Topic: Migrating from VWS to WD questions

[W3DRM]

I know some of you may think I should be posting this on the Weather Display Forum. However, I would like to start my exploration by getting some inputs from those of you on this forum first.

After ten years of running VWS, I have just about had it with VWS, VVP and VPLIve issues. Since I moved to a new laptop, I have had nothing but continuous problems with my website and the software feeding it. I keep losing VVP connections with both VWS and VPLive. I have tried everything I can think of to get things to stay connected and run as they should (and used to).

So, I am at the point now that I am going to go to some other software and most likely that will be Weather Display. I have a license for it and have had one for many years but never put it to use. I have a couple questions that perhaps someone here can answer. If not, I'll post them on the WD forum later.

I am currently using StartWatch to control my programs which are VVP, VWS, WL, VPLive and Image Salsa.

My main question is "What do I need to do to switch from VWS to WD?" Are there step-by-step instructions on doing this and, since I have 10 years of history data, will I be able to somehow import that old data into WD? I am using Ken's templates as well as the old original VWS templates for my website and I would really like to keep Ken's template as is. I know there are differences in the tags used by WD and VWS.

Hopefully, others have gone through this and kept some kind of a step-by-step process to make the migration a bit less painful. I suspect this will take quite some time to get it done, and to learn the in's and out's of WD.

Any suggestions, pointers to other similar discussions, etc are most greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I should have mentioned that I have a Davis VP2 wireless station.

[gwwilk]

I've been running VWS for 13 years and WD for 7 years now.  Startwatch manages the menagerie, usually without much problem.  I don't trust laptops to multitask to the extent you're asking yours to, but that's my prejudice against lightweight iron.  My primary interface to my VP2+ Console is on a relatively slow PentiumII Dual Core 4GB Win7 32bit machine.  It's running Weatherlink, VWS, WD, ImageSalsa, MovieSalsa, VVP, Fling, and Startwatch.  It feeds via VVP using IP a much more powerful i7 Win7 64bit machine that also runs VVP, Startwatch, WL, WD, Webcam7, and GRLevel3 and uploads all my data to my web site.  I wouldn't trust all of this to a less capable machine.  Startwatch was set to monitor WD every 5 seconds and to kill it if it became unresponsive until earlier this week when I found multiple copies of WD trying to run and none of them doing the job.  I've since set Startwatch to monitor WD every minute and have had no further such problems.

Be forewarned that converting your VWS data to WD is a labor intensive process because VWS's data is stored in daily files while WD's data is stored in monthly files.  Earlier this week for reasons as yet unclear to me my WD data was hosed on both computers for the first 17 days of this month.  My solution to reconstruct my August 2015 data was to import the VWS daily files into an aggregate Notepad++ August 2015 file and then process it using WD's import utility.  It worked!  I detailed the process a little more here.  Now that I better understand how to import my VWS files into WD, I sometime in the near future will set about converting the rest of my VWS data to WD.

[jmcmurry]

Many years ago when I converted WeatherLink data over to WD, I found it handy to do that with second copy of WD on another computer so it didn't interfere with normal WD operations.  At least back then, it took a considerable amount of time to do each conversion.

- Jim

[W3DRM]

Jerry & Jim,

Thanks for the replies. Glad to know WD has import capabilities. Merging the VWS data files into WD compatible layout sounds like a simple but manual process. Am wondering if there is some kind of batch proces I could use to make this job more automated and easier to do. Will have to investigate that thought.

My laptop is a brand new HP Envy w/Intel i7-4720HQ cpu @ 2.60GHz plus 8GB of memory and 1TB hard drive. My old system was an Acer Aspire One netbook that was slower than molasses but, everything thing ran just fine albeit slowly. So, I don't think my problems are due to it being a laptop.

I am going to download and install the latest version of WD and then begin the process of setting it up. I'll use StartWatch so it can run along with everything else which will let me compare the differences between VWS and WD. Once WD is installed, I won't be using it for any live website updates but will simply take my time getting things going as I try to keep VWS running long enough to keep the databases current.

My real problem is time availability to do this plus keep up with my other commitments but that is my problem I will have to deal with as I move through this process.

[W3DRM]

I am slowly wading through the WD installation. I have succeeded in getting WD installed and running with a new registration code (thanks Brian!). Basically, it is running but I am not feeding any of the data anywhere, just yet. I am still running VWS to feed my main website and for some unknown reason it suddenly starting to run reliably this evening with no changes by me at all. Perhaps it noticed I was installing a new piece of software to take its place and decided it needed to behave nicely once again. 

My real problem has been the setup of the Saratoga template. For some reason it is not showing any new data on the webpages (wxindex.php). When I check the testtags.php file all it has in it are the characters "no". I've obviously missed something in the setup instructions which don't exactly follow the screen layouts of the current version of WD which I am using. If anyone has any ideas, please send them my way. The link to my new website is currently as follows:

• http://carsonvalleyweather.com/wd/wxindex.php

[weather]

W3DRM good day,

I am in EXACTLY the same situation as yours and have been trying to use correctly WD with my VWS imported data.

WD is a great soft for it is easyly used with the great Ken's templates. Problem, if importing data from VWS can be done it is a huge task for 10 years (I had only 8 to import). Customization of usage WD data is possible but bugs still remain. (NOOA reports)

But first things first.

How to import VWS to WD.
1- Export csv format all your VWS
2- Split in ONE month files your 120 months of data
3- In WD goto: Action/Import log files from other software/VWS csv import
4- Tick "Metric data" if needed
5- IMPORTANT: Depending on VWS data generation delays, in Data pad out needed...
    write the number of minutes between each VWS recording.
6- Click on "Import now"
7- If you intend to use WD graph files click "Convert the log file to graph file"... (I don't  )
Once doene your 120 month (severala days later...  )
8- Goto: Action/Convert log file(s) to data file(s)
9- I suggest that you convert one file MMYYY.txt after the other. Click any option wished. I did none.

All your VWS data is now available in WD

But realy first thing to run WD is to have your clientraw.txt  and testtags.txt running live
Possibility of custom clientraws variables with "customclientrawlocal.txt file.

You may see my results in:
http://www.meteoturbie.fr/index2.php?lang=en
http://www.meteoturbie.fr/index.php?lang=en

Good luck, regards.

-= Guy =-