ObserverIP not reporting to ambientweather.net

[randy]

While this is not related to this excellent plug-in, I thought I would pick the collective brain trust. I have a WS-1001-WiFi station and an Observer IP. Here it the chain of events.

• The weather station has worked flawlessly for years since I installed it
• The plug-in has been fine since it came out of beta. I started using the ObserverIP instead of WiFi through the WS-1001-WiFi display for posting to ambientweather.net and Weather Underground when I started using the plug-in
• I added 3 additional temperature/humidity sensors and they were also posting to ambientweather.net and being picked up by the plug-in
• About the end February, we started seeing wild fluctuations in reporting from the sensor array. Every minute the luminance would go to about 92,000 lux, then back to the correct reading. Temperature and other readings were acting similarly.
• I Replaced the batteries in the sensor and reinstalled it. Now we were getting readings for temperature and luminance that would go to 0 every minute, then back to their correct readings.
• I replaced the sensor array at the beginning of March. Everything seemed be be back to normal, but now the ObserverIP stopped posting to wunderground and ambientweather.net.
• I checked the firmware on the observerIP and found there was a newer version. I flashed the new firmware, still not reporting to either service.
• My network topology or configuration has not been changed much at all in a couple of years, definitely not at the time this started happening. It is a reliable and fast pure UniFi system.
• I replaced the ObserverIP. It still works fine locally with the plug-in, but will not post to either service.
• I have deleted and re-added the MAC addresses on ambientweather.net several times for each ObserverIP. I generated a new station ID and Key for Weather Underground. Nothing has changed.
• Through all of this the sensor array has communicated fine with the ObserverIP and the dedicated display. The plug-in gets data locally from the ObserverIP.

I am at a loss as to where to go with this. I cannot see it having anything to do with my LAN or firewall settings, it is not on the IOT VLAN, it is on the same as all of our other full access devices, which have no problems. I have reserved a different IP for the ObserverIP a couple of times. The problem has persisted.

What am I missing?

[ewkearns]

I would guess that you may be facing that scary situation of "more than one contributing factor." However, picking through your words carefully, I'd want to make sure that the "LAN and/or firewall settings" are not the culprit. It seems like you have done everything else! Did your ISP somehow try to make things "better?"

[Mark S.]

I had a similar problem. I logged in to my Wunderground and Ambient.net accounts, and when I did I had to accept some new terms and conditions. After that, it worked again. Not sure why.

[randy]

I would guess that you may be facing that scary situation of "more than one contributing factor." However, picking through your words carefully, I'd want to make sure that the "LAN and/or firewall settings" are not the culprit. It seems like you have done everything else! Did your ISP somehow try to make things "better?"

Well, I have turned off all security and the problem exists. Since the issue appears to be involving outbound traffic, it is affecting two different destination sites and no other device on the network has problems accessing any sites ever, I really don’t think that is it. I don’t know what URL or IP is used for Weather Underground or ambient weather.net use for posting, but it seems very unlikely my network could be blocking just those two from two different MAC devices and several local IP addresses.

[randy]

I had a similar problem. I logged in to my Wunderground and Ambient.net accounts, and when I did I had to accept some new terms and conditions. After that, it worked again. Not sure why.

I’ve logged into ambient weather.net several times to delete the device and change MAC addresses and to Weather Underground to create an entirely new station and posting key. I don’t think it is a permission issue.

I suppose I am going to have to try to analyze the traffic and see if there is a clue there.

[langenet]

I too noticed that I am getting errors in the log about 1-3 a day. I've rebooted my Observer IP module - though, didn't do a full power reset, but I get these errors now and I've never seen these before.

May-24 5:02:52 PM

AmbientWeather ERROR

Exception ObserverIP.LiveData(): System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at HSPI_AmbientWeather.Simplex.Classes.ObserverIP.TransformLive Data(String mac, Dictionary`2 livedata)

Not sure if it's related. I've had no changes. The only thing I'm thinking is that perhaps my eithernet over power line could perhaps be acting up... Then again, I've got a camera which also plugs into the network in my pool house and works fine. My observer firmware is AmbientWeather 4.5.6. Not sure if there's a newer version.

Robert

[Monk]

I have never had errors related to the plugin that I can recall.

Just going out a little bit with this thought - and I don't recall ever hearing that something like this exists regarding Ambient Weather - but could there be a data cap per account? Maybe something got loose & over did it a bit?

[randy]

I’ve tried everything I can think of and still no joy. Does anyone know the URL that the ObserverIP posts to when it reports? Maybe I could diagnose the problem if I knew what the ObserverIP is talking to.

[cowinger]

I’ve tried everything I can think of and still no joy. Does anyone know the URL that the ObserverIP posts to when it reports? Maybe I could diagnose the problem if I knew what the ObserverIP is talking to.

I can't remember which key the PI uses but have you tried creating a new API or Application key and replaced the old one with a new one?

[randy]

I can't remember which key the PI uses but have you tried creating a new API or Application key and replaced the old one with a new one?

Yes, I’ve tried that. However, that would have nothing to do with the ObserverIP posting to ambient weather.net. There is no problem with the ObserverIPs connecting to the plug-in, but that is all done on the local LAN. They are simply not posting to the external websites. All ObserverIPs send the data to ambient weather.net, it is only the MAC address that identifies the data as yours, no key is required. There is a key for posting to WU and I have tried several. I have also tried two separate ObserverIPs. Since neither one connects to ambient weather.net or WU, it seems like they are not talking at all. Until February, this was all working for several years.

[ewkearns]

Maybe?

https://help.ambientweather.net/product/observerip/

[cowinger]

Yes, I’ve tried that. However, that would have nothing to do with the ObserverIP posting to ambient weather.net. There is no problem with the ObserverIPs connecting to the plug-in, but that is all done on the local LAN. They are simply not posting to the external websites. All ObserverIPs send the data to ambient weather.net, it is only the MAC address that identifies the data as yours, no key is required. There is a key for posting to WU and I have tried several. I have also tried two separate ObserverIPs. Since neither one connects to ambient weather.net or WU, it seems like they are not talking at all. Until February, this was all working for several years.

Yea it was a shot in the dark. Been a long time since I played around with ObserverIP. Maybe John will see this and have a suggestion.