Cloud Sensor Project - Part 2

[Mac]

I've just restarted it and its showing the correct time and temp,
I was just puzzled as to why it froze.

I might run a few of them together, just to see what happens

[Mike]

Could be a bug. I'll leave it running on my laptop and see what happens.

[Mike]

Right, I woke up this morning to find the server had froze. Weirdly, when you told me your client had froze yesterday the server was still ticking away as normal.

I'll do some digging and try and find out what is going on.

[Mac]

Just to let you know it's crashed again. 
this time it was running from 10:51 through to 12:18,
Where its frozen.
The java sub system is showing as running at about 15-20% cpu, with 25Meg of memory allocated.

Im going to reboot and load a system debugger, and run it again, if it crashes again i'll try and get you some more information.
Just to see if its your coding or the main Java subsystem.

[Fay]

Have tried to get it going, Mike, but get "could not find the main class" do you know what this is?

[Mike]

Fay. That means you are using an old version of Java. Download the latest version - http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp - and it should be fine after that. Let me know if you have any further problems.

I'd suggest anyone else that has problems to also install the latest version as it was developed under the latest Java JVM.

[Ian]

I've had a quick look but it won't start at all. I suspect it's a Java version which I'll try and fix if I can...

[Mike]

It should run if you have the latest java JVM.

OK, the last log file gives a clue as to what may have gone wrong...

2009/2/4  21:33:19   0.12   -0.18   0.0
2009/2/4  21:33:25   0.12   -0.18   0.0
2009/2/4  21:33:31   0.12   -0.18   0.0
2009/2/4  21:33:36   0.12   -0.18   0.0
2009/2/4  21:33:42   0.06   -0.18   0.0
2009/2/4  21:55:2   NaN   23.93   0.0

For some reason it sat and did nothing for 20 minutes before outputting a spurious reading from the device. There is, admittedly, no checking that the data from the device is valid, which is probably it's downfall. I will code in some data validation at the server end before it spits it back out again.

The whole thing works on 3 layers of code.

1st, the Atmel Atmega168 microcontroller is reading data from the 1 wire temperature sensors, converting the data to a form readable by humans and then outputting that data to a serial port.
2nd, code on the server simply takes that data and spits it out to the net (until I fit an ethernet module to the microcontroller).
2rd, the client software listens to an IP address until data is received, parses it and then graphs it (along with a few other things).

The microcontroller end is pretty reliable and unlikely to cause any problems and as I have not reset it inbetween resetting the server the problem is probably at the server end. I guess the client gets locked up when it receives data it cannot parse successfully.

I'll code in some error checking over the weekend as well as the colour picker.

[JohnP]

Hi Mike,

Just thought I'd give you a 'heads up...'

Whilst at AstroFest (DrinkFest... boy did I have a sore head this morning..) Ian & myself were talking to Terry platt from Starlight Xpress. He was showing us a cloud sensor he has just developed ( should be released in a month or two) - It uses a single sensor similar I think to the IR ear thermometers you can get which I think is a single waveband radiation thermometer. It look very neat & simple to use & funnily the control box was about the size of a large box of matches. It used wireless technology to connect between sensor & control box & could give visual or audible warnings of cloud cover. According to Terry in trials it has been very accurate & works very well (but then I guess he would say that). We asked about price & he said it was likely to be £150 which seemed reasonably - it looked like a good quality product.

I've checked their webpage & their are no details on it yet but would expect them to have it up there soon...

Cheers,  John

[Mike]

Thanks for the info. John. I thought about going down the IR route but it pushed the costs up considerably.

[Mike]

The Server will be on and off over the net few hours whilst I run some tests.

[Mike]

Fay did you update your Java and if so did it work after that?

[Ian]

works for me in Ubuntu 8.0.4 mate...

[Mike]

Thanks Ian. I was hoping someone would give the Linux version a go.

[Mike]

OK I have migrated the Cloud Sensor over to a new Server adn it is now up and running again. Hopefully I can now leave it in peace to run non-stop now.

I will be updated the client software over the next few weeks time permitting.

Please let me now if you try it and cannot get it to work.

You can download the Client Software here :-

WINDOWS: http://www.amateur-astronomy.org/Filez/CloudClientv1_1.windows.zip
LINUX:        http://www.amateur-astronomy.org/Filez/CloudClientv1_1.linux.zip
MAC OSX:    http://www.amateur-astronomy.org/Filez/CloudClientv1_1.macosx.zip