Good point SPetro,

However, I am not sure your ping came back from the correct or rather real server. Those are down and that's the main reason why the app wasn't working.

If your host file had the entries, the ping is returning from localhost, aka your computer.

But this just verifies that your host file contains what the 5 days forecast app is looking for.

This may be considered a test to make sure the host file is correct:

Pinging server1.netinfostation.com [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 127.0.0.1:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

I hope this helps somebody out there.

Hi Casper,

Great explanations and pointers. It amazes me how much you try to help people. Kudos!

Indeed, there are many pitfalls and you named them all.

At some point I double checked the host file and somehow I found that the new servers entries weren't in the host file anymore. And I could swear I had them there before. Anyway, I re-added and I was good to go.

Some troubleshooting tips:

If all is well you should not get any kind of warning/error messages: "Cannot connect to server" or similar means that the 5-day forecast program cannot get the updates.

"USB disconnected" means the program cannot send the data to the station.

If you have problems you have to go step by step:

• is the software updating? If, after clicking "update forecast" you get the message about the servers not being found your Wamp doesn't work correctly.

A successful weather update should have no message, you only see the "Last update Today hours:minutes" time being changed to the current hour.

Next, when clicking "send to receiver" you should not get any message. Only a temporary "spinning circle", no "USB disconnected"

Next level:

So far I could not tell how long it takes for the program to send to the station. It may depend on the proximity to the station. YMMV

I had a lot of problems with my Windows 10 PC. As many have reported, unplugging and replugging of the USB transmitter helped. But I got fed up so I went a step further: I had a windows 7 PC laying around so I made that one into the weather station. It runs headless. It gets powered on once a day, stays on for an hour or so and then shuts down. Powering on is by a smart plug, by a schedule. In BIOS there is a setting for "On power loss: power on". So every time the smart plug powers on the weather PC boots. For shutdown there is a batch (i named it turnoff.bat) file in startup and it shuts down the PC after an hour. If interested I can provide the content.

As I said, I am still fine tuning it since I can't tell how long it takes for the station to receive the data from the USB transmitter.

Good luck!

Ok, let's check a few things.  First, if you don't see the green WampServer icon in the bottom right part of your screen in the system tray, you can click on the start button and type 'services.msc' in the search box (or, alternatively, you can select 'Run' and then type in 'services.msc'.  In the resulting box, scroll down until you see an entry titled 'wampapache'.  Look at the status (third column over).  It should say 'started'.  If not, then the WampServer did not start properly.

Next, double-check the 'httpd.conf' file by double-clicking it in the 'c:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf' folder (I use Notepad to open it up).  Almost exactly half-way down the long list of entries should be a section that looks like this (the important part is the part that I have bolded).  That entry SHOULD be there.  If it's not, you'll need to enter it.

Note that from this point forward you must specifically allow

particular features to be enabled - so if something's not working as

you might expect, make sure that you have specifically enabled it

below.

<Directory "c:/wamp/www/">

    #

 Allow from 127.0.0.1   # Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All",

    # or any combination of:

    #   Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews

    #

Next, make sure that when the program calls for data that it doesn't go looking for the old servers.  That is done in the 'hosts' file that is located in the 'c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts'  folder.  Open the Notepad application from the Start menu by right-clicking on the Notepad icon and then selecting ‘Run as administrator’.  You may have to select 'All Files (*.*) in the lower right of Notepad in order to see all the files).  Once the file is open, make sure the following three lines are in there:

127.0.0.1             server1.netinfostation.com

127.0.0.1             server2.netinfostation.com

127.0.0.1             server3.netinfostation.com

Lastly, make sure your API Key is entered correctly.  You can open it by going to 'c:\wamp\www' and then double-clicking the file called 'getweather.php' and again using Notepad as the editor.  The very first two lines should look like this (with your particular key instead of the sample one below) paying particular attention to the single quotes at either end of the key:

<?php

$api_key = '75c7015a503esample0158a4f338ef3';

If you end up making any changes to anything mentioned here, reboot when done, and then say a prayer.  :)  Hopefully it will now be working and receiving data.