hours a day for 7 years.

So both servers, each one bigger than a bread box (nobody remembers bread boxes) have been replaced with one little Mac Mini and a few accessories:

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Here we have:
  • The Shaw cable modem.
  • A small Linksys ethernet 10/100 switch to allow 2 computers to get the Shaw allotted 2 IP addresses.
  • An Apple Airport Extreme that serves as a firewall and performs Network Address Translation for the rest of Wx.Ca. It also port forwards HTTP requests to...
  • The Mac Mini (previous generation) running a 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo with 3 GB of memory (the max that this older generation Mac Mini can address).
  • An external Firewire 400 drive for Time Machine backups.
After 2 days, it's working great.

Poking up from the background, you can see that the 5 power bricks with their 5 line cords and 5 device cords take up more space than the active gear.

The conversion from Linux to Mac OS X (Leopard) was very easy. The Mac comes with Java and the Apache web server. I just had to add MySQL for the database, Ploticus for the charts and Apache Tomcat as the Java Servlet container.

I also moved the CVS source code repository from the development Linux box to this Mac Mini. I'll continue to do the Java coding and builds in Eclipse on a MacBook Pro.

I have a Kill-A-Watt to measure the power consumption, but it's not plugged in at the moment. I'm sure the power saving will be substantial. On the next scheduled outage I'll add it in.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:13:00 -0700 The News Blog is Back http://news.wx.ca/the-news-blog-is-back http://news.wx.ca/the-news-blog-is-back

Sorry to anyone who tried to follow the old Wx.Ca News blog. (Was there anyone besides you, Corey?) I hadn't posted since a month or two after it was set up, and that was years ago. It used Blogger, but with the posts actually hosted on Wx.Ca. Since the last post, Blogger is now Google and uses Google accounts. I can't seem to resurrect my old Blogger ID. Oh well. Time to move on.
 
This time, I'm going to try a hosted service and a new cool one. posterous at www.posterous.com. Posting is just sending email. No arcane markups. Pick any email client you like, including Mail on a Mac or an iPhone. It lets me specify my own URL like news.wx.ca for reading the blog even though posterous is hosting everything. Photo albums by just including more than one photo in an email. It looks pretty good, except every posterous blog looks every other one. No theming that I can see.
 
Let's see what happens.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:20:00 -0700 Gotta Start Somewhere http://news.wx.ca/gotta-start-somewhere-2 http://news.wx.ca/gotta-start-somewhere-2

My first post to www.posterous.com so you know - a test message.
 
And a gratuitous really big pic.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/132012/Rand.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4aQScMedb4CB Randy Peters wxca Randy Peters