[seockwig]

@samer…I can, but it may not be for a couple of days.

[seockwig]

Yes, my firewall checked out fine as well.  Nothing in the firewall logs showed any kind of error with the traffic, it showed everything working as it should.  There was just something the controller didn’t like when the traffic was being inspected.  Don’t know what it is, but it just wouldn’t communicate properly with Wunderground when the traffic was passing through the firewall.  Putting a bypass rules in just for the controller prevents any of the traffic going from or too the controller from being inspected.  I realize it’s a small hole in the security of my network…but it’s small enough that I feel comfortable with it.

[seockwig]

I was having issues with my OpenSprinkler getting the correct information from Wunderground when it was going through my firewall.  I started getting the notifications from Wunderground saying I had exceeded my limits as well and the Sunrise/Sunset time was incorrect as well on the controller.  Everything worked fine when I turned anything off on the firewall that scanned the traffic.  Once I turned on anything(content filter, A/V scanner, ect…) that scanned the traffic the OpenSprinkler wouldn’t communicate properly with Wunderground and the calls to Wunderground would go up.

I ended up also posting for help in the forum’s used by my firewall and basically it came down to putting a bypass rule in for the OpenSprinkler.  The bypass rule told the firewall to ignore all the traffic coming from or going to the OpenSprinkler.  Once the bypass rules were in place everything worked and has been working since.  Maybe something to try on your firewall as well.

This is the thread I started about it: https://opensprinkler.com/forums/topic/exceeding-wunderground-api-calls/

[seockwig]

Yes, that is why you could  be having a problem. When you select the firmware version to upload, that is what is being sent to the controller.  So you will want to select the newest version in the list.

Hope that helps!

[seockwig]

I was running into the same problem with my Windows 8 tablet.  When I clicked on Detect Device it would cause the OS to boot up and then it would fail to upload or detect the device unless I shut it down and started over.

Here are the steps I took and it worked for me:

• I did not have the Firmware Updater started on the tablet
• Connect the USB cable to my tablet.
• Plugin the USB cable to the OS while holding down B2.
• Release B2 after 1 second
• Wait for the tablet to beep; indicating that the OS was recognized by the computer
• Launch the Firmware update software
• DO NOT DO AUTO DETECT…the LCD screen on the OS should stay blank.  If it doesn’t restart the process.
• Select the Device from the drop down….in my case it is OpenSprinkler_v2.1
• Select the Firmware to upload
• Click Upload Firmware

Hope that helps!

[seockwig]

I think that was the trick; because it worked the first attempt I did.  I could’ve sworn I tried uploading the firmware with out doing the detect; but apparently I didn’t or I missed something at that time.

So for future reference here are the exact steps I took:

• I did not have the Firmware Updater started on the tablet
• Connect the USB cable to my tablet.
• Plugin the USB cable to the OS while holding down B2.
• Release B2 after 1 second
• Wait for the tablet to beep; indicating that the OS was recognized by the system
• Launch the Firmware update software
• DO NOT DO AUTO DETECT…the LCD screen on the OS should stay blank.  If it doesn’t restart the process.
• Select the Device from the drop down….in my case it is OpenSprinkler_v2.1
• Select the Firmware to upload
• Click Upload Firmware

Thanks for the quick response!

[seockwig]

Well, I think we have it worked out.  I’ve created a bypass rule on the firewall for the OpenSprinkler controller.  So none of the traffic coming from or going to the controller get’s scanned by the filters.  Still don’t know what the controller didn’t like about the scanned traffic, but it appears to be working.  If things change I’ll let you know and if I ever figure out  what was being changed in the traffic I’ll pass that along as well.

Can I make a suggestion?  I was on the Wunderground page to check my Call count….that required me refreshing the page every couple of minutes to see if the Call count changed.  Would it be possible to add a Date/Time stamp of Last Attempted Call and a Date/Time stamp of Last Successful Call.  If it’s possible, putting it on the Weather Diagnostics page I think would be the most logical place.  It would make it a lot easier to troubleshoot if that is possible.

Something like this:

Min Humidity   67%

Max Humidity   93%

Mean Temp   23F

Precip Yesterday   0.00″

Precip Today   0.00″

Current % Watering   0%

Last Call Attempt   1/7/2015  7:13PM

Last Successful Call   1/7/2015  7:13PM 

Thanks for all the help!

[seockwig]

Well I wish I could say I’ve got it figured out.  But I just can’t quite seem to nail this one down.  It is something with scanning of the traffic…but I don’t know what.  When I have any module on that scans the traffic the calls to Wunderground climb at a rate of 2/minute.  How ever as I watch the firewall logs it looks like everything is going through.   I turn off the modules and the calls drop to 1 every 15 minutes.

I used the query provided earlier and ran it with all the scanning modules off and then with just the webfilter on( I restarted my browser and cleared the web cache between tries as well.)  I received the same results both times and the response time was about 2 seconds.  I would think if the traffic was being blocked I wouldn’t get a result or if scanning was slowing down the response I would’ve seen a noticeable lag with the webfilter on.  The results on Wunderground were consistent as well.  With the modules off it was 1 call and done; with the webfilter on calls climbed.

When I get a chance I’ll post to the Untangle forums to see if anybody over there has an idea what may be happening.

For now, I’m going to shut the controller off as it isn’t being used right now.  I’ll turn it back on when I need to do some more testing.  Hopefully I can get it figured out before Spring rolls around as I would really love to use the weather feature of the controller.

[seockwig]

Your right,  you did explain the timeout.  It was just as I started making the connection with the scanning modules on the firewall the first thing that popped into mind was the possibility of a time out of a few milliseconds.  I know that scanning the traffic doesn’t take 30 seconds; if it did anything I did over the internet would be noticeably slower.  As an example when I checked the url you posted above the results came back in a second or two.  If the filter was slowing the traffic down that bad, the results would’ve taken considerably longer to show.

I have not received any emails from Wunderground today, and I would have by this point if I exceeded the call limit.  I just checked my Wunderground page and the usage looks about right for a call every 15 minutes.  So I believe that isolates the issue to scanning modules of the UTM, what that is I don’t know yet.  I’ll do some digging this evening to see what else I can figure out.

 

[seockwig]

Is there a time out for how long before another request is made from the controller?

I’m running a homebuilt Untangle UTM which in not only a firewall, but has modules for Webfiltering, Virus Scanning, Spyware Scanning; Application controller, IPS and ADBlocker.  Here is what I’ve found so far.  If I turn off all the modules but the actual firewall the Wunderground stat page goes up by 1 or 2 calls and then stops. Meaning to me the controller received its response and won’t call again for another 15 minutes. However if I turn on any additional module which scans the traffic; it doesn’t matter which one; I can watch the call counts go up by about 2/minute on Wunderground.  Once I turn the module off, the call counts level off.  From what I can tell the traffic isn’t being stopped by the UTM, but it’s possible the small delay introduced by scanning the traffic may be enough that the controller is thinking that it won’t get it’s response and then sends another request out.

Your thoughts?

I am going to leave everything off on the UTM except the actual firewall module to see what happens over the next day.  If you could check your logs again to see how many calls are coming in from controller; I’m thinking it will look correct now.  If that’s the case it is something to do the UTM, either a delay or it’s changing something in the traffic.

 

[seockwig]

I did change the key and I’ve been watching the stats on Wunderground and have been seeing the same thing.  The calls have been going up about 2/minute.

I did have my controller on a different port, but I changed it back to port 80 earlier this evening.  I just checked it again and rebooted it to make sure and everything looks alright.

I do have my network behind a firewall/UTM, and I’ve been going through the logs.  But I don’t see any issues with the firewall blocking any traffic destined for the controller.  I’m going to do some more testing with firewall just so I can rule that out completely or find a problem.

I don’t think you’ll need to change to firmware as right now this appears to be an isolated issue.

Thanks for all the assistance!

[seockwig]

Well..something still isn’t right.  I received two of the notifications from Wunderground.  One yesterday afternoon and one early this morning stating that I’ve gone over the call limit.  I think I’m going to generate a new a key and see what happens.  I wouldn’t think my key has been “compromised”…but it’s an easy thing to check.

I suppose the next thing would be to do a factory reset on the controller and see what happens from that.

[seockwig]

I think it’s working now.  I checked the Current Status page and the Sunrise is now set for 7:49 and Sunset is set for 16:41.  Which seems about right.

[seockwig]

So this is the result I get when I goto the URL:

&scale=-1&tz=24&sunrise=469&sunset=1001&maxh=-1&minh=-1&meant=-500&pre=-1.000000&prec=-1.000000&hc=-1

 

I typed my zip code in to the location field and  hit the locate button..right now the location is set for icao:KSGS

I’ll see if I get another email message from Wunderground today and will let you know.

[seockwig]

Sunrise time is 6:00 and Sunset is 18:00…and that is not correct for this time of year in MN.  I’ll dig into my router when I get a chance…but that may not be for a few days.

If you think of anything else let me know; otherwise I will post again after I’ve had a chance to look at the router.

[seockwig]

As an FYI, I did get another email early this morning informing me that I’ve exceeded the call limit again.

 

The location is set to: Inver Grove Heights, MN.

 

Let me know if you need anything else.

[seockwig]

Looking forward to the update!

[seockwig]

That’s what I kind of thought.

For me it’s not a huge deal as I’ve only used the self-test a couple of times and everything else is working just fine with the controller.

I used the self-test when I did the initial install; I didn’t have the app running on my cell yet; and the other day when I disconnected and reconnected everything and that time it wasn’t behaving the way I expected it too. I don’t always carry my cell phone with me when I am at home so using the self-test was an easy way to see that everything is hooked up and working correctly.

I could also see where people might use the self-test when starting up the system in the spring as a quick check of the zones before going into the the full checking of the heads and such.

Thanks for taking a look into it.

[seockwig]

Now that I understand the way it works that is fine by me. In fact I prefer that it stops the program cycle all together when it detects rain.

Having the rain sensor in series with the COM wire was the way it was hooked up to the old RainBird controller before that controller died. I prefer using the dedicated rain sensor port.

So….now for a little update.

We didn’t get the rain today that was predicted; so when I got home from work I checked the webpage for my OpenSprinkler. And it still said “Rain Detected”; which seemed odd because it had been warm and sunny pretty much all day. I refreshed the page a couple of times just make sure..and cleared the cache just to be on the safe side….but it didn’t change. So I pulled apart the rain sensor; so there would be no pressure on the switch; and the rain state still didn’t change. Next I rebooted the controller…and it still showed “Rain Detected” on the web page. So this is now new….I can’t get the rain state to clear at all. I go in and check to make sure the rain sensor is plugged in tightly to the controller…and it is. So I spend the next half an hour trying various things; check the “Normally Open” box and then uncheck, reboot…it is not doing anything like it should. I get it to work once…and then and go to repeat it and it fails. I’m about ready to give up on the rain sensor all together when I decide to go back to the basics.

Back to trouble shooting 101…..first thing check the cable. The end’s are good…follow the cable around and hmmmm…..this doesn’t look right[attachment=0:3j2rce1b]rsz_img_20140618_173538_565_2.jpg[/attachment:3j2rce1b]. A chipmunk(at least I’m pretty sure it’s a chipmunk as I’ve seen it in the garage before) has chewed a section of the wire completely away! 😮 Hmmm……no wonder things aren’t behaving the way they should. So I run a new wire from the controller to the rain sensor and proceed to test it….and everything works beuatifully 😀

Bottom line…too many new variables and not doing the basic steps in troubleshooting. I appreciate the quick response’s and the help.

Thanks again!

[seockwig]

Thanks for the info.

I should’ve known about the trying to refresh the web page after making a change. My fault for not trying that.

I have the “Normally Open” box off, which is what I thought it should be. I don’t remember if the box was checked or unchecked when I first started it up; I went through a couple of rounds of checking and checking the box. Thanks for confirming that it should be unchecked.

That’s the piece I was missing. I didn’t realize it stopped the whole program from running. I guess I was used to the old analog RainBird controller I had; you tested the rain sensor by pushing it down. Which shut the system off, then when you released the plunger it would immediately activate the system again. Right now I’ve got the Rain Sensor enabled again. On the web interface it’s in the “Rain Detected” state. We’ve had a fair amount of rain the past few days…and we’ve got rain in the forecast for rest of the week as well. So it may be a week or so before it dries out enough to see if it changes states.

Thanks for the help and I’ll report back probably sometime next week.

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