We have 22 weather stations installed across the country (Namibia), with some as old as 8 years. For the last couple of years (3 to 4), we have been experiencing excessive data usage from some (18) of our weather stations to such an extend that the monthly data limit has been depleted. Four (4) of our stations are not effected by this problem at all (these 4 stations cannot be accessed remotely).
We blame our local service provider, and they blame the programming and software of our weather stations. It just seems that nobody can find a solution or answer to this puzzling and recurrent problem which usually takes place towards the end of the month, and during after-hour timeslots and during May to August every year. The rest of the year every thing runs smoothly.
We use Cinterion RGS2T modems powered from SW12. All the stations have fixed IP addresses and logger security codes enabled. Our OS is CR1000.std 27 (a bit old I know). Data is send from the loggers via the Cinterion modems using the GPRS protocol of the service provider. Our stations are programmed to send data every hour, on the hour. It was found that data is transmitted every half-an-hour, and not on the hour as it should be, while the FTP server registers that it received data on the hour, e.g. precisely on 14:00 and not 14:30.
What puzzles me, is:
Why is this problem only effecting the 18 stations (accessible remotely) and not the 4 (not accessible remotely);
Why only on certain days of the month and also not every month;
Why, when our airtime was topped-up (28 August 2018), we loose everything again immediately?
Our service provider claims that our stations are doing software updates automatically (which they dont!!) and that the same data sets are send more than once (which is also not happening, otherwise the FTP server will indicate that).
Do you think we are being 'played' with by the service provider, or are there some other explanation for this kind of problem?
Salome
Salome, do you know whether the sim cards are registered under an unrestricted APN? if so, internet bots can try to connect to the stations and burn through a lot of your data. One of our customers reported that turning the modem on and off every 30 minutes solved the problem.
You can also experiment with one of the station using a standard sim card with 30MB data bundle for the month. You do not need a fixed IP to use ftp from the logger. We can help you with setting on your datalogger which will allow you to still make an IP connection using LoggerNet, even when using standard sim cards.
Please feel free to constact me at Campbell Scientific Africa
Regards
Johan Visagie
Hi Johan,
Thanks for your feedback. I will drop you an email.
Kind regards,
Salome