Author Topic: WiFiLogger - Connect your Davis console directly to the Internet via WiFi  (Read 109254 times)

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Offline dalecoy

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Does anyone think that there might be enough posts on the WiFi logger to ask The Management here for a separate WFL subforum?

I think it's fine the way it is - and we have entirely enough separate fora.

I know what you mean, but:

1. This obviously isn't a Davis product and so discussion doesn't really belong here. Ditto Weatherlink. I guess the only other potential home might be  'Other weather station hardware' but then it's not hardware in a sensor sense.


On the other hand, it's a Davis "accessory" (just like the replacement fan discussion, non-Davis rain gages, ways to mount Davis systems, heaters, etc. etc.)

I know there are other fora for non-Davis supporting software (although that also appears in this one).  But in general, this forum seems (to me) to be about all "hardware" related to Davis weather systems.



Offline wvdkuil

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Maybe we should rethink this and a ask for a subforum for "Davis loggers a.s.o."
For   the successful  Belfroy loggers , the WiFi-logger as this topic is about , but also for similar devices  such as the MeteoBridge Nano
Probably more devices to come.

Just curious when Davis itself announces a similar device,

Wim

Offline WheatonRon

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...

such as the MeteoBridge Nano
Probably more devices to come.

...


What is the difference between the Nano and the WiFi Logger that has been discussed in this thread? I thought the latter was a totally new concept!
Davis VP2 with SHT31 (3 complete VP2 systems—2 with a daytime fan and 1 that has a 24 hour fan); CWOP--CW5020, FW3075 and FW4350; WU--KILWHEAT17, KILWHEAT36 and KILWHEAT39; WeatherCloud.net; CoCoRaHS--IL-DP-132; and Weatherlink 2.0

Offline wvdkuil

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...

such as the MeteoBridge Nano
Probably more devices to come.

...


What is the difference between the Nano and the WiFi Logger that has been discussed in this thread? I thought the latter was a totally new concept!
There is not much difference. The hardware seems the same for both devices and fits in the same area as the Davis logger. The software will be different,  but both address the same market and will do similar things in similar ways. 

A WiFi-logger + uploader, configurable from your browser,  inside your Davis console.  It is time Davis announces one themselves.

The advantage of the MB-nano is there current user base. Sometimes that can be a dis-advantage also as you need to keep things compatible, such as template variables. The Wifi logger will have a clean sleet to start with.
Wim
« Last Edit: June 12, 2018, 04:18:45 PM by wvdkuil »

Offline dport

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...

such as the MeteoBridge Nano
Probably more devices to come.

...


What is the difference between the Nano and the WiFi Logger that has been discussed in this thread? I thought the latter was a totally new concept!

Looks like the planned release date is August 2018 according to the datasheet.  Glad I have my wifilogger now though. 

Offline WheatonRon

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When was the last time Davis released an enhancement to its VP2 product line? Shortly after California became a state? Seriously, the latest is probably the aerocone rain bucket which added little, if any, to the VP2.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2018, 04:29:02 PM by WheatonRon »
Davis VP2 with SHT31 (3 complete VP2 systems—2 with a daytime fan and 1 that has a 24 hour fan); CWOP--CW5020, FW3075 and FW4350; WU--KILWHEAT17, KILWHEAT36 and KILWHEAT39; WeatherCloud.net; CoCoRaHS--IL-DP-132; and Weatherlink 2.0

Online johnd

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When was the last time Davis released an enhancement to its VP2 product line? Shortly after California became a state? Seriously, the latest is probably the aerocone rain bucket which added little, if any, to the VP2.

Bit like predicting earthquakes isn't it? You never know when the next one is coming - could be sooner, could be later.

And guess I should add that Davis haven't been sitting still - there have been two major product launches in the past year or so - EM and wl.com 2.0. But EM especially doesn't get much attention here - it's obviously not really a hobbyist product but has consumed a lot of Davis resources.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2018, 04:58:37 PM by johnd »
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Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
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Offline kobuki

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There is not much difference. The hardware seems the same for both devices

Nah, the HW is quite different. The ESP8266 in the WFL is limited in many ways. The Vocore2 in the new MB nano is capable of running a small Linux distro like LEDE or OpenWRT which is used by other, older MB devices IIRC. The deciding factor will be the price, I think. As others mentioned, the existing user base is a big plus and it's a lot easier to add new features to a more capable SOC.

Offline WheatonRon

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When was the last time Davis released an enhancement to its VP2 product line? Shortly after California became a state? Seriously, the latest is probably the aerocone rain bucket which added little, if any, to the VP2.

Bit like predicting earthquakes isn't it? You never know when the next one is coming - could be sooner, could be later.

And guess I should add that Davis haven't been sitting still - there have been two major product launches in the past year or so - EM and wl.com 2.0. But EM especially doesn't get much attention here - it's obviously not really a hobbyist product.

And for the record, they killed the USB Weatherlink program—a great and wonderful decision!
Davis VP2 with SHT31 (3 complete VP2 systems—2 with a daytime fan and 1 that has a 24 hour fan); CWOP--CW5020, FW3075 and FW4350; WU--KILWHEAT17, KILWHEAT36 and KILWHEAT39; WeatherCloud.net; CoCoRaHS--IL-DP-132; and Weatherlink 2.0

Offline dalecoy

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We're clearly well off-topic.  But:

And for the record, they killed the USB Weatherlink program—a great and wonderful decision!

Huh?

Online johnd

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[The deciding factor will be the price, I think.

I'd agree. If I had to guess, I suspect that the market will probably settle down with WFL as the lower-priced option and with Nano at a somewhat higher price, but with more features by virtue of its extra horsepower. Maybe WFL will typically be used to feed a Pi or PC running eg Cumulus or WD, while Nano could be more of a standalone product.

But overall both are great products and have the potential to add considerably to what's possible with (relatively) inexpensive kit.
Prodata Weather Systems
Prodata's FAQ/support site for Davis stations
Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
UK Davis Premier Dealer - All Davis stations, accessories and spares
Cambridge UK

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 CW2274

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When was the last time Davis released an enhancement to its VP2 product line? Shortly after California became a state? Seriously, the latest is probably the aerocone rain bucket which added little, if any, to the VP2.
Well they did give us the SHT31, and that by no means is peanuts in the PWS world.

Offline docbee

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There is not much difference. The hardware seems the same for both devices

Nah, the HW is quite different. The ESP8266 in the WFL is limited in many ways. The Vocore2 in the new MB nano is capable of running a small Linux distro like LEDE or OpenWRT which is used by other, older MB devices IIRC. The deciding factor will be the price, I think. As others mentioned, the existing user base is a big plus and it's a lot easier to add new features to a more capable SOC.

In terms of RAM and performance the MT7628 is in a complete different class and by having the OPENWRT/LEDE stack it is much much more easy to have all the network services SFTP/FTP/HTTP/HTTPS/MYSQL/EMAIL/TWITTER/SMB/NMB/etc at your fingertips. By having moved the complete Meteobridge SW stack over the NANO can in many situations completely abandon an PC/RPI solution even when you deal with more individually defined services. At least this is what many Meteobridge users currently do with it.

As johnd wrote, there should be a market for both solutions, where the WFL has imho its clear plus in being even more conservative in power consumption. Having the NANO solar powered might be a challenge, at least in Northern Europe ;-) When NANO goes into mass production I will post a bit more detail and will also come up with an idea on pricing. But I think this is enough for now on the NANO, as I don't wont to hijack this WFL thread.
founder of smartbedded.com - home of meteohub, meteoplug, meteobridge, meteostick

Offline WheatonRon

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When was the last time Davis released an enhancement to its VP2 product line? Shortly after California became a state? Seriously, the latest is probably the aerocone rain bucket which added little, if any, to the VP2.
Well they did give us the SHT31, and that by no means is peanuts in the PWS world.

Forgot that. I would elaborate but that may be viewed as being off-topic.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2018, 09:16:38 PM by WheatonRon »
Davis VP2 with SHT31 (3 complete VP2 systems—2 with a daytime fan and 1 that has a 24 hour fan); CWOP--CW5020, FW3075 and FW4350; WU--KILWHEAT17, KILWHEAT36 and KILWHEAT39; WeatherCloud.net; CoCoRaHS--IL-DP-132; and Weatherlink 2.0

Offline CW2274

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When was the last time Davis released an enhancement to its VP2 product line? Shortly after California became a state? Seriously, the latest is probably the aerocone rain bucket which added little, if any, to the VP2.
Well they did give us the SHT31, and that by no means is peanuts in the PWS world.

Forgot that. I would elaborate but that may be viewed as being off-topic.
Go big or go home. :-P

Offline dport

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Ron, john nailed it.
You can upload data as frequent as 1 minute and even use WU Rapid Fire option on battery power but those frequent updates consume more battery power. Disabling Rapid Fire and stretching those other sites up to 10 or 15 minute updates will drastically reduce battery consumption.
I posted this back at the beginning of the thread about about Battery power.
Power Consumption. It does use the juice but not as much as I thought. I am uploading to 4 sites at these intervals. 10 minutes, 9 minutes, 1 minute, and WU Rapid Fire at 3 seconds. The batteries lasted
for 4 days and 15 hours. Voltage got down to 3.45 this morning so I plugged it back in. 


Have we figured out how much battery life is consumed if we change the default 30 minute "archive interval" to 5 minutes?  Not talking about how many sites we upload to, rapid fire, etc, but simply the archive internal.  30 minutes is just too long if I'm trying to export data from Wifilogger. 

Curious in the case of power outages in storms.

Online johnd

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Have we figured out how much battery life is consumed if we change the default 30 minute "archive interval" to 5 minutes?  Not talking about how many sites we upload to, rapid fire, etc, but simply the archive internal.  30 minutes is just too long if I'm trying to export data from Wifilogger. 

Curious in the case of power outages in storms.

Personally I don't like running IP loggers on battery power AT ALL - I've never found it very reliable with WeatherlinkIP loggers. My picture is that internal console batteries can only deliver 4.5v at most rather than the 5v of the mains supply. Then the batteries don't need to deplete far before the voltage might start to drop back from 4.5v and (cabled) Ethernet seems quite sensitive to this.

I'm no electronics engineer and don't know how accurate this picture is and how it might relate to WFL. But for higher power devices like the IP logger, WFL (or eg Nano) I'd always feel more comfortable  with a 5v input than relying on batteries.

My preferred backup solution would be to use a UPS on the 5v input - either a mains UPS or eg a 5v power booster for smartphones (though I'm never sure which ones can be left permanently plugged in to the mains and still provide a 5v supply).
Prodata Weather Systems
Prodata's FAQ/support site for Davis stations
Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
UK Davis Premier Dealer - All Davis stations, accessories and spares
Cambridge UK

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 dport

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Have we figured out how much battery life is consumed if we change the default 30 minute "archive interval" to 5 minutes?  Not talking about how many sites we upload to, rapid fire, etc, but simply the archive internal.  30 minutes is just too long if I'm trying to export data from Wifilogger. 

Curious in the case of power outages in storms.

Personally I don't like running IP loggers on battery power AT ALL - I've never found it very reliable with WeatherlinkIP loggers. My picture is that internal console batteries can only deliver 4.5v at most rather than the 5v of the mains supply. Then the batteries don't need to deplete far before the voltage might start to drop back from 4.5v and (cabled) Ethernet seems quite sensitive to this.

I'm no electronics engineer and don't know how accurate this picture is and how it might relate to WFL. But for higher power devices like the IP logger, WFL (or eg Nano) I'd always feel more comfortable  with a 5v input than relying on batteries.

My preferred backup solution would be to use a UPS on the 5v input - either a mains UPS or eg a 5v power booster for smartphones (though I'm never sure which ones can be left permanently plugged in to the mains and still provide a 5v supply).

Thank you for the idea. May have to look into other backup options.

just curious because of power outages during storms. If anyone can comment on their actual battery life and the archive interval update, etc that would be appreciated.  If I can get a couple days of battery life with 5 minute archive intervals and updates to WL, WU, PWS then I may just use batteries as backup.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2018, 08:23:46 AM by dport »

Online johnd

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What bothers me about batteries is that you can never be sure about their state of charge. Say you've had batteries in for 6-12 months. And then maybe you had an outage overnight, maybe even without knowing about it. Then you had another outage some time later. You may get much less life out of your batteries than anticipated.

You don't get the same problem (or at least not to the same extent) with a UPS.
Prodata Weather Systems
Prodata's FAQ/support site for Davis stations
Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
UK Davis Premier Dealer - All Davis stations, accessories and spares
Cambridge UK

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 kobuki

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We had several maintenance blackouts during the years and the Envoy was always running perfectly fine from the installed 3x1.5V batteries. The SW then caught up from its archive memory. I wonder if the WFL has an archive memory to replay old records from in case of network failures.

Offline kobuki

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What bothers me about batteries is that you can never be sure about their state of charge.

IIRC the battery pack voltage is reported and an alert is displayed on the console when they're nearing depletion. In the case of the Envoy it's a different story but still manageable.

Offline PaulMy

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Quote
I wonder if the WFL has an archive memory to replay old records from in case of network failures.
Wojtek will need to answer this, but it does have archive FTP ability which I think is the logger's stored data at whatever interval logger is set.
http://www.komokaweather.com/wifi-console/vue_console.txt

I tested WiFiLogger with CumulusMX (which was not very reliable due to conflict with WiFiLogger's own uploads access and I was not using the Sleep and Pause settings) and CumulusMX at restart did catch up the data from previous shut down.

Paul

Offline WiFiLogger

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Sorry for the delay. I was truly busy.
WiFiLogger has copy of console settings, so it knows, what is concole arch. interval. Just add 30s to it and WFL will start to upload FTP file and in same queue will export to WL.COM.
With 30 min arch records it will be 8:00:30, 8:30:30, 9:00:30, 9:30:30

At this moment WiFiLogger can operate with arch records with 3 functions.
- Web interface where you can download CSV file
- FTP where you can send same CSV file
- WL.com

TODO list is:
- store console arch. records in internal flash disk od WFL
- make php scripts which will be same like WL.COM. With those PHP functions and your own server, you will be able to establish your own WL.COM with current data, hilows day, month, year and arch records.
Simple: take console data(all) send to MySQL via php script.

Offline WiFiLogger

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If you would like to work with other software on TCP port 22222 you have to stop or pause WiFiLogger functions.
With export interval like 30 min there is no problem, but when you use RapidFire (3s) WiFiLogger internal functions will dominate access to console, which can be only one.
There is no better solution. Internal WiFiLogger export functions, or other software like WeatherLink are both important, and console can have only one connection at same time.
I will try to make pause trigger automatically, but that won't solve this problem.

Online johnd

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WiFi logger stock now just received and is now available for UK/EU orders and distribution (and other international locations other than the Americas). First shipping date confirmed as Monday 18th June. Limited stock only - first come, first served.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2018, 07:21:01 AM by johnd »
Prodata Weather Systems
Prodata's FAQ/support site for Davis stations
Includes many details on 6313 Weatherlink console.
UK Davis Premier Dealer - All Davis stations, accessories and spares
Cambridge UK

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.

 

anything