Poll

What type of computer do you use for your weather station?

Standard Desktop or Tower
96 (54.5%)
Mini Desktop or Tower
23 (13.1%)
Laptop
22 (12.5%)
Netbook
14 (8%)
Other
21 (11.9%)

Total Members Voted: 174

Author Topic: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?  (Read 42669 times)

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Offline Bushman

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #75 on: July 06, 2010, 09:06:57 AM »
What OS are you running Bob?
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Offline PCBob

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #76 on: July 06, 2010, 12:49:47 PM »
The netbook is running Win7 Starter. It does have the WinXP compatibility mode that many have said was disabled in Starter. Thus far I have found no drawbacks with Starter for my use.
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Offline Bushman

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #77 on: July 06, 2010, 02:06:13 PM »
I only recall that Remote Desktop is not available on Starter.  BTW, you should be able to go into Control Panel and put the HD to sleep after a specific time.    Or use  utils like Dennis Babkin's TOFF?WOSB to manage power states.
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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #78 on: July 18, 2010, 05:11:05 PM »
Running a tiny pc that draws 4 to 5 watts. It runs Windows XP and is dedicated to handling my weather data. I don't have a monitor or keyboard connected to it - I just use TightVNC to control it remotely over my LAN. It's been running non-stop for over a year. I like it, because along with drawing little power, it generates almost no heat, and has no moving parts, so it's totally silent. I have it, my router, and my DSL modem (all low power devices) connected to a UPS. So, the data flow is almost uninterrupted, even during most power outages (DSL still works during most power outages).

Steve
Hey Steve,

Is that a mini-itx that you're using? If so, what did you go with? I was looking at several different ones and wanted to try to find the lowest power board.

Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #79 on: July 22, 2010, 01:00:24 AM »
I made the rounds of the local stores today and the cheapest netbook I found was $298.  Still thinking about it.   ;)

What brought this on was another round of issues with my 1999 weather only computer.  Last night at 1:30 am the screen froze and all activity stopped.  When rebooted it ran for about half an hour and locked up again.  After another reboot could only get it to run in safe mode.  Come to find out it has decided it does not like the NVidia drivers for some reason.  I tried a couple different drivers to no avail.  Last time it done this several years ago the local shop that originally built it stuck in a used video card for cheap for me which solved it. So I figure that is probably the fix for it again.  The drivers when installed give an endless loop error.  Seems to be a lot posted on the net about issues with that after updates, and such on NVidia drivers.   But since it happened out of the blue with no software re configurations or additions I'm still thinking it is the card.

So anyway by uninstalling the driver I have it back up running for now.  The only casualty being I cannot run GRL3 on it in that mode.  Considering the original 6gig hard drive sounds like a mini jet engine on cold start until it warms up a few minutes, I'm amazed every time I actually get it running after any lockups or blue screens.   :lol:
Mark 
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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #80 on: July 22, 2010, 08:13:34 AM »
I like the idea of no moving parts, especially if you use compact memory for the boot drive. No fans, nothing. I'll still probably use a small 60GB drive as the main drive but still only about 10 watts of power consumption.

Offline 4wd

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #81 on: July 22, 2010, 08:55:35 AM »
Just moved over from an 8 years old IBM tower to a Samsung NC10 netbook.
It seems an awful waste of the "internet anywhere" netbook to tether it there semi-permanently, but after playing about with it for 6 months I really wasn't using it as much for other stuff as expected. (Have a laptop and main desktop also)
The old PC fan used to hum away costantly, and you could just about hear it all over the house.
It seems curiously quiet now! Also the computer room - a small bedroom - is surprisingly cooler.

The netbook plays with Weather-display and could do other stuff at the same time if you don't mind the cables out of it.
Not much else is installed on it apart from Office2003
With screen automatically going off after 5 minutes it will be using well under 10watts - which considering the 24/7 running is a significant saving on the 100watts+ IBM tower.

Offline ANPweather

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #82 on: July 22, 2010, 10:13:47 AM »
Last week I moved Weather Display from my Windows Home Server to an Acer Aspire One netbook ($200 special from Newegg) running XP Pro. This allows me to
- run the server for a only couple of hours in the evening when I'm home, saving about 60W for every hour it's not run
- put the server out of site in a spare room, and considerably improve the looks of the area where my Davis/Acer is

I also tried moving my private Teamspeak server from the WHS to the Acer as well. It was able to handle a few players OK but once 8 or 9 had connected it would randomly drop 4 players. So Teamspeak went back to the server.

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WU: KAZNEWRI17
PWS: ANTHEMNP
CWOP: EW7526

Offline ed2kayak

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #83 on: July 22, 2010, 09:48:19 PM »
After reading comments a couple weeks ago I bought  ASUS netbook from Newegg for $289. Also added extra 1 mb of ram, not sure that did anything. After 300 hrs or about 12 days, my avg power consumption is 9.5 watt/hr. I keep it in the basement, w/the top closed. I use realVNC to access the desktop. Any guesses as to putting it on a timer, and say letting it run on battery for 6 hrs and change for six hours?
Ed
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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #84 on: July 23, 2010, 05:31:23 AM »
The only thing I worry about with laptops is the continuously charging battery which I know is not great for them. Of course, I leave mine plugged up all the time (but my battery is shot too) so I don't heed the warnings.

Offline ANPweather

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #85 on: July 23, 2010, 09:48:04 PM »
You can always take the battery out. Of course if that's your only battery backup for the laptop....  :lol:

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WU: KAZNEWRI17
PWS: ANTHEMNP
CWOP: EW7526

Offline Cienega32

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #86 on: July 24, 2010, 08:31:30 PM »
Mine has been plugged in for the last 4 years or so and has just starting getting flakey. Always kept a full charge until just recently.


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Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #87 on: July 25, 2010, 12:16:43 AM »
I got about 3 years out of my laptop battery being plugged in 95+% of the time.  Could pull the battery and use a UPS.  But in the end have you really saved anything given the cost of the UPS and that the batteries in them go bad after several years as well?  Kind of debatable.   :-k

I made the rounds of the local stores today and the cheapest netbook I found was $298.  Still thinking about it.   ;)...

No longer thinking about it as of yesterday.  I'm typing this on an Acer Aspire One.  \:D/

 I bought it from the local owned shop I've dealt with for over 10 years.  Paid more for it but they have given me more then enough free phone and face to face tech support over the years to make up for it.  Plus keeps some local boys on a better pay scale then that of a clerk at Walmart.   ;)

Might keep it for a backup weather computer for now.  I'm too busy playing with it to dog tie it to the console.   :mrgreen:
« Last Edit: July 25, 2010, 12:18:40 AM by Mark / Ohio »
Mark 
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Offline SlowModem

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #88 on: July 25, 2010, 12:25:32 AM »
No longer thinking about it as of yesterday.  I'm typing this on an Acer Aspire One.  \:D/

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Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #89 on: July 31, 2010, 10:05:23 PM »
It's official now.  The netbook is running the weather show all alone and doing a very good job of it I might add.   =D>

  I have the serial data logger but also had an old Radio Shack Serial to USB adapter that I used for awhile on the old computer after it's serial port took a lighting surge.  Seemed to work well back then and is working well now (after I found the old floppy with the driver for it.)  CPU usage is about half what it was on my old 466MHz.  Also much easier to work on settings as the response times to commands is much improved even when running VNC from my laptop.  Twice the memory compared to the old 466Mhz helps too no doubt.  That and also I was running the software on an external USB hard drive on the old unit.  I was worried about heat with the netbook but so far it does not seem too bad in that regard neither.  So we'll now see how it holds together over the long haul.



I've updated my vote in the poll to reflect the current setup. \:D/
« Last Edit: July 31, 2010, 10:08:42 PM by Mark / Ohio »
Mark 
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Offline Cienega32

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #90 on: August 02, 2010, 01:19:01 AM »
Congrats on the new setup!  =D>

I came close to doing that myself - getting one of the Acers for the Wx station but decided on 3 Dell GX620s from EBay for about the same price instead. I still would've needed another box if I went Acer but the power savings alone still might push me there.

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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #91 on: August 02, 2010, 07:36:21 AM »
Way to go Pat!!!! 1000 post!  =D>

Offline Chris H.

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #92 on: August 02, 2010, 04:41:53 PM »
If it does begin to heat up, all you need is a notebook cooling fan accessory. Then you're good to go. You could also point a fan at the thing too..though that's all up to you anyway. Way to go! I thought it couldn't necessarily be done.  =D>

However, I could never get GRLevel3 to run on my Acer Aspire One. So I ditched the effort on that and used my Toshiba heavyweight.
Weather in Rio Rancho, New Mexico:


Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #93 on: August 04, 2010, 12:56:25 AM »
If it does begin to heat up, all you need is a notebook cooling fan accessory. Then you're good to go. You could also point a fan at the thing too..though that's all up to you anyway. Way to go! I thought it couldn't necessarily be done.  =D>

However, I could never get GRLevel3 to run on my Acer Aspire One. So I ditched the effort on that and used my Toshiba heavyweight.

I was unsure how or if GRL3 would work on it but was pleasantly surprised.  I loaded up the backgrounds and shape files like I have on my laptop plus turned on smoothing without any problems.  Smoothing never did work on the old computer.  I've been sorting out a few other things, bad file names, tweaking software settings, setting it for auto user log in and the like from the changeover.  I'm currently running it wireless to my DSL router.  That's also working better then I thought it might.  The only real headache I've had with it was getting it on DSL through the wireless.  I knew it worked because we had it on the net through the wireless at the computer shop.  Spent about 6 hours off and on fritzing with it to no avail the first day.  The next day I took it to work with me and drove to a couple hotels on my lunch hour parking in the lots and found I could log into their wi-fi signal with no problems.  After another half hour scratching my head back home and poking around in my router setup I finally realized I had MAC filtering turned on.  Thirty seconds after that revelation I was connected to my own wireless internet with it.   #-o  #-o

I had my wireless signal so well secured I could not get into it myself.    ;) :lol:
 
« Last Edit: August 04, 2010, 01:00:33 AM by Mark / Ohio »
Mark 
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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #94 on: August 09, 2010, 05:35:04 PM »
That's how I do mine.

Offline W Thomas

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #95 on: August 09, 2010, 06:01:56 PM »
Congrats on the new setup!  =D>

I came close to doing that myself - getting one of the Acers for the Wx station but decided on 3 Dell GX620s from EBay for about the same price instead. I still would've needed another box if I went Acer but the power savings alone still might push me there.

Hows the Optiplex doing running your weather programs?
Reason I ask is I picked up a 620 a week or so ago and after some refurbs it seems to do fine.
Currently has 1 mb of RAM and a P4 2.5 processor. My weather server currently is the fastest thing
I own which is an Intel Core Duo with 2 b of RAM. If the 620 would work reliably I could use the Core Duo
in several other roles around here..least of which would be video rendering.

I have been seriously considering this but I'd definitely have to re read up on moving WD and keeping everything intact.

I'd consider a drive swap but Windows would likely have a heart attack :lol:


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Offline Cienega32

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #96 on: August 10, 2010, 06:41:15 AM »
These 620s came with P4 3.0 HT,  1 gig mem and 80 gig drives. The mem was in various flavors and matches so I just got  2 2x1gig kits and a pair of 250 gig drives for two of them. Step 1 in moving the software over for me.

I still haven't moved the Wx software over but the one has been running the 3 Oly cams with VM95 without any problem since Feb. FEB? Geez, I'm still waiting to move that stuff?!  ](*,)

I don't think the WD move is as daunting as first imagined. I installed both WL & WD to one box to test a few things and IIRC WD was fairly easy. I did it with a 8gig USB stick I had laying around. Their forum has the FAQ laid out pretty clear and still I haven't done it in full working order either  :lol:. I just started playing with its Webcam/Movie maker functions so I'll do it when I'm done with that.

And like you - I want my main box back! This Wx stuff is holding it hostage!

Pat ~ Davis VP2 6153-Weatherlink-Weather Display-StartWatch-VirtualVP-Win7 Pro-64bit
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Offline ed2kayak

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #97 on: August 10, 2010, 08:15:20 PM »
Netbbook user here. I noticed that VWS was not updating on Wunderground.  This system is only 1 month old. I did have a prior issue on 7/26.  Since then I added Startwatch, so I was hoping to avoid any further issues.. Any insight on what happened. I closed and restarted VWS, and problem resolved. I'll try and attach jpg.
Ed
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Offline W Thomas

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #98 on: August 10, 2010, 09:00:38 PM »
These 620s came with P4 3.0 HT,  1 gig mem and 80 gig drives. The mem was in various flavors and matches so I just got  2 2x1gig kits and a pair of 250 gig drives for two of them. Step 1 in moving the software over for me.

I still haven't moved the Wx software over but the one has been running the 3 Oly cams with VM95 without any problem since Feb. FEB? Geez, I'm still waiting to move that stuff?!  ](*,)

I don't think the WD move is as daunting as first imagined. I installed both WL & WD to one box to test a few things and IIRC WD was fairly easy. I did it with a 8gig USB stick I had laying around. Their forum has the FAQ laid out pretty clear and still I haven't done it in full working order either  :lol:. I just started playing with its Webcam/Movie maker functions so I'll do it when I'm done with that.

And like you - I want my main box back! This Wx stuff is holding it hostage!
My processor is not nearly as quick as yours but would probably be sufficent for weather data as my radar is on another machine so basically it does alot of up dates but they are small data packets and shouldn't load it too bad.Definitely something to look into..



Wayne



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Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #99 on: August 11, 2010, 12:34:10 AM »
Netbbook user here. I noticed that VWS was not updating on Wunderground.  ...

I've had that issue very intermittently on my old desktop and once so far on my netbook.  Unfortunately StartWatch remained unaware of that particular failure for me as well.  I suspect there might be a way to detect the loss of connection using additional configuration of StartWatch but have yet to figured out how to do it. 

Couple things to check for grins and giggles, first would be in power management options for the "USB Root Hub Properties" in the Windows Device Manager.  Make sure they are not set to allow the computer to shut them off to save power.  Second would be in VWS "Settings", "Program Settings" there is an option to "Restart program if communication is lost for 5 minutes".  You might select that option and see if it helps.

One thing I did note was the 608 MB memory usage shown in one of your images.  That seems on the high side.  I'm wondering if you might have the memory leak problem with VWS that some experience.  You might try setting StartWatch to restart the program before the memory reaches that level.  My current VWS memory usage seldom goes above 100 Mb.  At one time a couple of years ago when I had a memory leak issue with VWS once it reached above 150-200MB or so it would get pretty unstable and be only a matter of time until it would crash or do some strange things before crashing.

Just some thoughts....   :grin:
Mark 
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