Oh God it's arrived

Actually WC, I hear theres some older type Vantage pro ones going cheap on ebay, you should look into getting one of them.

I've manually reset the anomolies in this programme so everything should be running fine now touch wood.

Theres some pretty cool flash add ons for the weather display programme so when I've the time,I'll play with a trial version of them.

Peaked at 16.2 c here so far in a somewhat sunnier day than of late.

Mothman I still seem to be often running a degree colder by daytime than yourself so you might want to bring your wooly coat, the next time you come down here

Mothman

Actually WC, I hear theres some older type Vantage pro ones going cheap on ebay, you should look into getting one of them.

I got some of these, have just received them

so you might want to bring your wooly coat

I always bring my coat when going into the hills

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Davis-Vantage-Pro-6150-Wireless-Weather-Station_W0QQitemZ5817804564QQcategoryZ48625QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

There you go weathercheck a steal-air mail from the states $50
Add another 30 for taxes and you have the lot for under €200

Though you might want a fan aspirated shield as from memory, the photo's of your garden that you posted up during last winter, the surrounding houses would make it either a heat pocket or a frost pocket.

Mothman

Earthman wrote:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Davis-Vantage-Pro-6150-Wireless-Weather-Station_W0QQitemZ5817804564QQcategoryZ48625QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

There you go weathercheck a steal-air mail from the states $50
Add another 30 for taxes and you have the lot for under €200

Though you might want a fan aspirated shield as from memory, the photo's of your garden that you posted up during last winter, the surrounding houses would make it either a heat pocket or a frost pocket.

Yes but that particular model, which is a US version is illegal this side of the big pond.
I got mine from http://stores.ebay.co.uk/McMurdo-Obsolete-Stock_Davis-Weather-Stations_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQftidZ2QQtZkm.

And I'm not sure about the FARS unit. The maintanence instructions says to put in a new motor and batteries annually. Also if the fan is not working, then the shield looks as if it would perform a lot worse than the passive shield.

Mothman

And to connect the Davis stations to a computer, a datalogger is needed, with the Davis datalogger at c.£160, they're not cheap! They're less in the US and will work fine in the overseas versions

Yeah I forgot about that but he could spend the communion money on the Vantage pro and save for the datalogger again.

As regards the U.S radio signal-shush!!

Oh I must look at that mcmurdo's link-I did a simple ebay search and despite being in dot co dot uk.
I know someone up at about 900ft who may be interested.

Now reports from there would be interesting!

Radio signals don't like low pressure systems

The weather display programme is having serious difficulty interpreting the signal loss.
Unlike the Virtual weather programme, VWS cannot interpret rainfall and rain rates properly but is ok with the temps.

The console is displaying the correct data or at least the last correct packet.

Anyways-they posted out the updater yesterday so I'll say thursday will be the day I have it and with any luck a strong signal from the repeater.

Sigh

Updater came with envoy firmware.
Muggins updated the console without realising this.
(In fairness the supplier should have sent me one with the console firmware)

My console is now an envoy with no display and its not talking to the pc.

What I have to do now later is to go onto the davis website and download the correct firmware and......


Grrrrr:mad:

Tonight I might be right-tonight...

Tis is begining to read more like a web log than a thread now

Anyway-I rang Davis and they confirmed if I plugged the updater by serial to the pc and d/loaded the latest "console" firmware and then re update the console with that-It should work and it did.
I'm getting about 25% more signal in here now from the repeater.
But better still when I get a longer cable,I can get an even better signal upt to 45 out of a max 60.

Tried the VWS software again and it is still misbehaving even with the reliable signal so I am close to dumping that.
I rang ambient though and tbh I didnt like their attitude-they told me the same as the last time...
So its probably bye bye to them

Back on weather display now and I reckon I'll stay with them and put on the flash add on so the website will have virtual real time moving dials:cool:

Changed the update to every 5 minutes too.
Thats if my broadband can stick it-Eircom were supposed to have fixed the drop outs here but when the wind went NW tonight, I've been getting a lot of drop outs as the cable swings in the wind...
Hello Eircom-I'm renting the line and paying good money for it:mad:

Anyways-more tomorrow probably.

Flash test


Click on that above for an almost live flash version of the site.

The ten minute update page is temporarlly closed while I'm tricking about with that.

But hey we've gone from 10 minute updates to five minute updates to 30 second updates with moving fancy dials and stuff


[Edit] or no update at all if I'm tricking with that flash script which I currently am[/edit]

mike65

Ooops!

I'm running Opera 8.5 no java, with javascript.

Mike.

Yeah I'm having a few ISSUES with an xml configure script in the flash file.

The doctors and nurses are working on it as I speak

In the meantime the following testcard is still being updated every 5 minutes(tho-extra sooper dooper flashy site will return asap hopefully)

Supercell

http://arklow.741.com/weekrep.htm looks great imho, is this heavy user editing or the other software just behaves itself ?

Supercell

Also the temp scale of 0-40 c is a bit unrealistic, why not -10 -> 35c , seems to me to be a more realistic possible range

Indublin i'd make that -7 -> 33 and expect not to see that exceedede..but you have to ajust to yer local ranges.

Longfield

Longfield wrote:

http://arklow.741.com/weekrep.htm looks great imho, is this heavy user editing or the other software just behaves itself ?

It's a whole lot of things Longfield.
For instance in the weather display programme I had the rain guage setting wrong(It was correct on the console) so the Wdisplay programme was multiplying everything by ten at one stage.
This problem was fairly obvious when I noticed that the house hadnt floated away after about a foot of rain

Untill I realised this I had to manually correct the figures.
Also with the problems with reception and unplugging the data logger and closing programmes frequently to restart others-I discovered that some programmes were d/loading from the data logger and then clearing it meaning I've a mish mash of statistics some of which arent making sense.

What I propose to do with that is completely ignore and clear all data to date and start a fresh when I have everything working right.
I'll consider November 1 as the start date for when records begin.


The flash site worked for a while but there appears to be issues with the fowarding on arklowweather.com and it not recognising the flash script or interfering with it in some way.

If I get it back working in the next 10 minutes I'll re post the url for that here.
Unfortunately I'm jaded now as I've been working like a ...(very hard) today at other things

billy the squid

Wdisplay programme was multiplying everything by ten at one stage.

now i know why weathercheck wants one

OK I think I've got a lot of it fixed

The flash movie realtime weather is here

Theres some tweaking to be done there yet.
I'll also add a background.

I'll enter a link to it in www.arklowweather.com later which is now also back and updating every 5 minutes.

Comments welcome


By the way and mothman may have an answer to this.

Part of the teething problems I'm having is when I turn off the pc and the console via the datalogger is still connected to the pc, it stops logging data.
I lost all of last night and I'm sure there was an almost grass frost.

When it turned on WD treated yesterdays data as today but thats a separate issue which I'll look into maybe tomorrow when I've time.

Mothman

Earthman wrote:

Part of the teething problems I'm having is when I turn off the pc and the console via the datalogger is still connected to the pc, it stops logging data.
I lost all of last night and I'm sure there was an almost grass frost.

Can't help you on this I'm afraid.

No updates since midday yesterday to your site

Mothman

Mothman wrote:

No updates since midday yesterday to your site

Yes this is due to the fact that I've been in Cork since yesterday and am just back.
Apparently the phone line here was appalling in that time due to the wind.
It must have been very stormy as a piece of a treee blew across and smashed a window

Actually I see the sustained average windspeed was 26mph at around noon with a peak gust of 32mph today.

If I was here I would have manually restarted the broadband connection myself, which is something I have to do in these conditions.
Eircom are well aware that the cable is damaged and have it down for replacement.

Line rental eh :rolleyes:
As I type the connection has dropped again :mad:

Looks doubtfull that there are going to be any updates in the next 24hrs.

Cant Ring out from the phoneline here at all and people ringing in get through for a few seconds only sometimes only to be cut off again.

It's a wonder how I'm able to even get an internet connection at all on this and this is broadband albeit for about just .25 of a second at a time every now and then when whats left of the line feels like it.

Maybe this will encourage Eircom to speed up the replacement of the line :rolleyes:

Supercell

Sweet, I like the flash version have to say, why F temps though ?

Took me 10 minutes to get a connection Grrrrr

It must be farenheit because I clicked farenheit last thing before I left.
It was celcius and should be possible to click on the temp icon at the bottom to change it to calcius or farenheit and the rain from mm's to inches-whichever you want.

Do you think I should redirect arklowweather.com to the flash site?

And then set the other site to say half hour updates? (which will be half year updates if errorcom dont fix this line)

Both links will remain in my sig , so anyone that wants the detailed site can find it easily.

That said theres a fair amount of information in the flash site too.

By the way it's possible to do two cool extra things with that flach site.
It can be in an iframe which is a window on the detailed site-though it will be smaller it could take a third of the visible screen.

Or I could leave it as is but I could put a picture of the farm/Arklow as a background/backdrop to the display.

Now that the wind has died down here to less than 5 miles an hour average,It seems the interweb connection is holding and everything is updating.

(I hope this satisfies your cravings mothman )

I wouldnt hold my breath as to this continuing though as the forecast is windy to extremely windy in the next 36 hours and errorcom ...well they will be themselves and probably will come out unscrew a cable again and go away promising a new line sometime between now and the next millenium

Well its been interesting reading back on this thread describing the putting up of my home weather station.The broadband is perfect these days as Eircom eventually completely replaced the line in.

Unfortunately the lightning on saturday night damaged the repeater tx so the signal coming in has been eratic at the pc as I've had to rely on the signal from the ISS and not the repeater.
To temporarlly resolve this I've moved the receiver display unit with the datalogger to a location where it gets a reasonable signal from the ISS.

This means I'm only updating the website now twice a day untill I get the repeater sorted.

I'll likely take this opportunity to do an entire relocation of the ISS to an even more exposed site and at last put the wind vain on a pole that is the full length of the cable.There is a possibility that when the TV aerial mast is being serviced here next I might put the wind vain up on it as a seperate station.
Its about 70ft high and has a clear uninterupted wind field in all directions,including a good view out to sea at a height.
Now that would be interesting of a stormy night.

I'd be interested to hear of lightning detection software that can be added to this system aswell.

Mothman

The issue is servicing. I had to access my anemometer 3 times in 2 weeks. It's 10m up, so it was full height (and a bit more) with the telescopic. It's been working fine since, though I noticed that the cups got stuck for 12 hours one day. Spider or earwig probably being the culprit.

Snowbie

Tristrame wrote:

I'd be interested to hear of lightning detection software that can be added to this system aswell.

What do you want to know.

Snowbie

Mothman wrote:

The issue is servicing. I had to access my anemometer 3 times in 2 weeks. It's 10m up, so it was full height (and a bit more) with the telescopic. It's been working fine since, though I noticed that the cups got stuck for 12 hours one day. Spider or earwig probably being the culprit.

I also had mine down before the wind picked up from the storm last week.
Spiders collected inside the cups weighing them down alright.I had to secure it better as it is 32feet up on a mast which i created out of washing line poles.

If you notice them sticking or stuck probable insect problem but never lube the inside of drip ring as it would damage the bearings inside,and create corrosion.
Another thing i use is the transmitter kit for the anaemometer(pardon the spelling)it bypasses the ISS and i get an instant update on the console opose to the 2-3 second delay.

Supercell

Regarding spiders on the anemometer, might it be an idea to coat the pole with something to stop them crawling up and making a web in the first place?

My father used to coat the apple tree base in the back garden years ago with stuff as he didnt like spraying and claimed it helped a lot?

Maybe there is some kind of insect repellant that you could spray the pole with also ?

Web site now back up and running-That took a bit of an effort to clean up display wise!!! It was very mucky.
My advice with weather software at the start at least is to NOT TOUCH it once you have it any way right at all unless you REALLY know what you are doing!!

Records are foobarred though as theres lots of missing data from the stop again start again affair that has been the very QUIRKY weather display software so today is day one AGAIN.

www.arklowweather.com is the main page

http://arklow.741.com/live.html is the live one but remember it only works without the "www" for some other quirky flash licence reason.

Danno

WOW, what a read - some good laughs in there! BTW - I never knew the wind cups can become stuck :eek: