Thanks for the replies. I'm still scratching my head about this issue. A few weeks ago i installed a wifi plug onto the power line of the Raspberry Pi and i have been experimenting... whenever i see the station losing signal and having a breakup in the reporting (ie. *user.sdr: lines=[]*) then i power off the Raspberry Pi using the wifi switch which gives it a hard power off. I leave it off for 1 minute then power it back on and so far, every single time i do that, the raspberry pi starts receiving a signal from the Acurite5-in-1 again.
Currently, i am led to believe the RTL-SDR dongle i think i've installed (this one <https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HA642SW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1>) is actually faulty. Because a software reset doesn't bring it back online, but a hard reset always does. Would be curious to know if anyone else has experienced anything like this? My next step is to purchase a new RTL-SDR dongle and see if it solves the problem. Thanks, Sean. On Friday, October 30, 2020 at 6:37:00 PM UTC+4 RobbH wrote: > My suspicion is that this happens because of unusual propagation > conditions such as "tropospheric ducting," which may be associated with > unusual weather or sunspot activity, among other factors. There are > occasions when distant radio or TV signals can be received briefly, > sometimes stronger than local stations. The same conditions might affect > the frequencies used by weather sensors. > > I have a rooftop 5in1 for wind and rain measurements and a > temperature/humidity sensor in the back yard, both connected through an > Acurite bridge. Sometimes Weewx stops receiving data from one sensor, while > the other continues to work for a time. Then the other sensor will go > silent, as well, and shortly afterward the first sensor will reappear. > Eventually, the second sensor also reconnects. > > The time difference suggests to me that the outages are caused by > something in motion, which could be an atmospheric condition. I can't rule > out the possibility that there's some sort of local source of interference, > though. > > I'm sure there are people reading this forum who know more about RF than I > do, so it would be great to hear their opinions about this. > > On Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 8:03:02 AM UTC-4 Peter Whisker wrote: > >> I find the same occurs on my FineOffset HP1000 clone - it happens to the >> device receiver. >> >> My (unproven) theory is that the signals from the external and internal >> sensors which come every 16 seconds drift with respect with each other >> until they end up being transmitted at exactly the same time and the >> receiver can not discriminate them. After half a day or so the situation >> recovers and is fine for a month or more. >> >> Peter >> >> On Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 4:12:29 AM UTC seano...@gmail.com wrote: >> >>> Hi, >>> >>> My station has been running weewx + rt_sdr for a year and all is working >>> well. Weewx receives the station data and broadcasts it to windguru. >>> However, there is an occasional problem that happens and i can't figure out >>> what the cause is. All of a sudden, rtl_433 stops receiving from the sensor >>> for hours at a time. >>> >>> During those periods, when i run: >>> *sudo tail -f /var/log/weewx.log* >>> >>> All i see is: >>> *user.sdr: lines=[]* >>> >>> If you leave it, it eventually comes back online itself. I can confirm >>> that during that time there was no loss of power or internet - because i >>> can still connect to the pi and manage it. Also, weather station has new >>> batteries, so that is not the problem. I have a feeling that the problem is >>> happening with the realtek SDR dongle. Because a power reset sometimes >>> fixes the problem - and a physical removal of the USB dongle into a >>> different USB port seems to fix the problem immedaitely. >>> >>> I've even tried a python script to eject the USB device which also seems >>> to help. But in order to do this i first need to disable rtl_433 in the >>> weewx.conf, then reboot, then run rtl_433 on its own until it sees the >>> sensor, then re-enable rtl_433 in weewx.conf and reboot. That is usually >>> the process to fix it immediately, so it definitely feels to me like a >>> software issue. >>> >>> Any ideas? >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Sean >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "weewx-user" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to weewx-user+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/weewx-user/6aba7684-4bab-4866-b5d8-21c00f0c18c1n%40googlegroups.com.
