WXforum.net

Weather Related Organizations => WeatherUnderground => Topic started by: docbee on February 03, 2013, 05:06:09 PM

Title: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on February 03, 2013, 05:06:09 PM
If you are looking for a solution to feed your station's data to weather underground, but don't want to have your PC runnning 24/7 there is a new developed appliance that might fit your needs.

It is compatible with most of the stations out there (Davis, Rainwise, Peetbros, Oregon, Hideki, Honywell, ...) runs on minimal-sized, low-powered and cheap hardware and can be setup as DIY or ready-to-go from ambientweather.

The applicance is named "Meteobridge" and is from the makers of Meteohub and Meteoplug. You can find information about it here: http://www.meteobridge.com (http://www.meteobridge.com)

Ambient does have it named "Weatherbridge" also in their shop: http://www.ambientweather.com/amweatherbridge.html (http://www.ambientweather.com/amweatherbridge.html)
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Beaudog on February 03, 2013, 06:04:59 PM
Well... From all I can tell it uploads ONLY to WU.       Kinda limited in scope.       Not for me.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: docbee on February 03, 2013, 07:01:24 PM
What would you like as additional services?
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Beaudog on February 03, 2013, 07:07:55 PM
As a minimum CWOP and if you want the UK guys  WOW, PWS would be nice but necessary. If you want Europe buyers AWEKAS.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Bushman on February 03, 2013, 07:19:35 PM
useless to me unless you can \ftp to anywhere.  And it is pretty much the price of  a used netbook.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: DanS on February 03, 2013, 07:43:22 PM
Being able to upload to PWS would also open the doors to Ham operators via HAMweather (http://www.hamweather.com/)
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: docbee on February 03, 2013, 08:03:14 PM
Thanks for the feedback, just wait a week  :grin:

@bushman: Why do you think FTP is needed that much? To send data in a customizable fomat via HTTP or as a MYSQL query looks to me like a much better way to punch data over the Internet to a dedicated server. What do you need FTP for? Are you thinking of a WD-Live feed? That would be beyond the intention of the appliance as this needs tons of data and the feeded flash applet is not going well with smartphones etc.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Bushman on February 03, 2013, 10:03:06 PM
An FTP push to the server of MY choosing is a much  more open solution.  Trying to connect to a remote DB is fraught with issues.  And as I said, the price need to be better  I can do more with a $25 Raspberry Pi.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: saratogaWX on February 03, 2013, 11:35:03 PM
Docbee,

Having a generalized FTP upload (with weather tags processing for data) would allow the appliance to drive a personal weather website of the user's choosing.  Few of the weather enthusiasts personal weather websites are driven using mySQL (due to it's complexity and lack of a generalized, pre-packaged solution).  Something with the template processing capability like exists in Meteohub would be welcome. :)
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: docbee on February 04, 2013, 06:26:59 AM
@saratogaWX: good point. As the device cant store lots of data, it might receive the template to fill via wget from the webserver and delivers it back filled with weather data via ftp. that might indeed be an interesting option. Only thing that makes me a bit worrying is that the users (as I know from my Meteohub experience) do have tons of problems setting up their FTP-upload, especially giving the right path where to store it on the server. This and configuring email sending is my "Meteohub support issue #1", hard to believe but true ;)

@bushman: yes, the RPI is an interesting platform in general. However, when you put all pieces together you need (housing, power supply, WLAN-adapter) you will be significantly above $29 (btw, the RPI model B price as naked PCB is $35 to my knowledge) and pure hw costs will be above the Meteobridge solution and the RPI is more clumsy in size and needs more power. I find the OpenWrt routers selected much more appealing for this specific purpose and you get them from any computer store. Going the "flash-yourself approach" you will have a fully licensed Meteobridge for $100. Compared to what the proprietary and brand-closed upload solutions from Davis at al do cost, that still looks quite cost effective to me. If it is worth the money for you, as an expert that sets up computer systems (used netbook, rpi) like 1-2-3 and can handle installation and configuration of appropriate weather programs in no time is ofcourse another question... but think of less experienced users who just want to do a few clicks and have it running by that.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Bushman on February 04, 2013, 09:12:43 AM
If FTP path and email config are the top issues, maybe those users should buy a WL IP?  :)  Ken was spot on re: FTP.

I'm going to spend a bit more time on the open router thing, but for now a netbook with SSD is pretty much the cat's meow for a remote application.  IMHO of course.  :)
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Sigdigit on February 04, 2013, 09:33:47 AM
I considered things like meteohub, hautespot, WLIP before I finally settled on a relatively cheap Acer Aspire one netbook, which has been running 24/7 for years now without any problems and draws very little power with the screen closed.  Plus I have the ability to type, access the internet, etc, all from the same portal.  When I am not using it, the screen is closed and it sits behind by VantagePro console.  If it weren't for the serial to usb adaptor sticking out of it, you wouldn't even know it's there.  BTW, I am not a IT nut, so was looking for something relatively simple.  I only use Weatherlink, which pushes all my data to WU, CWOP/MADIS, and Weatherbug (ugh, don't even know why I bother with that one).
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Beaudog on February 04, 2013, 10:44:29 AM
I was in a hurry yesterday    a better explanation of my thoughts.

I think this is a nice device and that it will sell as is.

I think if it had the capability to upload to at least one more site it would have a much larger market.

Most US users I think would want at least WU and CWOP.

I think most UK users would want WU and WOW or AWEKAS   possibly both.

I think most European users would want WU and AWEKAS.

I understand that one of the objectives is to keep the price down and that limits processing power and memory capability.

One possibility might to have several software/firmware versions.  Hopefully user uploadable so one could switch from one to the other if desired



Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: docbee on February 05, 2013, 02:45:04 PM
Thanks again for sharing your insight!

@saratogaWX: The unit won't be able to feed a complete clientraw stream. Is there a light-weight option to get your famous website scripts feeded? As said, I could manage to provide a ftp-upload on templates provided in the Internet and I think I can adapt what kind of template variables Meteobridge provides to specifc needs of your templates. Would be cool to have a saratoga presentation of Meteobridge data, just by setting a switch in Meteobridge and giving some ftp credentials where to materialize this content. 
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: saratogaWX on February 05, 2013, 02:59:22 PM
That would be great :)

The template really needs only two files with conditions data:
a clientraw.txt type file
a MHtags.php type file which contains the bulk of the weather data to display.
The graph files and maybe NOAA-style .txt climate reports would be nice too.

One of the difficulties I had with doing a Meteohub plugin for the template sets was the use of both sensor name and unit-of-measure in the tag name.  Since various stations had varying sensors/units preferences, I had to use a set of utility scripts to craft the specific MHtags.php template (and the graph file names) to accommodate the selected sensor/units combinations.

If the weather tags for Meteobridge would be just static names (like WeatherLink or Cumulus provide) and the units-of-measure are available as separate tags, and the graph files had just fixed names, I could easily whip-up a specific Plugin for the template set to support the Meteobridge output (and call it an MB-Plugin :) )  The clientraw.txt output is optional IMHO, and unless it can be uploaded at 10-15 second intervals, is likely not useful for a 'realtime' display.  It's why I made the WeatherLink Plugin have an optional AJAX entry as WeatherLink only supports 1-minute uploads at a minimum.  Alternatively, since you have HTTP access on Meteobridge, we could craft a small script to run on the website and receive an update and store it (as VWS WeatherFlash server uploads do) .. that could provide a more-realtime aspect.

Let me know how I can help...  email is webmaster at saratoga-weather dot org

Best regards,
Ken
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Weather Display on February 05, 2013, 03:02:58 PM
the dig at WDL and tablets/iphones no flash does not apply anymore, as WD supports the new Steel gauges HTML5/Javascript real time display which works on iphones etc
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: docbee on February 05, 2013, 05:36:19 PM
@Brian: sorry, I didn't know that. good move. Is WDL your baby now or is Julian still the author?
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: docbee on February 10, 2013, 09:26:07 AM
I added FTP Upload as discussed earlier in the thread:
http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Push_Services#Individual_FTP_Uploads (http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Push_Services#Individual_FTP_Uploads)

@sratogaWX: Will upload of 4 files be suffcient for your templates? Does Meteobridge provide the data your template needs? Variables available are lined out here: http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Templates (http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Templates)
I remember some issues around "yesterday" data when doing the templates for Meteohub. I can invent variables for a "yesterday" time frame, if that is important for your scripts.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: Bushman on February 13, 2013, 12:36:14 PM
I added FTP Upload as discussed earlier in the thread:
http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Push_Services#Individual_FTP_Uploads (http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Push_Services#Individual_FTP_Uploads)


Neat!  definitely adds value.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: saratogaWX on February 13, 2013, 01:11:30 PM
I added FTP Upload as discussed earlier in the thread:
http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Push_Services#Individual_FTP_Uploads (http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Push_Services#Individual_FTP_Uploads)

@saratogaWX: Will upload of 4 files be suffcient for your templates? Does Meteobridge provide the data your template needs? Variables available are lined out here: http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Templates (http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Templates)
I remember some issues around "yesterday" data when doing the templates for Meteohub. I can invent variables for a "yesterday" time frame, if that is important for your scripts.
Those variables are fine .. having a 'yesterday' set would be a big plus.  If there is a way for the user to specify the preferred units, it would be great to have variables that contain those preferences (for Temperature, Wind, Barometer, Rain and Distance).

I gather that the sensor names all are for the '0' sensor for all station types .. is that correct?
So [thb0press-act] would always contain the current pressure (in hPa)?

The one file the template needs is the tags.php file (likely called MBtags.php) with the current data.
An optional WD-like clientraw.txt file like Meteohub issues would be nice, especially if it could be FTPed at a frequent interval (5 to 15 seconds).
If any graph images are produced by Meteobridge, it would be nice to automatically FTP them too at the same time the MBtags.php is uploaded.

I'd be pleased to carry on the conversation Boris via email to webmaster at saratoga-weather dot org

Best regards,
Ken
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: saratogaWX on February 13, 2013, 04:22:54 PM
Oh, and one question.. it appears that Meteobridge only works with a Serial or USB connection to the Davis datalogger .. are there any plans to offer it with a TCP/IP:port connection so someone (like me) could use VirtualVP TCP/IP to feed it?  Since I only have 1 Davis VP1+ and two instances of VirtualVP to drive all the various weather software for my station and testing, I don't really have any other way of trying it unless it supports TCP/IP:port connection to the Davis.

Best regards,
Ken
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground
Post by: docbee on February 17, 2013, 06:42:34 AM
As promised I am back with an update on supported weather networks. Beside Weather Underground you can now also select support for:
All weather networks can be supplied with data in parallel.

If you have a Davis WLIP interface, you can add IP and Port near the Vantage checkbox on Meteobridge web interface. This makes the logger not to use USB but TCP/IP to reach out for the station.

Latest bells and whistels are documented in the wiki: www.meteobridge.com

When you want to click around a bit to get an idea how this tiny device will look and feel, you can do it on the cloud simulator (originally designed to make network settings there and to transport these onto the device by means of a USB stick), which is very close to the real product: http://config.meteobridge.com
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Beaudog on February 21, 2013, 10:06:56 AM
Wow I like that. If I were buying my Davis station today I would give serious consideration to buying it.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on February 21, 2013, 11:49:09 AM
For about 80 bucks all-in (router is 15-30 bucks), this looks to be a heck of neat  project to try.  My netbook needs a new battery which will cost about as much as the MB app so for 20 bucks more I could do away with the device completely.  May have to put this on the summer project list!
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on February 21, 2013, 11:55:00 AM
Docbee, according to the Wiki "Storage capacity of Davis logger is not used at all."  Does that mean (a) you do not need a Davis WL logger adn (b) does that mean if the Meteobridge or your  Internet goes down that data is lost forever??
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on February 22, 2013, 06:42:30 PM
It needs a Davis data logger to get the data out of the console.

Data stored inside Davis logger is currently not used. As most weather networks can't handle tons of delayed data very well and the Meteobridge is anyway always connected. As the low-lewel logging code of Meteobridge is the same as with Meteohub, this could be switched on quite easily. But I still doubt, that it makes much practical sense and it adds complexity of keeping dates in sync etc.

As said, when users do urgently need this, I can add it for the Davis products. 
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on February 23, 2013, 06:04:40 PM
Thanks for the answers Doc.  The problem I face is that I get to the Internet via WiMax packet radio and it does drop occasionally.  If the logger is not used at all then I would lose that interval when your device cannot connect to the network.  If you (and I am not sure exactly how you have this implemented so bear with  me...)  pop the last reading off the stack in the  logger  and then  continue to the current time I would not lose any weather once the device reconnects to the network.  Without this feature I would have to stay with my Netbook which continues to gather the weather off the ISS until it can reconnect to the Net and upload the data.  Makes sense?
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on February 23, 2013, 09:18:08 PM
And another question...  Does it handle extra temp and temp/hum sensors??
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on February 24, 2013, 04:11:19 AM
Meteobridge does have an internal buffer where it stores up to 2000 weather network submissions. When data cannot be sent for any reason, Meteobridge can drop it, try again for distinct number of tries or can try endlessly. When buffer is full, oldest entries will be dropped.

Web interface allows to specify per weather network how this should be handled:
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on February 24, 2013, 04:21:12 AM
And another question...  Does it handle extra temp and temp/hum sensors??

Not yet. Vantage offers tons of additional sensor options, I don't think offering all of these will make too much sense. Most weather networks can hardly do something usefull with it. Meteohub has a sophisticated approach to select sensors and give them IDs. This is something I would like to keep away from Meteobridge, as it has an impact on usability for the standard user, who just wants the key data being transported to WU with as less hassle as possible.

Having said that, adding a few fixed ones like soil could be easily implemented, if the user-base does have an urgent need for that. It is still work in development.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on February 24, 2013, 10:44:05 AM
Thanks Doc.  I did eventually find the 2000 slot limit; can you tell me is that 2000 individual readings (ie. outside hum = 1 reading, outside temp = 2...) so that the typical say, 10 minute reading would use 20 slots of the 2000 availableso that 2000 would last for 100x10 minutes or 1000 minutes?

As for extra sensors, the use of added temp additional temp hum sensors would be awesome.  VP pro allows for 8 extra temp sensors. I need them to monitor a couple extra.  PLease add them.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on February 24, 2013, 01:01:05 PM
Each of the 2000 buckets holds a time stamped complete data set (including all sensors) to be uploaded to a weather network. 
When just one of the networks isn't reachable and your interval is 10 minutes that will give you a buffer of 20.000 minutes which is nearly 14 days. When you feed more weather networks or in shorter intervals buffer will more early run full, but I think it is still big enough.

According additional temp sensors, I will give it a thought.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on February 24, 2013, 01:35:18 PM
Thank you for the explanation.  14 days will do it (although keeping the logger function might still be nice).  The reason I need the added temp sensors is to keep track of lake water temp and my hot tub (which runs year round) and winter in the Monashees can be nasty so that a failure could be catastrophic.  I am really considering this product.  Looking better with each passing day. 
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: bussez on February 25, 2013, 08:30:10 AM
I installed it in 3020 tp link firmware meteobridge, are currently satisfied with the operation and will buy the license at the end of the test period.
would be very useful to use the php script to give continuity to my website that uses delivery through weather display.
very interesting, however, this meteobridge.
you may think a meteobridge with 3g function? would be very useful for remote weather station.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on February 27, 2013, 07:13:20 PM
Regarding 3G... never say never, underlying OpenWrt does give some ontions on that... but still nothing for prime time.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: saratogaWX on March 02, 2013, 12:39:26 PM
I've got a Meteobridge working on a TP-LINK TL3020 reading my Davis VP1+ via TCP/IP using VirtualVP.

I'm working on generating a MB-plugin for the Saratoga template set :)

Complements to Boris -- I think this little box is a nice low cost/low power station with a reasonable feature set.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on March 02, 2013, 05:07:53 PM
As soon as he adds extra temp/hum I am in.  Capacity for one fully populated four  sensor station would be enough for pretty much most everyone methinks.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on March 06, 2013, 01:43:50 PM
Release 1.1 brings some additional features, especially to make the saratoga templates working.
http://wiki.meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Forum#Release_Log

Next release will cover extra sensors. Beta release (available for those having registered
their Meteobridge for receiving the latest builds) already has extra temp sensor support
for Vantage included.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on March 06, 2013, 04:25:00 PM
Cool!  thanks!
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on March 07, 2013, 01:10:45 AM
What is the lowest cost wx station that a guy could get that works with this product?  OS?  LaCrosse?
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on March 07, 2013, 02:13:51 PM
I guess the Fine Offset Electronics clones like http://www.ambientweather.com/amws1090.html for $99
plus $5 for a USB hub, when you go with MR3020.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on March 11, 2013, 02:50:34 PM
New release covers vantage extra temp sensors and thanks to Ken there
is a set of Saratoga templates including setup instructions for Meteobridge:
http://saratoga-weather.org/wxtemplates/setup-Meteobridge.php
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: LABob on April 03, 2013, 12:45:28 PM
I have been studying meteobridge and it looks good except for two potential issues with my setup:

1. In the Southwestern United States, hydrological studies and records are maintained with October 1 as the beginning of the rainy season. Rainfall for the current year is never used. If I want to display the total rainfall for the current (or past) seasons it looks like the meteohub has no provisions for calculating rainfall since October 1. I could manually do it with Perl or PHP using SQL data, but it would be nice if there were a variable to sum rainfall between certain dates so I could take advantage of the template functionality.

2. I use soil moisture sensors and evapotranspiration to manage my irrigation needs. It would be nice to have some way of archiving these data.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on April 07, 2013, 06:50:07 PM
ad 1) is a hard one, not sure how to fit that into the historical data storage concept of Meteobridge.

ad 2) is already done. Please see the screendump from a user in the Netherlands who had a similar request.

You will find info about recent updates here: http://meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Forum
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: LABob on April 09, 2013, 01:41:14 PM
ad 1) is a hard one, not sure how to fit that into the historical data storage concept of Meteobridge.

Can't you just copy the "yearsum" function and replace the presumably hard-coded date (January 1?) with a user-defined date?
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on May 12, 2013, 01:34:18 PM
Just a short update: Meteobridge does now also support the USB equipped Acurite stations, which are intreresting if you are on a tight budget.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Weather Display on May 12, 2013, 02:24:01 PM
you did well to reverse engineer that one
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on May 12, 2013, 06:01:33 PM
Brian, thanks. Looks like it is the first non-Windows implementation. :shock:
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on May 14, 2013, 02:15:00 PM
1. In the Southwestern United States, hydrological studies and records are maintained with October 1 as the beginning of the rainy season. Rainfall for the current year is never used. If I want to display the total rainfall for the current (or past) seasons it looks like the meteohub has no provisions for calculating rainfall since October 1. I could manually do it with Perl or PHP using SQL data, but it would be nice if there were a variable to sum rainfall between certain dates so I could take advantage of the template functionality.

Meteobridge version released today allows to select a month to start annual rain calculation with.
Drop-down box for that is found on "system" tab. Wiki is also updated to reflect this.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: xtommo on July 04, 2013, 01:23:02 AM
Has anyone created a iPhone template for the meteobridge??
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Weather Display on July 04, 2013, 01:47:40 AM
I have created a iphone app called iWD
that works with the clientraw.txt file
and meteohub can create that file
so that could be used, linking to the URL of the file
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: xtommo on July 04, 2013, 07:19:14 AM
how do i get the clientraw.txt file from meteobridge?
im new to the meteobridge so still learning...

thanks
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 04, 2013, 07:51:25 AM
Has anyone created a iPhone template for the meteobridge??
I am working on one for my Samsung.  ;)
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: xtommo on July 04, 2013, 08:40:28 AM
I look forward to seeing it
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on July 04, 2013, 11:04:59 AM
building the clientraw files from meteobridge would be a killer,
as the clientraw files include up to 1000 values, which is
a grown mixture of live, historical and data for graphical use.
meteobridge does not provide series of data needed for graphs,
but the most important historical values are present and
can be used. if someone is building a smartphone oriented
dashboard and needs additional data for that, please
let me know, i will check if i can offer missing data portions.

today you can use saratoga templates with gauges and dials for live
and historical data with meteobridge. according to graphical representation
of historical data, i will enable meteobridge to feed the cloud
meteoplug services which opens a universe of
graphical display options. you can look at www.meteoplug.com
to get an impression. meteobridge will then provide an option
to feed all raw data from the weather station to meteoplug server
and to allow for completely customizable and excessive graphing.
this is on my todo list for one of the next meteobridge releases.
as said this will be an option to choose as the meteoplug graphing
service is a subscription based service, as it needs centralized
storage, computing power and is based on commercial grade
visualization packages.

Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 04, 2013, 11:10:27 AM
What options would there be to regularly download my data from the cloud?
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Weather Display on July 04, 2013, 03:56:46 PM
I thought that meteohub already was able to produce a basic clientraw.txt for use with WDL?
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 04, 2013, 04:01:50 PM
I thought that meteohub already was able to produce a basic clientraw.txt for use with WDL?

meteoBRIDGE vs meteoHUB
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: xtommo on July 04, 2013, 08:47:17 PM
well you got $5 from me for the app anyway... enjoy  :-P

at the end of the day what im looking for is an app or web template that has a nice design that i can access current and historic data from a smart phone.
its the way i access my data 90% of the time.

i know that weatherunderground are working on a new dashboard for PWS thats formatted for smartphones, tablets and PC's which should be released by the end of the year so i think they are quite sometime away...

http://imgur.com/a/wlS47 (http://imgur.com/a/wlS47)

I thought that meteohub already was able to produce a basic clientraw.txt for use with WDL?

meteoBRIDGE vs meteoHUB
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Weather Display on July 04, 2013, 09:32:25 PM
Quote
at the end of the day what im looking for is an app or web template that has a nice design that i can access current and historic data from a smart phone
well, you can do that if you happened to be using WD
as the iWD app allows you to bring up lots of current and history graphs (the same graphs that are available to WDL)
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 04, 2013, 10:12:30 PM
well you got $5 from me for the app anyway... enjoy  :-P

at the end of the day what im looking for is an app or web template that has a nice design that i can access current and historic data from a smart phone.
its the way i access my data 90% of the time.

There are a couple of apps - Sunny Day and Pocket PWS.   The first reads the WL downld02.txt two day file and the later reads an easy to create XML template (available for WD, Cumulus etc.)  Cheap and free respectively. 
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: xtommo on July 04, 2013, 10:34:10 PM
thanks for the advise but i want to stick with the Meteobridge and not have the PWS connected to my mac. Since i got the hub its been very stable so im happy with it.
i guess i just have to wait for the weatherunderground dashboard update.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 04, 2013, 10:39:54 PM
Then you will have to wait for my MB phone templates.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: txweather.org on July 05, 2013, 01:34:53 AM
I didnt know about Meteoplug. Looking in to it now... Seems very interesting.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 05, 2013, 01:36:50 AM
Yeah, great but 29 Euros every 12 months.  No thanks.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on July 05, 2013, 12:18:20 PM
yes, i understand that a yearly subscription fee is not very sexy, but i cant give it for free.

there are two professional graphing engines included i had to license as saas (amcharts and fusionwidgets) and it is a self built server optimized for extreme fast database processing (1TB of ssd), all that co-located at a professional hoster in Germany, so there are significant ongoing costs and investments to be covered. this is not meant to convince anyone, but to explain why a subscription model has been choosen.

i still belive that cloud-based solutions for weather data processing are the future and i can promise that no NSA or alike have access to my root servers. :lol:
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 05, 2013, 12:42:34 PM
I can appreciate the costs involved, etc. but like Davis' implementation, I have no interest in that sort of business model.  It may very well work for some, but not me.
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: txweather.org on July 05, 2013, 12:47:20 PM
yes, i understand that a yearly subscription fee is not very sexy, but i cant give it for free.

there are two professional graphing engines included i had to license as saas (amcharts and fusionwidgets) and it is a self built server optimized for extreme fast database processing (1TB of ssd), all that co-located at a professional hoster in Germany, so there are significant ongoing costs and investments to be covered. this is not meant to convince anyone, but to explain why a subscription model has been choosen.

i still belive that cloud-based solutions for weather data processing are the future and i can promise that no NSA or alike have access to my root servers. :lol:

Understood. I am trying your services and this could very well work for me/my son. No NSA access? That's a plus! Sold! ;)
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: nincehelser on July 05, 2013, 01:49:28 PM
Ugh.  Even if was willing to pay a subscription model, I would be concerned about the availability and access times from a server in Germany.

Unless there were some cached content distribution mechanism in the US, I'd have to pass.

I used to work for a German company that tried to establish a US subsidiary.  It was a great product, but German management insisted that *ALL* customer traffic had to flow through and be served by German data centers.  We didn't last more than a month.   :-(
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: docbee on July 07, 2013, 03:16:09 AM
I have world-wide clients for this and no transmission problems so far. Germany is quite good connected to the Internet backbones, btw. All raw data is stored in the client for 10 minutes and then send as a compacted chunk of data to the server. So you have wind data resolution down to a few seconds (when your station provides it) but no need to start a transfer over the atlantic every few seconds. There is also a live data transmission for some data in a parallel manner to make nice real-time wind gauges etc, but this is just a fraction of the data. But I will stop to explain all the brainwork I did on that before implementing it, as it is a bit booring technical stuff. However it works fine since 3 years now. Enough on advertising that... subscription-based services is something that some people like - as they have very minimal initial invest and they can step out without losing a significant invest - and others hate - because they expect higher costs over time and have a wish to own things and have it under their exclusive control. It is something very individual and hard to argue about (as I learned).
Title: Re: Meteobridge - A new appliance feeding Weather Underground and more...
Post by: Bushman on July 07, 2013, 09:30:21 AM
Although I currently see no future for a subscription model (Acurite, Davis, Meteohub) FOR ME, I can say the connectivity to Germany IS amazing.   I get better response (on all counts) than I do from the local ISP and other cloud services that I am forced to use (work stuff).  But we are straying off topic here for sure.  ;)