An error occurred while trying to add an ATIS bot

[Jim Rosado 896019]

vATIS was working great, until I finished making my profiles and then exited so that I could start it up again. I wanted to ensure that the profiles were still there (even though I'd exported them first).

 

Now, whenever I click the "TX" button, I always get the "An error occurred while trying to add an ATIS bot" error message.

 

I could not fine a "crash log", etc to post here, so my hope is that this screenshot might show what it's doing.

 

W7, vATIS version 3.1.0.0

 

By the way: love the range of available voices!

 

Thanks!

[Sean Harrison]

Jim, in my extremely limited experience, I found that removing non alphanumeric characters from the profiles, OR add the non alphanumerics in the contractions.

 

I think it may be the bot not being able to read things like “/“ or similar.

 

Once I got rid of them it seemed to work fine.

[Enrico Noia]

I'm encountering this too at LAX and I don't have any weird characters in the text

[Jim Rosado 896019]

Ahhhhh . . . Sean, you may be right!

 

I followed the example in the user guide to add the contraction for "RNAV" in my ATIS. I used the one shown in the example in the user guide, so that I could "trick" the program to read "RNAV" as "Are-Nav". Indeed, I followed the guide's example, which has a hyphen in the "Are-Nav" in the Contraction example. So it may very well be that the program does not like that hyphen. Justin Shannon might want to edit his online guide to remove that hyphen, and to add a note that states "do not use non-alphanumeric characters anywhere in the ATIS or any other part of the program."

 

I will try this evening to work with that and try to remove that (and any other similar "symbol" I might find) and then try to post the results here.

 

Thanks for that excellent insight!

[Sean Harrison]

Jim, sorry don’t get too hopeful. Last night I got exception error after exception error. So, I’m not sure my suggestion is going to help.

[Jim Rosado 896019]

NP, I appreciate the recommendation, though. They'll get it all worked out in the end.

 

Thanks again, Sean!

[Christopher Olmstead 11820]

Getting the same thing at Boston. It seems to be only facilities with multiple profiles. Our facilities with only one vATIS profile created for them can connect with no problem.

[Jim Rosado 896019]

Sean's suggestion fixed my vATIS issue. I removed the hyphen from the "ARE NAV" Contraction and it works now. Then I decided to remove "RNAV" from my ATIS so I removed the contraction completely, so I have no contractions.

 

I have four profiles built.

 

I will say that I do like the different voices, and I do like the new vATIS when it works.

 

Thanks, Sean!

 

Addendum: At the end of my 4-hour controlling, as I was closing the VRC down, I noticed that the vATIS was no longer connected and that I had a couple of those same errors. The error popup boxes were hidden on my other monitor.

 

So it seems that even though removing the hyphen from the Contraction (and/or removing the contraction completely) did the trick initially. It appears, though, that the vATIS eventually stops working on its own at some point. For me, I estimate that it stopped working about 3 hours into my 4-hour controlling session. So that is an issue that the developer(s) will eventually find and fix.

[Mike Fries]

All of my facilities have one profile, I tried removing contractions, some work, some do not.

[Jonathan Halverson]

I installed 3.1.0.1 fresh and created a brand new file with completely default settings and still get the error. One of our controllers said he was able to get it to work with a re-install with our facility files. Any updates?

[Justin Shannon]

I haven't been able to reproduce this issue, so I'm chalking it up to a server issue.

[Jim Rosado 896019]

Thanks, Justin, for developing vATIS to work with AFV!

 

Just a couple of quick notes --

 

1. It finally works with my VRC again, although I will not be too surprised if it just stops working if I stay on-scope for too long at a time (dunno why that is).

 

2. It is working despite the fact that I still have four pre-defined profiles I built. I typed each one into a text file and saved it, and was ready to delete all but the one in use at the time, before connecting. But I decided to try to connect just prior to deleting all but one of them, and was very pleasantly surprised that it actually connected, and is still connected! Eureka!

 

3. I for one wish there was a true copy and paste ability within vATIS. There is a pseudo-paste ability by clicking on ARPT COND or NOTAM MSG. That opens a window that allows the user to ADD NEW profile to either of those boxes. I learned that you have to add a profile as a single line of information. It can include spaces but no carriage returns. And, after you add a few of them, you can then sort them as you wish, which is nice. Unfortunately, I have not yet figured out what they do except that they keep the new profiles you add to them. If you check one of them and click apply, I would surmise that it should, as the resulting popup alludes to, replace the profile currently in use and then cause you to have to click the TX ATIS button again to active the automated voice ATIS. In fact, it appears that it does not replace the current profile in use, but it does cause the user to have to click the TX ATIS button to restart the automated voice ATIS. Strange! I must be missing something, but I do not know what I am overlooking there.

 

4. For some reason, the only way I can preview my vATIS is to add it and its freq to the AFV panel and then click RX to monitor it. I have seen the Preview feature listed in the past inside vATIS by right-clicking one of the three vATIS boxes, but it certainly is no longer working in the latest version of vATIS that I downloaded and am using, which is version 3.1.0.2.

 

Anyhow, thanks again, Justin, for such a great program. It will be great to see what further updates you make to it!