I should also have mentioned in my last post that I took the opportunity to compile wview with wunderground support. So now Begbroke weather data is now contributing to probably the biggest, freest and longest established Internet weather data service.
See http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IOXFORDS10
Just to prove that this blog is not dead… Last month I updated wview to version 4.0.1 (including an update to radlib) with very little pain. I also put a simple backup script into the crontab (which writes to a second disk I have attached to the slug; ideally it should be rsyncing offsite but…). I then went on holiday and had the pleasure of viewing my wview site on an iPod Touch in the New York Apple Store (I was also able to login to the slug from an entirely different location abroad to restart lighttpd which had, for reasons unlogged, decided to fall over).
Linksys have officially discontinued the NSLU2. Amazon et alia still have them in stock so I bought a second one. Really, for just in case ‘cold’ standby (it’s still in its box) but actually when time is permitting I will probably deploy it as a home file server or similar.
On Wednesday I installed Weatherlink and connected it to the Vantage Pro2 console. Actually, this didn’t accomplish much except allow me to see what functionality Weatherlink provided. I think I hoped to download and export the historical data which sits on the console (e.g. high/low totals since Feb 2007) but I couldn’t see a way to accomplish this. I’ll probably experiment with afedit and do this manually.
My next task was to configure the Weather Envoy so that I could restore the console to its rightful place in the living room. This was easily done via Weatherlink (and could equally have been configured via wview). I opted for an archive interval of 15 minutes.
Initially, I had configured wview to put archive data into a mysql database. However, I am not convinced that, in the longer term, the slug will cope with wview+lighttp+mysql so I reconfigured wview without the mysql option (actually, this was probably unnecessary since I could simply have switched off mysql via the wviewconfig utility — I did want to upgrade wview to the latest version at the same time but this also failed, probably because I needed to reconfigure radlib without mysql too; it was getting late…).
Restarting wview with the new envoy worked very smoothly. However, a new, more serious problem developed. Having followed the instructions for unplugging the data logger from the console in order to connect it to the envoy, I discovered, on replacing the batteries, that a full quarter of the console screen was blank! There was nothing where there should have been a wind gauge, outside/indoor temperature, and there was also character corruption in the ticker area. My first fear was that in disconnecting the data logger (especially prising out the batteries, which is not easy) I had accidentally damaged the screen.
I sent an email to Davis Instruments and Tom replied next day with some very helpful advice: remove the batteries and any other power source; leave the console without power overnight to fully discharge the screen; and then power it up again. It worked!
Next tasks are to deal with historical data and look at customising the html templates.
The Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station has been in operation for just over a year. Only I can see the console and access the data on rainfall, barometric pressure, temperature, wind etc that it’s been collecting and displaying. Hopefully, that will change soon. My intention is to connect a console to a Linksys NSLU2 with (probably) Unslung and wview installed. All the bits, including the datalogger and NSLU2 are on order.
