Author Topic: Weatherlink software  (Read 5171 times)

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Offline Billyram

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Weatherlink software
« on: February 17, 2017, 08:21:42 PM »
Looks like most Davis owners don't care for the Weatherlink software and are using something else. "Like Cumulus" Is this right? Looks like if I wanted to use something else I would have to run the Weatherlink disc anyway? I may not care for the Weatherlink software either.
Billy

Offline PaulMy

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #1 on: February 17, 2017, 08:53:25 PM »

Try it, it has some nice graphs and a sample web template.  But you will most likely soon go to another program... which offer much more.


Enjoy,
Paul

Offline Aardvark

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #2 on: February 17, 2017, 11:47:55 PM »
I assume you have a pc.  it is more difficult with a mac.

However, my favorites are VWS (Ambient)   and WeatherDisplay .   I prefer Weather Display.

Offline ocala

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #3 on: February 18, 2017, 06:57:15 AM »
I use WL for the graphs, but I use Cumulus as my everyday software.
I did use WL all the time but occasionally it would get a hicup and stop working. Never could figure out why but since changing to Cumulus it's been rock solid.
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Offline johnd

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #4 on: February 18, 2017, 07:14:13 AM »
Looks like most Davis owners don't care for the Weatherlink software and are using something else.

IME most Davis users DO use the WL software - it's only a minority who look elsewhere. But within that minority are obviously folks that are keen hobbyists or otherwise want more from their data handling - these are the users who tend to be more vocal on forums like this.

It's a moot point as to what the future of weather station software might be. The whole trend of software development is a move to online/cloud data handling and I don't see why weather software should be immune from this. You'll be able to access your data from any (Internet-connected) device anywhere and view/manipulate it to your heart's content in any browser.
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Offline chief-david

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2017, 08:20:50 AM »
It is ok and needed. Still has a place for us 'uncoders'
Here is my best versions of the WL templates

http://weather.rms.rdale.org/weather2.php
http://weather.rms.rdale.org/history.php



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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #6 on: February 18, 2017, 08:42:57 AM »
You are absolutely right John, the trend is "cloud". However people will still want to have their data locally as well. In fact this is how it usually works already, people use some kind of local SW, but send their data to "cloud" to some weather network.

One extreme is having data only locally. Other extreme is the Meteobridge Standard, which does not save anything and only sends data "somewhere" (weather network, FTP, own MySQL etc.).

It is likely that the trend will be to only save the raw data locally and then process and look at it in the cloud/online. However having data only online is dangerous. Most of these services are offered as is and can be shut down any day, and you have absolutely no control over this and even your server can crash. It is a nice backup in case your PC crashes or disk dies, you can then import it back, however, likewise, if such service shut down, you need to have a backup somewhere locally as well.

I can imagine that in the future, all PWS will have a decent data logger, which will save everything - lot has changed, a very cheap memory card these days can hold centuries of data... so no need to worry about this, and in addition it will send data to some online service where you will be looking at it, editing it, analyzing it. That is what I mentioned in a different thread where I wrote about my "dream station" - I think in the future, PWS really will be just a set of sensors and some integrating hub, which will aggregate data from all the sensors and send it off. Ideally everything - all sensors, webcam, detectors... all as one data package, saved locally in the hub onto some memory medium and sent off online. But no console or SW.

Offline johnd

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #7 on: February 18, 2017, 09:28:49 AM »
However people will still want to have their data locally as well.

Hmm, it's interesting to speculate and none of us AFAIK has a (working) crystal ball, but not sure I agree. As long as the online platform is a good, recognised brand and reliable then users will start to trust it.  Think about it. If you own stocks & shares then you probably don't keep local copies of the trading history - you just rely on going online whenever you want to check eg pricing or turnover histories. Same thing with utility bills and bank statements - many people no longer receive or make paper copies, they just rely on being able to view the details online. Why should your weather data be any different?

I'm sure that there would be a period where any new system has to earn its users' trust. And it would certainly help if there were some simple mechanism to keep backups of the key data (eg monthly summaries) in a separate part of the cloud somewhere, eg your own Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever. But once trends start nowadays then transitions can happen surprisingly quickly.

Look at Davis Connect systems, for instance, uploading to weatherlink.com - these don't necessarily touch anything local at all - the data goes directly up into the cloud and can be viewed there too, eg via onward uploads to WU. OK, there's currently a limit of 10,000 records storage, but it's easy to see how that could be made unlimited. And, yes, we need the next generation of the wl.com interface, but Davis will be actively working on that I'm sure.

The only real issue right now AFAICS is how data gets uploaded to the cloud. Connect is a bit expensive for non-professional users (because of the power demand, which in turn means a non-trivial solar PSU). Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see Davis release something functionally equivalent to an Envoy + IP logger box, but cheaper, to facilitate wl.com uploads and maybe unbundle the wl.com annual charge from WLIP.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2017, 09:37:27 AM by johnd »
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Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
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Sorry, but I don't usually have time to help with individual issues by email unless you are a Prodata customer. Please post your issue in the relevant forum section here & I will comment there if I have anything useful to add.

Offline Garth Bock

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #8 on: February 18, 2017, 09:47:08 AM »
WL is a good place to get started and has good features but other packages (VWS, WD, Cumulus) has more features (sometimes a bit much but gets ya thinking...). As for the cloud based stations....yeah convenience of not needing a local pc and anywhere access is nice. However, depends on the service provider. There are alot of former internet connected devices that are now orphaned because they shut down their services (went broke, etc.). Having a local PC capturing and then feeding a website/service gives you the control incase of loss of connectivity/service discontinued, etc. If we all depended on WU to provide us with our information....I am sure some would have pulled the plug long ago. Also some services charge a fee to host your data. So you pay a good chunk of change for your weather station and then you have to pay to have a display of historical data and such ? It all comes down to what you want to have. A station that is plug and play and has a company service that provides you with your data.....or your own pc as the intermediary and send the data where you want.

Offline hankster

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #9 on: February 18, 2017, 09:48:01 AM »
Quote
Why should your weather data be any different?

Over the past 20 years or so I've been burned way too many times from "on-line" services that force me to use their cloud services instead of saving it myself only to get bought out or go out of business and I lose it all. Even the biggest name companies on the internet have shut down parts of their services when they no longer find it useful to them. I avoid using such services at all costs if possible, I want my own copies.

You can't compare Davis (or any other consumer weather equipment manufacturer) to banks and brokerages. They are regulated services that are required by law to protect your data. Davis could easily go out of business (we don't know their finances) or get bought out by someone like WU/IBM and we lose access to years of data we gave them and never stored ourselves.

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #10 on: February 18, 2017, 09:51:51 AM »
Yes, but the problem is that just one single incident - and it would happen - of one particular service, and people lose trust in general.

I also use GDrive and have data there (of course not something private and I have it encrypted), but I also keep a copy at home on my disk. One should always have a back up at two physically separated places. You might have ten disks at home in a RAID and your house catches fire and you have a problem. One location backup only protects your data from disk failure.

Also remember that the time when everyone will always have reliable access to high-speed internet is still nowhere near so that also has to be taken into account.

And last but not least, one of the major problems currently, one that spans the whole IT industry right now, is battery life. This is something we are still unable to solve really. Batteries do get better and more efficient, but our devices, being more and more sophisticated, require more and more power so the overall battery life remains more or less the same. And the problem is that wifi for example, or bluetooth need a lot of energy and it is unlikely to be possible to power these only via solar panels anytime soon. Therefore having the possibility to log everything locally and then send data once in a while is currently the only possibility really. People obviously prefer the much more practical wireless communication, but in the mean time they want their data to be in close to real-time, sending data packages over wi-fi to the cloud every 5s is obviously an issue. Sending it to some local hub is not such a big problem and as I mentioned above, it could theoretically be this hub, connected to the mains, that would send it off to some cloud, but having 100% stable fast internet connection is not always possible, or rather hardly ever possible.

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #11 on: February 18, 2017, 10:47:00 AM »
Quote
Why should your weather data be any different?

Over the past 20 years or so I've been burned way too many times from "on-line" services that force me to use their cloud services instead of saving it myself only to get bought out or go out of business and I lose it all. Even the biggest name companies on the internet have shut down parts of their services when they no longer find it useful to them. I avoid using such services at all costs if possible, I want my own copies.

You can't compare Davis (or any other consumer weather equipment manufacturer) to banks and brokerages. They are regulated services that are required by law to protect your data. Davis could easily go out of business (we don't know their finances) or get bought out by someone like WU/IBM and we lose access to years of data we gave them and never stored ourselves.

Exactly

The problem is that none of these services are "for free" - people often dont realize it, but even if you are not directly paying for it, you are providing your personal data or other things that the service benefits from.

I like the idea of a cloud and I use it myself, there is always pros and cons. We are heading towards a situation where our "PCs" will only be a device capable of connecting to the Internet and running a browser. Everything will be done in a browser, which will become the OS (I am of course not talking about some highly private things in companies etc. Im talking about the regular user/consumer). The advantages are many. This device itself will be much cheaper than a PC. You will have practically unlimited power - just think about it, for example people editing videos, playing games - they will simply pay for a better PC/server and temporarily have a much higher power, rest of the month they might only use some much less powerful machine to do regular office work. Right now you have to choose and if you want a powerful PC you have to buy one and 99% of the time it could be idle... but you need that 1% of the time when you use it to its full potential.
There is much less potential for failures. As long as there is connection, you dont have to worry about upgrading HW, repairing HW etc. It just works...

On the other hand, cloud services and SW is a golden mine for the sellers. If you buy a SW today, you install it on your PC and even if your PC is offline, you can pretty much use it theoretically indefinitely. However, with cloud SW, the moment you stop paying.... you have a problem and you are left with nothing. Marketing departments are smart, they will be telling you that overall you save money - but that always assumes that you would buy a new version every time it is released.

There is also all sorts of terms and conditions - which none of use reads and always clicks "I agree" - as that is pretty much the only thing you can do if you want to use it and if you dont feel like reading literally hundreds of pages of some legal phrases. Most commonly, unless you pay you cannot expect anything, the service can shut down anytime and you would have absolutely no possibility to claim anything - and even if you were a paying customer, claimed some money, you could still lose your data or have your data hacked.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2017, 10:48:55 AM by Jáchym »

Offline Garth Bock

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #12 on: February 18, 2017, 12:53:30 PM »
Like I said earlier....there are many internet devices based on someone's services that are now orphaned because of shutdown/buy out/etc. There is a risk. Also internet connectivity is not guaranteed these days. If you like to see weather trends and the service goes offline....well you can't. There are cases of cloud service providers that have gone out of business without regard to the users' data. One in particular was a parking garage whose software was cloud based. There was a contract dispute which ended up trapping peoples cars in the garage for a month or more. However, for the beginner who wants a no fuss plug n play device and the cost is affordable...go for it....just keep in mind that they may not be there tomorrow. You get what you pay for. As for the cloud providing an anywhere ability to see the weather station......we can all do that with our websites. Should our web providers go out of business....we have the data locally on our computers and can find a new host to upload to. We are not locked in. Same goes for the software. You don't like WL....there are many other packages to choose from. The new XYZ weather station that is cloud based with its own software may be closed loop. Without their software it is a door stop.

Offline Jstx

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #13 on: February 18, 2017, 02:54:08 PM »
Like I said earlier....there are many internet devices based on someone's services that are now orphaned because of shutdown/buy out/etc. There is a risk. Also internet connectivity is not guaranteed these days. If you like to see weather trends and the service goes offline....well you can't. There are cases of cloud service providers that have gone out of business without regard to the users' data. One in particular was a parking garage whose software was cloud based. There was a contract dispute which ended up trapping peoples cars in the garage for a month or more. However, for the beginner who wants a no fuss plug n play device and the cost is affordable...go for it....just keep in mind that they may not be there tomorrow. You get what you pay for. As for the cloud providing an anywhere ability to see the weather station......we can all do that with our websites. Should our web providers go out of business....we have the data locally on our computers and can find a new host to upload to. We are not locked in. Same goes for the software. You don't like WL....there are many other packages to choose from. The new XYZ weather station (or whatever) that is cloud based with its own software may be closed loop. Without their software it is a door stop.

Like y'all are saying, there's a lot of risk with all this "cloud" crap. Software apps, devices, email, all those cloud-based IoT's are vulnerable to the needs and whims of the sometimes nebulous operators.
On a large system, corporate in-house environment (whether sublet/leased or not), it has benefits, flexibility, and cost reductions.
For individuals, not so much, or not at all.

For an example, I got a nice (I thought) Seagate wireless 2T hard drive, a Lyve device (wireless drives are pricey). It had come up on sale on Newegg a couple times at a very attractive price  :roll:, so I finally couldn't resist and jumped on one before they sold out again (yeah, I know to be suspicious of things suddenly getting 'moved').
When I got it I found out it wasn't quite what I thought (the item info online was a bit misleading).
Instead of being a freely accessible external drive, it was bound to a Seagate cloud app, and that was dedicated solely to 'managing' your image files, via the cloud. Bull. This Lyve app would (if you let it) spider through whatever machine you connected to it, save a thumbnail of all image files (trust issue?), and 'manage/classify' them for you. More bull.
Last fall, after I'd had the Lyve for almost a year, Seagate sent out a notice (to registrants) that they were pulling the plug on the whole thing in December  :-x .
Seagate was pretty good about it though, they gave out some nice 2T external USB drives as compensation.
It was a good idea, but terribly implemented (I hate "proprietary" crap)

Now to the Lyve device itself. It internally has to be an ultra-small SoC computer system like an Intel NUC, et al., or a very upscale Raspberry Pi. All in a very attractive, small package (see poor pic below).
It has a full complement of I/O ports, including HDMI, wireless (and Bluetooth too IIRC).
It has a nice display screen on one whole side, a decent processor/graphics system, RAM, and a drive, 1.8/2.5" hard, or SSD(?).
No idea what operating system it runs on, but a custom Linux would be a good guess.
So it has to be a very nice ultra small system, if it can be HACKED and made to run Linux or even Windoz.
FYI: Microsoft offers a FREE basic Windows OS for small devices, check a search engine or microsoft.com (forgot the name of it, it's mentioned on the Win10 Wikipedia pages; Windows Embedded or something)


I haven't yet opened it up and pulled the drive out for examination and reload, repurposing it, but this should be doable.
Anyone else have one of these orphans, or heard of a hack to make them run a usable operating system?
I'm also assuming that the Lyve I/O, etc., is off-the-shelf stuff, and drivers will be available. Otherwise it'll take some dev work.

Hey, parts is parts. One can rejigger almost anything.
If that doesn't work I'll just cannibalize it, it still has a 2T drive inside (~$80+-), plus what else? And it only cost ~$99.
Hate to waste stuff, but such is modern obsolescence.

http://www.seagate.com/support/software/apps/lyve/

Best Lyve device image a quick search turned up:
 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
« Last Edit: February 19, 2017, 09:52:47 AM by Jstx »

Offline Billyram

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #14 on: February 18, 2017, 03:02:34 PM »
Well I'm running WL calibrated my indoor temp and have the rain data up to date. We'll see how it goes.
Billy

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #15 on: February 18, 2017, 03:59:48 PM »
Not that long ago

Quote
IF YOU WERE one of the people who shelled out $300 for Revolv’s smart home hub, you’ve probably already heard the bad news: the web service that powers the little gadget is shutting down next month, which will render the thing effectively useless.

Revolv was a smart home startup that was acquired by Google’s home automation company Nest in October 2014 (Nest is now, like Google, a part of the Alphabet conglomerate). The company sold a hub for controlling a wide range of different gadgets, from lights to coffee pots, via a single smartphone app. The catch is that the hub depends on a cloud-based service to communicate with your smartphone. Once that cloud service shuts down, you won’t be able to use the app to control anything.

It is not just a problem of SW obviously...

Offline Bushman

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #16 on: February 18, 2017, 04:48:11 PM »
Worse than that - Revolv units were actually bricked!  At least with some things (like the Acurite smarthub) can be repurposed.
Need low cost IP monitoring?  http://wirelesstag.net/wta.aspx?link=NisJxz6FhUa4V67/cwCRWA or PM me for 50% off Wirelesstags!!

Offline Scalphunter

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #17 on: February 18, 2017, 05:15:07 PM »
Guess folks just have to do stuff the old fashion way. All these modern conveniences seem to have one big flaw and that is depending on companies on Internet keeping the service going.


Offline Mattk

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #18 on: February 18, 2017, 06:26:06 PM »
There is nothing wrong with the basic WL for what it does, configuration, download, archive and some analysis. Those that want to go further with real time type feeds and updates would typically look at other non desktop applications as running a PC full time these days for this type of function is a bit of a waste.

Cloud storage is way over rated and pushed to the masses that really know no better, nobody should be relying on the cloud for their data storage

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #19 on: February 18, 2017, 06:53:47 PM »
There is always this hype for something...

3 yrs ago it was 3D TVs
2 yrs ago it was cloud
last year it was wearables and IoT (Internet of Things)
and this year it is virtual reality, IoE (Internet of Everything), and self-driving cars :)

Offline Mattk

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #20 on: February 18, 2017, 09:09:30 PM »
IoT (Internet of Things) is one of those now obscure phases that goes back to the late 1990's as originating from Kevin Ashton, sat in on a presentation by Kevin last year and as he notes the real meaning has been screwed around so much that technology today uses it very loosely to describe totally irrelevant functions that the IoT is not, the term sounds cool but is not very well understood   

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #21 on: February 18, 2017, 09:18:24 PM »
They now use Internet of everything instead,  eg Internet of tooth brush lol

Offline Billyram

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #22 on: February 19, 2017, 09:26:43 AM »
WL turns out to be quite usefull and works well with the VP2 console. I'm starting to like it.
Billy

Offline jrswiss

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Re: Weatherlink software
« Reply #23 on: March 05, 2017, 02:28:45 AM »
Hi,

The Davis WL Software has room for improvement but the XML of Davis is very well structured and has a lot of information inside.

If you have a Davis Weather Station connected to Weatherlink, our FREE PHP Script could be of interest. The script requests and reads the XML offered by Davis and display current weather data and high and low of the day.
You can also set Alerts to get warned on severe weather conditions by e-mail. The design is made for Smartphones / Tablets but works in all modern browsers.

Check G-Davis at http://www.gustalert.com

You need a Webserver (Webhosting) running PHP 5.x (+).
There is no need of database.
Check out the demo:
http://www.gustalert.com/app/gdavis_test_dark/index.php

Best regards
JRSWISS / Roman
« Last Edit: March 31, 2017, 01:30:03 AM by jrswiss »
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