Topic: Weatherlink Live

[kobuki]

Most JSON responses that you'll see and capture including other network traffic will just be errors if the request was not formatted with the commands that the device expects. Without API documentation you are pretty much left in the dark. Sure you can start sending some guesses as to what you think the device would respond to. But that's like finding a lost dog and trying to call it to come to you and making up different names to see what name it responds to.

Capping traffic is the first step in reverse engineering the protocol. The goal is to cap a whole session with the app and the request/response pairs. Of course I'm not hoping to RE the whole protocol but at least we might gain some insight (if the traffic is not fully encrypted).

[galfert]

Most JSON responses that you'll see and capture including other network traffic will just be errors if the request was not formatted with the commands that the device expects. Without API documentation you are pretty much left in the dark. Sure you can start sending some guesses as to what you think the device would respond to. But that's like finding a lost dog and trying to call it to come to you and making up different names to see what name it responds to.

Capping traffic is the first step in reverse engineering the protocol. The goal is to cap a whole session with the app and the request/response pairs. Of course I'm not hoping to RE the whole protocol but at least we might gain some insight (if the traffic is not fully encrypted).

Still a big challenge and as you said if it isn't encrypted.

[kobuki]

I would try wireshark (and then a filter set in that)

Well, I realized that you need to run the app in the Nox emulator to be able to capture anything important. There are other ways but they're more involved and might not be possible for you. If you have the incentive, go on...

After installing and starting Wireshark, wait for it to populate the interface list. Then select your LAN interface, then enter 'host a.b.c.d' in the '...using this filter' text box, then click on the shark fin icon at the top left. 'a.b.c.d' is the IP of your WLL. It starts capturing. Let it run, start your WL app session in the emulator, use it for a while. You should see the captured packets in Wireshark. Stop the capture and save the file when it asks. That's the file we need to investigate.

[kobuki]

Still a big challenge

I'm not afraid.

[Mattk]

Geez the sharks are already circling and trying to pull the innards out of the WLL. But hopefully Davis have learnt lessons from the past, like the green dot loggers they imposed on everybody just because of the actions of a few.

[kobuki]

Geez the sharks are already circling and trying to pull the innards out of the WLL. But hopefully Davis have learnt lessons from the past, like the green dot loggers they imposed on everybody just because of the actions of a few.

I'd be happy with a fine, documented local API right now and have an urge to order one device. But... 

[boldblue737]

Well I received the WLL today.

1) Cardboard box but with really slick printed imagery and slogans all over the outside and inside promoting in a visually interesting way things like "Let's Go Live!, 80+ Connected Sensors to One Weatherlink Live, Easy App Setup, 10+ Different Sensor Types, Stay Current. Just Ask Alexa!, Garden: Grow like a Pro, Wine Cellar: Air Temp Matters, Pool: Keep Tabs on the Temp" etc.
2) The plastic housing is fine, feels a bit like thinner cheap plastic with visible mold lines etc. but whatever, this isn't something I'd keep out and about. It isn't the plastic quality of an Echo or Apple TV box or anything, its very utilitarian.
3) They include a short Ethernet cable and it has a port but I used Wi-Fi.
4) The device takes 4 AA batteries for backup (128 hours estimated storage time, I believe that was at every 15 minutes so I suppose now that I have it set to store every 5 minutes on my Pro account that must have gone down, you would think that in 2019 they could put in enough money for a lot of backup data.)
5) A blue light flashes when ready for pairing and if you don't do it within a few minutes the light goes out. To reactivate there is a capacitive touch sensor on the top (weird spend of money in the design) that when brushed turns pairing back on.
6) You go into your WeatherLink app on your phone (I'm using iPhone) click your account button then click the "Add WeatherLink Live" button. Pairing was near instant for me, you select a name for your new station, then tell it what type of station you have and on what transmission channel and it lets you pick your upload time rate (fastest is 15 minutes until you upgrade it to pro which doesn't appear possible in this initial setup, just once complete). You tell it how you want to connect (I selected Wifi) it has you select the wifi name and password and done...
7) That's it... the station instantly appears in your app and within a few minutes the first upload of data occurs.
In the app you can make modifier adjustments to temp, wind, baro, rainfall YTD etc. for the WLL.

It was all very seamless. As of now WL 2.0 shows "both" my stations but they are redundant, one is uploading from a WLIP connected to my Vue console and the other is the WLL but both are tied to the same station. I intend to allow rain data to merge over the next 24 hours and then I will deactivate the WLIP and switch to having my WLL do the uploading to WU and CWOP. At that point I'll move my Vue console to somewhere else in the home that is better for me and put my WLIP up for sale on Ebay. Hopefully Davis adds a bunch of neat features to this in the form of an API etc. but I'm happy just to have a simple wireless solution that isn't tied to my console and is the future of Davis 1st party development.

[zackdog]

If I understand this correctly, this could be a replacement for my VP2 console that is only good for a secondary temperature sensor during the winter, because of signal drop outs when it gets cold.  I have never uploaded data to WeatherLink.com, so I would basically be starting fresh. 

Mark

[Mattk]

....One interesting question... we have already said that the WLL will be a NEW device to Davis and it will cause me to lose the data from my WLIP on WL 2.0 which I'm not thrilled about....

Why will WLL cause you to loose your WLIP data or even stop you from continuing to use WLIP?

That wasn't worded correctly. What boldblue737 meant to say is that by switching to the WLL and being forced to use a new station ID in weatherlink.com and the data is lost in terms of continuity. Boldblue737 knows that the data is still there if he references the old station ID.

Ok but I just don't see any real need to shutdown WLIP's just because they now have WLL? Why not keep it running, it's not as if it really affects WLL

[Mattk]

If I understand this correctly, this could be a replacement for my VP2 console that is only good for a secondary temperature sensor during the winter, because of signal drop outs when it gets cold.  I have never uploaded data to WeatherLink.com

WLL and your VP2 console use the same RF so it would be expected that if your VP2 drops out in the cold then so will your WLL?

[galfert]

....One interesting question... we have already said that the WLL will be a NEW device to Davis and it will cause me to lose the data from my WLIP on WL 2.0 which I'm not thrilled about....

Why will WLL cause you to lose your WLIP data or even stop you from continuing to use WLIP?

That wasn't worded correctly. What boldblue737 meant to say is that by switching to the WLL and being forced to use a new station ID in weatherlink.com and the data is lost in terms of continuity. Boldblue737 knows that the data is still there if he references the old station ID.

Ok but I just don't see any real need to shutdown WLIP's just because they now have WLL? Why not keep it running, it's not as if it really affects WLL

Looks like you've missed some posts and the back story. I'll catch you up. The console is not in a desired location now because of needing to be cabled into Ethernet for the WLIP. The WLL will now enable the console to be moved to a desired location. WLIP is going up for sale on eBay because it is no longer needed.

[galfert]

I just want to bring up to those of you that have a console in a not desired location because of WLIP needing to be cabled that there is a solution other than the WiFiLogger. And then maybe you also don't need the WLL (I understand that there are other benefits to the WLL, but that isn't the point here). You can keep the WLIP, move the console to where you want, and then connect a WiFi bridge to the WLIP. Essentially what this solution provides is a way to connected an Ethernet device to WiFi. I've done this numerous times for places where cabling was not easy for several clients. A good example was they wanted a the big copier (with no WiFi) in a certain room or corridor without Ethernet connection and no easy way to cable because of building construction challenges. TP-Link makes a few models for less than $50 that are pretty good at this. Depending on your WiFi needs you could get something with protruding antennas or if your WiFi was strong at that location you could get buy with a small little TP-Link box with no antennas sticking out. TL-WA801ND or TL-WR802N. Those aren't the only choices and if you want better and don't mind antennas then you can get a RT-AC68U (but then that gets pricey). The key thing is these routers have a mode where they no longer are a router...they become just a WiFi bridge. Then anything you plug into the LAN ports gets on the network via WiFi. So yes you could share this with multiple Ethernet devices.

* Not all WiFi routers have this WiFi bridge capability. But a lot of them do these days. If you have an old WiFi router you might want to check to see if it can be made into a WiFi bridge. Also some routers can be altered to run alternative 3rd party firmware that then gives you this ability (for the more technically gifted) and thus you can run firmware like Tomato, DDWRT, OpenWRT, Merlin, and others. You can even turn a Raspberry Pi into one of these WiFi bridges.

[Mattk]

....One interesting question... we have already said that the WLL will be a NEW device to Davis and it will cause me to lose the data from my WLIP on WL 2.0 which I'm not thrilled about....

Why will WLL cause you to loose your WLIP data or even stop you from continuing to use WLIP?

That wasn't worded correctly. What boldblue737 meant to say is that by switching to the WLL and being forced to use a new station ID in weatherlink.com and the data is lost in terms of continuity. Boldblue737 knows that the data is still there if he references the old station ID.

Ok but I just don't see any real need to shutdown WLIP's just because they now have WLL? Why not keep it running, it's not as if it really affects WLL

Looks like you've missed some posts and the back story. I'll catch you up. The console is not in a desired location now because of needing to be cabled into Ethernet for the WLIP. The WLL will now enable the console to be moved to a desired location. WLIP is going up for sale on eBay because it is no longer needed.

Right gotcha. How does Davis go then with activated WLIP transfer from one owner to the next? 

[waiukuweather]

and it lets you pick your upload time rate (fastest is 15 minutes until you upgrade it to pro which doesn't appear possible in this initial setup, just once complete).

oh
so you can't actually set to 1 minute updates to weatherlink.com
and so that mean WU cant be updated any faster than 15 minutes either
?

[galfert]

and it lets you pick your upload time rate (fastest is 15 minutes until you upgrade it to pro which doesn't appear possible in this initial setup, just once complete).

oh
so you can't actually set to 1 minute updates to weatherlink.com
and so that mean WU cant be updated any faster than 15 minutes either
?

Weatherlink Plans
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[zackdog]

If I understand this correctly, this could be a replacement for my VP2 console that is only good for a secondary temperature sensor during the winter, because of signal drop outs when it gets cold.  I have never uploaded data to WeatherLink.com

WLL and your VP2 console use the same RF so it would be expected that if your VP2 drops out in the cold then so will your WLL?

Since my VantageVue console receives the signal from the VP2 ISS with no drop outs, I would hope that the WLL would also receive with no drop outs. This is a known problem with the VP2 console.

Mark

[galfert]

If I understand this correctly, this could be a replacement for my VP2 console that is only good for a secondary temperature sensor during the winter, because of signal drop outs when it gets cold.  I have never uploaded data to WeatherLink.com

WLL and your VP2 console use the same RF so it would be expected that if your VP2 drops out in the cold then so will your WLL?

Since my VantageVue console receives the signal from the VP2 ISS with no drop outs, I would hope that the WLL would also receive with no drop outs. This is a known problem with the VP2 console.

Mark

If the WLL has reception problems then instead of designing it like this:
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...they should have designed it like this for better reception:
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[Mattk]

And they could have made it a real mickey mouse and included an external antenna connector ..... but then the RF police would not allow them to do that, they thought we might scramble our senses with all that power

[waiukuweather]

@galfert
I was meaning for default plan
I do realise that with a paid plan you can send at a faster rate to weatherlink.com

as a comparison, weatherflow has fast data updates via their cloud server do their app
and they use UDP for data over LAN/WIFI

[johnd]

and it lets you pick your upload time rate (fastest is 15 minutes until you upgrade it to pro which doesn't appear possible in this initial setup, just once complete).

so you can't actually set to 1 minute updates to weatherlink.com
and so that mean WU cant be updated any faster than 15 minutes either

I can't make out exactly which uploads you're talking about here, but to be clear:

1. WLL behaves just likes WLIP in uploading Current Conditions data to wl.com every minute. That's not configurable AFAIK. (A browser auto-refresh looking at wl.com may be set to 5 mins, though I get the impression that might have been reduced, at least for the smartphone app, but new data is available every minute.)

2. Other intervals such as the minimum archive interval allowed for WLL (with hourly archive uploads), forwarding to 3rd party websites from wl.com etc are set as per the '3rd party upload rate parameter' in the table galfert posted, ie 15 mins default, 5 mins for Pro, 1min for Pro+ (assuming that the 3rd party accepts data at that rate, eg I'm not sure whether WU does or not). Yes, I know that archive interval is not a 3rd party setting but it seems to be governed by the same parameter.

[waiukuweather]

OK, so weatherlink.com will get a 1 minute update rate via WLL
that's better

[galfert]

I'm still confused.

1- At what rate will the WLL send data to WU if on the basic free plan?
2- Where does WU get this upload from? The WLL directly or from Weatherlink.com?
3- If on the free Weatherlink.com plan will historical data be there for every minute but batched in 15 min uploads (therefore delayed up to 15 min) or will it be historically uploaded every minute but only able to be seen every 15 minutes via browser?

[johnd]

1- At what rate will the WLL send data to WU if on the basic free plan?

In general, I don't think that WLL behaves any differently from other devices uploading to WLL (subject to new data being available of course, eg a Connect on an hourly plan won't be able to do 15min forwarding to 3rd party sites). So wl.com==>WU has a default of 15mins I believe, on eg the free plan.

2- Where does WU get this upload from? The WLL directly or from Weatherlink.com?

From wl.com. It's early days with WLL of course but everything points to WLL only supporting two upload targets, with wl.com being the primary one and the WL smartphone app being the second, if detected on the local network.

3- If on the free Weatherlink.com plan will historical data be there for every minute but batched in 15 min uploads (therefore delayed up to 15 min) or will it be historically uploaded every minute but only able to be seen every 15 minutes via browser?

The key term with historical data is the archive interval. This is the period over which the next historical record is created. The minimum archive interval on a free plan is 15 mins, but lower settings are possible on a subscription plan. For logger-based stations (cellular ones are different) the historical/archive data is uploaded only hourly, irrespective of the archive interval. I haven't seen this confirmed for WLL (and I haven't gone to the trouble of checking) but my guess would be that it's still hourly.

Edit: OK, you just prompted me to check [3] and it looks like I was wrong . My WLL is on a Pro plan with the archive interval reset to 5 mins and the archive seems to be uploading every 5 mins, so it's behaving like a Connect/EM rather than WLIP.

@galfert: If you have a wl.com account and want to PM me the account name then I can extend you a temporary Pro share if you want to see the data at first hand for a day or two. It's not very exciting I'm afraid - just a Vue ISS outside and a second Vue ISS inside (!) just to prove the point about receiving two ISS transmitters.

[Mattk]

1 - 15 minutes
2 - WeatherLink.com
3 - The 1 minute data is only available to the WeatherLink.com bulletin/Summary pages. WLL may be a little different to say WLIP which batched whatever the archive interval was every 60 minutes and WLIP had no restricted lower limit, could be 1, 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 etc

[johnd]

This is promising for the WLL app to do the same running under NoxPlayer.

Many thanks!