HELP! Weeder Funnies updated

Mon Jun 28 13:15:42 EDT 2021

My concern is that you’ve got either some faulty ethernet wiring or some faulty power wiring or something else. the errors you were talking about in the past showed networking disconnects rather than weeder protocol errors, at least to start with. 

If the problem was that the weeder interface or other software was faulty then there would be no networking errors as the wiznet cards don’t care what data is passed through them, the connection would be maintained and the errors would be limited to the weeder interface level, but yours were not. There were TCP disconnect errors in the logs you previously sent which can only come from the lower level connection between the XTension machine and the wiznet card. It can’t be caused by any error in the actual weeder communication. Though it will then cause such errors after the ethernet/TCP errors happen so that is why it is confusing. But the presence of the ethernet errors in the log points to a problem with the wiznet setup, and not necessarily the weeder cards that are connected to them.

I recently added some newer wiznet cards to my system without any difficulty, but it’s not impossible that newer ones would have changed the protocol or be more or less reliable. If there was a major change in the version I would expect an error when trying to save the settings data back to the card. When you save the settings do you get the message about the wiznet accepting the configuration or is there an error? I’ve done a little reading now about the newer wiznet firmware and I do not immediately see anything that should be a problem. It’s all lower level stuff for supporting newer hardware on their own boards and possibly some IPv6 stuff that we don’t use anyway. That should not cause a problem, but I cannot be sure that it would not. 

If you find that everything prior to a specific version works fine, but everything newer than a specific version does not that would be good to know as that would be a starting point to work from. Just having multiple different firmware versions by itself isn’t really a problem unless it actually causes the problem. It should be fairly straight forward to figure out as some of those would never work, and some would always work. If the problem is more random than that then it’s more likely related to wiring or power issues i think.

> On Jun 28, 2021, at 5:15 AM, George <ghandley at kc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> Well James,
> 
> I seem to be having all sorts of things pop up as not working tonight and they are all Weeder boards of different types.
> Two banks of Weeder (5) boards.
> 
> I have tonight exhausted any more ideas to bring them to life including changing out whole Weeder chains. (Damn those wire holes are small for 74 year old eyes)
> 
> One thing I did notice which might have something to do with it is WizNet boards with different flavors of firmware. Could that make any difference in their operation? I hope the small screenshot of Configurator below might help you answer that question.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> George
> 
> <PastedGraphic-1.tiff>
> 
>> On Jun 27, 2021, at 3:35 PM, james at sentman.com <mailto:james at sentman.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Sorry George,
>> 
>> I've got your emails in the queue here just not enough of me to go around the last couple of weeks as usual.
>> 
>> Looking at the spec of the WTDIN board, and how I’ve used the 2 of them here and in one other location, they have a pull up resister already on board connected to the 5v rail. That means that to make them change state you need to connect them to the ground terminal that is on the board. There are 2 Gnd labeled terminals in between the inputs and the outputs. I have those connected to one connector of all the contacts that I’m measuring and the other side of the contact goes to one of the inputs. So if you just take a piece of wire from the Gnd and short it to any of the inputs it should generate either an on or an off to XTension. I know that some of them needed to be setup as reverse logic in XTension, but that shouldn’t matter one way or the other. You should see a command for the endpoint change when any of them are connected to Gnd, or disconnected from Gnd.
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jun 26, 2021, at 1:02 PM, George <ghandley at kc.rr.com <mailto:ghandley at kc.rr.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I received your acknowledgments that my two inquiries were successfully received, but I waited all day yesterday, and this morning, but still haven't heard from you. I just received the new parts I need to redo the basement Weeder Digital Output board and new relay board, so I'm tabling that questionI for the moment, but I'm still in need of your opinions to resolve my garage Weeder Digital Input Board. Does that board require the negative switching used in the Digital Output Board or does i work like all the WTDIO boards that use the  positive side for switching.
>>> 
>>> I confess, I've already tried it both ways without success.
>>> 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>>  James
>> 
>> 
>> James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org <http://www.planetarygear.org/>		http://MacHomeAutomation.com <http://machomeautomation.com/>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 

Thanks,
 James

James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org		http://MacHomeAutomation.com

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