Funny you should ask...
We put the station up last Friday afternoon. I suspect I have well over 100 hours of time on my PC since then trying different software and solutions to get what we need from WL.com using Vantage Connect. I've spent many hours on forums such as this one asking questions and seeking answers.
Here's the end results of all that time:
The
ONLY place one can go to get the latest 5 minute data that includes Wind Gusts is the very boring fixed width 760 pixel wide WL.com summary page:
http://www.weatherlink.com/user/clearwaterbeach/index.php?view=summary&headers=0Right now there is no way around that sad reality. Oh well, we have to suck it up.
Now to move forward with our goal to produce some kind of respectable web presentation on what we
can get, here's the best we can do in my opinion, and I am not ashamed at what I have done with what we have to work with.
After extensive trial and error, and to skip the hours of discussion that you may find on this forum and others, here's what I am doing:
I use WeatherDisplay to download my data from WL.com at the default settings. It gets everything but Wind Gusts and Solar Radiation.
Then I have WeatherDisplay upload the data every 5 minutes to Meteotemplate. I tried using the Meteotemplate plugin and a cron job to update the Meteotemplate database once a minute but found I was still losing about 10 to 20 five minute records a day which created another problem for me. But so far WeatherDisplay has not missed one record.
I have WeatherLink 6.0.3 software on my PC and once an hour it retrieves all the data from WeatherLink.com, including the Wind Gusts and Solar Radiation.
Meteotemplate has a feature to import data manually using a CSV file. Since I am crazy about wanting accurate Wind Gust data, I am going every few hours and updating the Wind Gust and Solar Radiation data in the Meteotemplate database (which lives on our own server).
Sounds like a lot of work, right? And it is! UGH
BUT, the good news is that the Meteotemplate application is amazing, and very powerful. In fact, I am blown away by how well it works. A week ago I was almost about to find and visit the Davis HQ and beg them to let me build a somewhat decent modern data presentation webpage or pages so they could offer them to customers like me.
Here's my work in progress, almost ready to share to the public:
https://beachresortcondos.com/weather-stationI just have to tidy up some links and maybe add another block or two. But I am impressed.
It also has a pretty cool "Sticker" feature:
At this point in time, I applaud WeatherDisplay and Meteotemplate for helping me overcome what WeatherLink.com does not provide with my data. On the other hand the WeatherLink 6.0.3 software allows me to access my weather data and archive it on my PC or wherever else I want to save it.
Obviously WeatherLink.com is way behind the curve on what we want, and expect. They are ahead in that Vantage Connect is a fantastic tool in many regards, and allows us to upload weather data without an internet connection or even electric power. Bravo for that! And Bravo to WeatherDisplay and Meteotemplate for everything else!
So that's my thought on that.