Topic: Will Virtual VW work with my station

[Anthony]

I was wondering if Virtual VP will work with an OS WMR-968 or if it only works with a Davis Station? Seems like I read somwhere (old forum maybe) that it would. But just want to make sure. Thinking again about running WD along with VWS.

[W3DRM]

I was wondering if Virtual VP will work with an OS WMR-968 or if it only works with a Davis Station? Seems like I read somwhere (old forum maybe) that it would. But just want to make sure. Thinking again about running WD along with VWS.

Anthony,

I doubt that Virtual VP will work with any other weather station other than the Davis Vantage Pro which it is designed to support. The purpose of the software is to allow multiple programs to communicate with the Vantage VP. Other weather stations most likely use different communications protocols and thus would not work with Virtual VP.

See the following link to Virtual VP (http://www.softwx.com/weather/virtualvp.html) which is produced by SoftWx. The user guide and release notes do not mention any other weather station compatability.

[Weather Display]

you can use a Y serial splitter with the wmr968 station type

[Anthony]

Don, Thanks for the info. Thats what I was afraid of.

GBW. I thought about doing that. But got to thinking. There are voltages present on a serial connection. So if you use an adapter like you mentioned. You could be putting double the voltage on the weathe station and fry something. So don't think I want to take the chance.

[tinplate]

VirtualVP only works with the VP1 and VP2 stations. However, the reason something like VirtualVP is needed is because of the two-way communication protocol that makes a straight serial split not work reliably. For stations such as yours that have only one-way data, a simple serial splitter should work just fine. There are hardware cable splitters, or you can use a software serial splitter. One I have used in the past, which worked well, was GPSGate from Franson (http://www.franson.com/gpsgate/). It's inexpensive and works.

Steve
SoftWx

[W Thomas]

Steve,
Is this a software solution used in conjunction with a standard serial splitter cable or just a plain old serial splitter cable?

[tinplate]

This is a pure software serial splitter. You just hook up your weather station to your computer as usual, with a normal cable. The software creates multiple virtual COM ports that your weather programs can then connect to. It does what a hardware serial splitter cable does, but does it entirely via software.

Steve
SoftWx

[Anthony]

Sounds like it might be what I'm looking for. Would even be better it is was a tad less expnsive. Maybe theres something else out there thats less expensive?

[tinplate]

Hmmm, $39.95 now. When I bought it years ago it was only $15 or something like that. It's really a fairly simple thing to program. Maybe it's time to make a passthrough  version of VirtualVP!

[tinplate]

I'm really busy right now, but I might be able to throw this together today. Want to be a guinea pig?

[W Thomas]

That might be the ticket Passthrough version of your software

Keep us posted! It certainly does sound interesting

[Anthony]

Yea I'm game. Whats the chance of getting yours to work across a network? I have WD on one machine and VWS is on the weather computer. I'd put WD on the weather computer. But it only has a very small amount of memory.

[W Thomas]

I am thinking it's going to take something similar to this setup to actually determine if I have a fault within VWS fouling up my updates or something within my network..or more likely the web hosting interface. As it stands I cant really tell..

[tinplate]

I have an alpha version of a software serial splitter ready (a sort of VirtualVP lite for non-VP weather stations), and need another volunteer. Send an email to steve at softwx.com. Include the model of weather station you have. It is a .NET application, so requires .NET to be installed on your computer.

Steve