SPA525G: No Weather Information possible?

[Pasadena01]

Hi,

Since some month I cannot use the weather Web-Tool in the SPA525G. For all Towns or ZIP Codes it tells me, that there ist a Mistake in searching the town-Information.

I tried several Towns, which works several time ago. What happend? How can I check this or waht can I do?

Pasadena

[Dan Lukes]

I have no SPA525G near, so my advice will be fuzzy somewhat.

Weather feature depend on data supplying service running on remote server. Such service is either

1. cancelled or request format become changed (so server doesn't understand phone request)
2. unreachable from your phone - because of routing/firewall/DNS issue

Run a packet catcher (tcpdump or wireshark) during phone request. It will help you to identify the reason.

Assuming you are running latest firmware, you can do almost nothing with [1]. For example, traffic service information feature on SPA962 doesn't work as well because data supplying server has been terminated ...

[Andreas DartWader]

As workaround we use it's picture gallery feature. It's much more usable.

You need some linux or something box to get and prepare pics for phones and deliver it then.

Follow guide here:

http://wiki.opennet.ru/Linksys_slideshow

Works on 942/504 962/525g2 awesome.

[Dan Lukes]

OK, I reached my testing SPA525G2.

The weather service depend on MSN's data. It request somehing like

http://weather.msn.com/RSS.aspx?wealocations=wc:USIA0641

where USIA0641 is the location identificator.

It seems that

1. http://weather.msn.com/RSS.aspx no longer exists, it is redirected to http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather?wealocations=wc:USIA0641
2. wealocations=... is no longer used to identify location and is meaningless
3. response format has changed and is unknown thus unparseable to phone

Just for the completeness - you didn't complained that fetching of weather data doesn't work, you complained that city selection doesn't work. OK, so ... it call:

http://weather.msn.co.uk/weatherservice.aspx?weasearchstr=new+york&culture=en-gb

Where "new york" is the city we are trying to set.. It is redirected to:

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather?weasearchstr=new+york&culture=en-gb

Request to such address is considered invalid by MSN.

Conclusion ?

It will not work. Either Cisco need to update the code to follow MSN changes or you need to discover former response format and you need to create man-in-the-middle proxy that will convert current response to the old one (that can be processed by phone).

[Pasadena01]

Hi Dan,

I thought so. Thanks for your analysing. So there is so chance to get the weather back on the phone. The Phone ist EoL and support is for HW only. So there will be no firmware update in the future, I am afraid.

Maybe others will find a solution.

Thanks

Pasadena

[Dan Lukes]

Note I missed we are speaking about SPA525G2. I analyzed it on this model, not the SPA525G.

With EOLed SPA525G you are out of luck definitely (not counting the man-in-the-middle proxy solution I mentioned).

[Pasadena01]

Hi,

That is right, but both have the same problem.

Anyway...

Pasadena

[Dan Lukes]

True, but SPA525G2 is not EOL (yet) so you may wish the issue will be resolved by firmware upgrade. But I don't recommend to put much hope in it ...

[dirkventer · Accepted solution]

I realise your comment is a year old. But it looks like the firmware release v7.6.1 (Sept 2015) fixes this weather lookup issue as well as a separate SIP issue. This may resolve issues on the 525G and 525G2 phones, check the hardware and firmware compatibility section in the release notes of the firmware zip file.The firmware file has been attached to this post, in case it gets stripped for some reason you can currently get it from the URL below (publicly accessible)

https://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?mdfid=282414147&softwareid=282463651&release=7.6.1&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

[Pasadena01]

Hi, Thanks for your Info. I installed this Firmware on my SPA525G and - Hurra! - weather ist back! Thank you very much for this tipp! Happy New Year! Pasadena

[Dan Lukes]

Just for completeness - the 7.6.1 firmware is using openweathermap.org service.

Search for city:

http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/find?q=%SEARCH&mode=xml&lang=en&type=like&APPID=%APPID

Request weather:

http://api.openweathermap.org//data/2.5/weather?id=%CITYID&mode=xml&units=metric&APPID=%APPID

where

• %SEARCH is the search string (partial city name or so)
• %CITYID is numeric id of particular place (returned in the response to search request)
• %APPID is constant id used as client's authorization
  

So verify the api.openweathermap.org is not firewalled.

Unfortunately, %CITYID can't be provisioned, so phones needs to be configured one by one manually.

[jtarbox79]

Thanks for creating a thread about this. Have been working with Cisco for months. I was hoping they would fix it in the new FW version 7.5.6c for my Cisco SPA525G2. From time to time I have been Googling to see if anyone else has had the same issue. Was in touch with a lady from Cisco and she wanted me to do a packet capture and all this other time consuming troubleshooting. Glad you guys have pinned it down. Seriously though if it is happening to my phone and I'm giving them the specific error message how hard would it have been to replicate? My Case Number # is 633814413 but I'm not holding my breath. Seems like Cisco does not care much for the SOHO business sector.

[Dan Lukes]

How to say it nice ...

... Cisco is giving up on VoIP SMB  segment. It has been Linksys job, but Linksys is now out of game.

Consider use of other phones.

[rutibuni]

This is NOT the case and no one should make the leap that the fact a weather app provider is no longer supporting their APIs that Cisco has given up on the VoIP SMB segment.  That is simply not true.  Just like every other phone provider, we have to prioritize issues and frankly, the weather app has not been a priority.  We are attempting to look at other weather app providers, all which charge a fee - nothing comes without cost.  Stay tuned...

[Dan Lukes]

I fully analyzed the issue six months ago. So don't claim the Cisco has not been aware of it. There is no problem that weather service got no priority, but Cisco should announce customers that service is broken. Unless Cisco decided to give up on customers.

As far as I know, there is no such notice from Cisco - either in this thread nor elsewhere.

You are first user of "Cisco Emplyee" class responding to question six months old/comment three month old. And you are claiming the Cisco is not giving up the VoIP SMB segment in it.

Hm, glad to hear it, despite I wish for more than just words.

During Linksys times, the questions not answered by volunteers (and this one can't be responded by volunteer) has been answered by Linksys technicians within few days. Even those complex and requiring deep-in knowledge about the product. It never required six months to receive generic "stay tuned" response. Sorry.

New firmware has been released in the mean time - so don't try to claim the Cisco has not been aware of the issue. Are you ready to confess the firmwares are released untested ? Broken service is still shown in menu, even in latest release. No notice even in Release Notes.

And it's not about weather application only ...

I'm not willing to enumerate here all those problems and firmware bug fully analyzed, documented and reported by users, but ignored by Cisco (I'm not speaking about "solved" response, I'm speaking about just "heard and understood, we will look at it sometime" response from Cisco).

In short, former Linksys division provided true support for customers. It's true no longer.  Now, even Chinese garage companies provide better support than current SMB Support Center to customers.

Feel free to disagree, I will not continue to fight here about it. Any customer with own experience with SMB TAC can decide by self, who is right.

So sorry ...