Can you help trouble shoot Sharper Image Internet Weather Station EC-WS115?

This is to one and all.

Since my suspicion as I indicated was it was the server not the WS software and since the WS is powered by Foreca a Swedish company I contacted them yesterday. This morning in my inbox (see below) I found the following information they sent. Let's see if by tomorrow things look better. I do believe this loss of has happened in the past. Thanks to all who took interest in this matter especially henkilökohtaista sääpalvelua the Forecan Meteorologi whoever he/she is, Jaoanna and Steven for his clever approach to the problem.

Since I was a mainframe computer programmer since 1960, think early missile systems Redstone etc and stuck with mainframes till I retired in 2005 my experience with PC software development is much less intense.

From Foreca

"Hello!

Thank you for your interest. We received the following information from the device manufacturer:

"Our interent weather data server has to be shut down tonight for transfer to a new location.  If everything smooth, the server can operate again on 1 June evening."

Best regards,

Joanna

>

> I have a sharper image 5 day weather forcaster which is not updating.  Are you still sending out updates for this device?

>

>

>

Forecan Meteorologi - henkilökohtaista sääpalvelua

0600 411 411 (3,98 e/min + pvm) "

It seems as if you two (ept8202 and Stefan) are experiencing the recent problem I came into as well. Suddenly, in the past couple of days, my date/time in the device was whack. It is showing November and the time is off by a couple of hours too. I tried tweaking the time adjustment in settings which makes the time appear right (+2 hours) but does nothing for the date (as I am sure you know). I uninstalled, removed all remnents of the software in temp files and registry (WinXP) disabled AV/AS software, put PC in DMZ on my SonicWall, and nothing. Funny thing is that mine has been working fine for over a year. Just in the last day or two it took a **** on me.

If you figure anything out on this, definetly post a follow up. I haven't surrended yet, so if I find the fix, I will let you know too. I will be calling SI later, but honestly I am not holding my breath...

Hey ept8202,

My father has the same weather station, and he's got the same problems too...

Yes it seems that it doesn't do much with the local PC time, unless your Internet is completely disconnected I think.

The tool I was using is a freeware tool called "Fiddler", yes you can download and use it for free from http://www.fiddler2.com

What I did to overwrite the response was creating a simple html file which contained nothing else than the response "13385041 1338504189 22:43:09 May-31-2012" (so difference with actual response is in the second number). Don't include any html-tags or anything else, but your file needs extension ".html". You do need to monkey around with that value to make time/date be close to actual time and date, as it otherwise still won't work.

Then in Fiddler you will see exactly what happens when you click "Update Forecast" in the WS application. Double-click on the "gettime2" URL to see the response received from server.

If you open the tab "AutoResponder", tag "Enable automatic response" and click "Add...", you can in the bottom of that tab where it says "Local flle ... to execute" browse to the html file you've created (select the last option "Find a file..." from the dropdown). Click Save and try the Update Forecast again.

Good luck, and let me know what you find!

Stefan Viveen

Fraser Valley Software

Hope, BC Canada

Hi Stefan:

I too get the date 2/11. This has happened before where I don't get the Date, Time or weather. At that time I reinstalled the software and the bug did not go away. What did happen was after a few days I dont remember how many but more than 3 the problem went away on its own. My guess at the time was that the WS was not receiving the data. You seem to have determined that the data is coming in but not being interpreted properly. Why two different WS would simultaneously develop a bug that gives the same wrong date and time seems unlikely. What tool did you use to intercept the data and send the correct epoch to the WS? Is it available online?

I tried changing my computer date to 11/2/2011 and updating, I still get the wrong time and the date stays 11/2 and no data as all the weather data is set to zeros. Sorry I can't be of more help.

ept8202

I'm having a weird problem with this weather station too in receiving weather forecast data, and I think I've figured it out where it goes wrong but didn't find a solution yet..

This is what the software (V1.1) is doing for communicating with the server:

First it's getting the time:

http://server2.netinfostation.com/gettime2.php

Result will look like "13385041 1338504189 22:43:09 May-31-2012"

Then it tries to receive the weather forecast data:

http://server2.netinfostation.com/getweather.php?city=105976783

Result looks scrambled, but that's okay.

In the application, I can see the time showing up on the Home Weather tab. The time looks fine, but the date is off. Today it shows time as "2/11", while in fact it should be "31/5".

Looking at the data received for the gettime action, the second number appears to be the epoch for 31 May 2012 22:43:09 GMT.

Using a tool to intercept data from server and putting in my own response, I fiddled around with the epoch and found out that if I change this to "1325119180" it would show the correct date and time, and actually retrieves weather data.

So... my conclusion is that the current time/date code as received from the server is wrongly interpreted by the software, resulting in the software thinking it's November. So when weather data is received for May, it doesn't know what to do with it...

Anybody knows more about this?

Stefan Viveen

Fraser Valley Software

Hope, BC Canada