Topic: Can VWS use sensors from both Davis and Oregon Scientific at the same time?

[seifrij]

I have had my Oregon Scientific WMR968 weather station running, and reporting it through VWS for 9 years. But lately the rain, temp and humidity sensors are going bad (or already gone) so I bought a new Davis Vantage Pro 2.   LOVE IT!   But, in my running instance of VWS, I'd like to have the outside temp/humidity/rain/wind come from the Davis, but still use two other inside temp/humidity sensors I have from Oreg Sci as well.   My Davis console is using USB and my Ore Sci console is using serial, so I'm able get incoming data from both source simultaneously.   

Anyone know if I can make this work?

[Garth Bock]

I don't think so. VWS only communicates with the weather station through 1 comm channel at a time. So it would either be talking to the VPro2 or the O/S but not both at once. What you could do is set up VWS for the VPro2 on USB and maybe set up say Cumulus (donationware) to talk to the O/S on serial. The info would not be in one program but would at least be recorded. You could have both programs ftp to a website.

[seifrij]

Thanks very much for the reply, which aligns with what I anticipated.  Perhaps you would know -- does the 'Multiple Stations' provision in VWS allow me to setup what would be parallel instances of VWS, with one getting source data from Davis and one from O/S?     Since I use VWS's weather site builder feature, and I'm quite familiar with the HTML code it is generating (have modified it to my liking previously), I think I could direct the body of web pages output into two separate directories, then manually 'merge' the two sets of HTML pages it  creates into a 'blended' set of pages that contains all the sensor data.  That's what I would then publish online.   Any thoughts on that?

[Garth Bock]

No. The Multiple Station settings is for configurations. For example your O/S has no solar or UV sensors but the Davis does. So you would have a config file for the O/S and a config file for the Davis. You would have to "Recall" the config file after starting VWS and then download the data from the Davis, then disconnect, "Recall" the config file for the O/S and then download it's data. If you look under the Comm settings you will see that there is only one comm setting so unless there is something trick I haven't heard of yet, VWS only talks to one station at a time. I am not sure about running a second instance of VWS. You would have to point its file locations to a different folder to make sure the files don't overwrite one another. I am not sure if you change settings in one instance it wouldn't affect the other. Might be safer to install a second installation of VWS and point it to a different drive or file area.

[seifrij]

Yeah, I think a second instance of VWS in a new directory location makes most sense (unless there's some crazy registry entry stuff that would conflict - but I doubt it).   Since I clearly have two separate ports collecting the incoming data, I should be able to have two instances run simultaneously and then (as noted above) do some manual merge of the HTML output.

I'll try it over the weekend, and post the results here.

Thanks for the feedback.

[SLOweather]

As I recall, it IS possible to run 2 different instances of VWS on 2 different stations at one time. I did it once, with a little help from Ed. You at least have to install the second one to a different folder/directory than the first. I'm trying to remember if there was some registry magic involved as well.

Ah, good ol' Google... here it is...

https://ambientweather.wikispaces.com/Running+more+then+one+instance+of+Virtual+Weather+Station+on+the+same+computer

Problem
I would like to run more then one instance of Virtual Weather Station on the same computer. Virtual Weather Station will not allow me to install two instances of VWS on the same computer.
Solution

    Install Virtual Weather Station as normal. This is your first instance.
    Copy the entire vws directory to a different location (your choice).
    Launch the new instance of Virtual Weather Station. Select Settings | Multiple Station Settings and select Recall Existing Station. Browse to the new directory location on the new computer. For example, if you install it into the c:\vws2 drive, browse to the c:\vws2 drive.
    There are several customized file paths you will need to change in the new instance of Virtual Weather Station. Select the following windows from the menubar and change to valid directory locations.
    Settings | CSV Export
    Settings | Jpeg File Settings
    Settings | WeatherVoice
    Settings | WeatherCentral Settings
    Internet | HTML Settings
    Internet | Upload File
    Internet | Upload Folder

[seifrij]

SUPER!   Thanks so much for the info.....