Topic: Using wview to archive Vantage Vue without the davis datalogger?

[tylertanton]

First off, allow me extend a huge appreciation towards Dekay and his
blog at http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://
madscientistlabs.blogspot.com/2011/01/alternative-davis-vp2-
console.html&usg=AFQjCNHV1PFsBxk6-efBWSyI2XSAuVOVHQ. I am a senior meteorology student at Texas A&M
University, and absolutely love my Vantage Vue, but there was no way I
could justify to myself spending another $150 for a piece of silly
hardware. With his directions and guidance, I was successfully able to
build an interface that is working fantastically! Big round of
applause. Secondly, thank you Mark Teel for developing such a solid
software to do all the grunt work, and for free. I can not appreciate
it enough. Once again, software was gonna be another big hit in the
pocket book, and building open source software to do this for me was a
huge help. Ok so enough with the sucking up (No seriously though,
thanks).
Wview is doing a superb job of reading the current conditions and
building html/images, FTPing and all that good stuff. You can view the
site at http://www.tantonweather.com . However, it is not building the
charts, or as far as I can tell, anything that would rely on the
archive. After playing with sqlite3 and digging further, I cannot see
where the archive is working at all. They syslog is also giving me the
classy "vproRunState: retrying archive record..." error. Now, it
should be noted, that the interface I use is a home built interface,
NOT the davis datalogger. It communicates great with the device, but
does not have an archive buffer between the console and my computer. I
understand the reasoning for having it etc. But my main goal is have
my home server just digest the data 24/7 and build that archive.
Is there anyway to tell wview to stop looking for the archive, and
simply build its own from scratch using just the current conditions?
From what I've read, this is what wview does with some of the other
stations that lack a logger. That would be ideal for my application.
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[iamturnip]

Hello,

I am so happy I found your post - as it put my mind to rest finally. I too have the same issue. Everything but the archive works with a home-made interface. I like the wview software, but I don't like it's support. I signed up for the mailing list and never was accepted to post to it. My Google searches did not come up with much either.

Did you ever resolve the archive issue? I see your site is down due to a server crash! Shucks, I hope you get back on-line soon.

I look forward to hearing from you on this.

--
David

[DeKay]

Just making sure that the word gets around here...

I have figured out what makes the datalogger tick.  You could put your own together for maybe ten bucks or less.  That should get around the problems you've been having with software like this that expects a logger.  See this post and follow up there if you have any questions.  I rarely look in this corner of the forum.

Good luck, and glad you're enjoying the home-made interface.

[SLOweather]

You could put your own together for maybe ten bucks or less.

Y'know, DeKay. I have a lot of respect for what you have brought to the forum. I've personally expanded and capitalized on some of your work. But this statement is disingenuous at best. Unless a forum member lives in the same town as Digi-Key or Mouser et al and can will-call single parts , I sincerely doubt that that anyone can can "put your own together for maybe ten bucks or less". In quantity, perhaps. But not in single units.

[DeKay]

But this statement is disingenuous at best.

At best?  A little strong, don't you think?

I suppose I could have said 10 bucks in parts.  Or I could have said 10 bucks in parts, plus applicable taxes, shipping and handling unless your distributor happens to be running a free shipping deal (like I got from Newark this summer) or you buy some other goodies while you are at it to qualify for free shipping (like when I bought my soldering iron a few weeks ago).  Or I could have said that the $8 Canadian I paid in shipping to Digikey for next day shipping on my last order is peanuts compared to the $55 US dollars that Davis would charge to ship their datalogger to Canada that nobody ever mentions when they talk pricing.  Heck, that amount of money could buy 47 datalogger ICs (just parts mind you, no shipping, unless you are already ordering something else, in which case the eight bucks probably still covers you), and that is just rounding up the cost of the part to the nearest dollar and not bothering to do the currency conversion.

Or I could have said that the "maybe" in my comment allowed a little wiggle room, especially given that a real cheapskate resident of the US can get a few parts delivered from Digikey for as little as $2.56 if they are willing to wait a little for it.  This is especially true if you do what I'm thinking of doing one day and soldering the datalogger IC directly to the PCB inside the case with some 30 AWG wire and no breakout board - something very doable with an 8 pin SOIC.

Or I could just assume that everybody understands that shipping costs are generally part of the deal when somebody ships something and just keep saying "ten bucks".   

[Bushman]

You would have to be an eejit to buy the logger from davis and pay the high cost when you could get it sent from a Canuck dealer for well... ten buck. 

BTW, I bought two supercaps to replace the POS things that Davis use din my ISS for 10 bucks with shipping from a Canuck dealer.  You need to dance wit the guy that bring ya like Don Cherry used to say.

[tylertanton]

I apologize for never getting back to y'all here. Totally my fault.

I was indeed able to get everything working! It just takes a recompile of the vprointerface.c source with the archive flag set to false. You can find the thread I followed to fix my problem below.

http://groups.google.com/group/wview/browse_thread/thread/e674cf06f14c0d1f/7f126259f6c3f800?lnk=gst&q=data+logger#7f126259f6c3f800