Poll

What type of computer do you use for your weather station?

Standard Desktop or Tower
96 (54.5%)
Mini Desktop or Tower
23 (13.1%)
Laptop
22 (12.5%)
Netbook
14 (8%)
Other
21 (11.9%)

Total Members Voted: 174

Author Topic: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?  (Read 42688 times)

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Offline cospringswx

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #125 on: December 21, 2012, 12:20:36 PM »
My WX PC is a 3 yr old Compaq Presario Laptop with 4GB of ram. It is just running WD and GR3. I connect to it with Team Viewer from the main PC. So it just sits on a shelf just plugging away with the lid closed and I dust it off every few days.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2012, 12:22:31 PM by hayskswx »




Ryan 

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Offline DanS

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #126 on: September 17, 2013, 07:13:43 AM »
Just upgraded to a (not as old)  Sony Vaio PCG-K23 laptop for the wx station and webcam. It stopped getting used as more tablets and smart phones started appearing around the house so I grabbed it up. Today I went through cleaning off unneeded apps then loaded and configured everything required to run 2 wx stations and a cam. I set the user accounts to be ignored on boot so it wouldn't pause waiting for an input. Even though it's around 10 years old the original battery still holds it for about an hour. I got it plugged into an UPS which held the replaced wx desktop for about an hour. The processor and bus speed is a step up along with the USB ports being 2.0 as opposed to the replaced 1.0 ports which should help. At least it isn't sitting, unused, any more.

Offline SlowModem

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #127 on: September 17, 2013, 02:05:55 PM »
It's good to recycle.   =D>  It will probably last for years.

I have a co-worker that brought me two unused desktops (one still has a tape backup slot) that I can use for parts, or replacement for my desktop if it ever dies (it's been running for 13 years or so now).  It's going to take a lot of convincing for me to switch to tablets.
Greg Whitehead
Ten Mile, TN USA

Offline piconut

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #128 on: September 17, 2013, 11:02:15 PM »
I started out with a Dell Latitude laptop with a 1 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM and used that for the last 12 years, up until a couple months ago.  I had a VPro feeding VWS, Cumulus, Virtual VP, Image Salsa, Movie Salsa, and StartWatch running on it and although it took it a while to make a time lapse movie, it still ran fine.  Most of the time it ran at <30% CPU (except when processing the movie).  It only had 1 USB port (USB 1) and I wanted more power and ports to be able to add a couple more Logitech 9000 weather cams to it so I bought a used Dell Latitude e5500 laptop off of Craigslist for $200.  It has a an old Core 2 Duo P8800 2.6 GHz CPU and 4 GB of RAM.  More importantly, it also has 4 USB-2 slots and a serial port.  It was a much need and well deserved upgrade and I'm glad I did it.  I have a cheap plastic dual fan laptop cooler sitting underneath it and it seems to run flawlessly 24x7.  The CPU runs about 30% most of the time except when I'm crunching 1000's of images into the daily time lapse movie.

Here is image of it showing my VWS desktop (newly reconfigured) and the the other stuff.  

« Last Edit: September 18, 2013, 01:35:13 AM by piconut »
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Offline meteo-saint-brevin

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #129 on: September 22, 2013, 10:54:15 AM »
I am using an old Acer Travelmate running Vista. The software running on board are : Virtual VP, WeatherLink, Cumulus, WeatherMap Live, Skymet to generate weather maps, WebcamXP, Lauyan ToWeb, Cobian Backup, Total Commander et NOD32 antivirus. I remotely control this computer using TeamViewer.
Marcel Le Jeune F6DOW - Saint-Brevin-les-Pins - Pays de la Loire - France
www.meteo-saint-brevin.fr
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Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #130 on: January 27, 2014, 01:08:30 AM »
Bump for any that might want to join the poll.   :grin:
Mark 
2002 Davis VP I Wireless, WeatherLink (Serial), GRLevel3, VirtualVP, StartWatch, Weather Display, Windows 10


Offline W3DRM

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #131 on: January 27, 2014, 12:23:49 PM »
Hi Mark - long time no hear from...

Well, my Acer Aspire One is still plugging along nicely. Here's the history of my little netbook:

  • 03/18/2010 - VWS + all wx-related software running on new Acer Aspire One
  • 10/05/2011 - Acer Hard drive died - no recovery possible
  • 10/15/2011 - New 250GB HDD installed and system back running again

The Acer Aspire One has run flawlessly 24/7 since October 15, 2011. Would buy another one should something happen to this one. I did upgrade from Win XP Pro to Win7 Ultimate in 2013 with no problems at all. Everything runs fine except that I have never been able to get StartWatch to auto-start when rebooting the system. That is really not a problem but just an aggravation point. I do daily automated backups.

Life is good...  :lol:
Don - W3DRM - Emmett, Idaho --- Blitzortung ID: 808 --- FlightRadar24 ID: F-KBOI7
Davis Wireless VP2, WD 10.37s150,
StartWatch, VirtualVP, VPLive, Win10 Pro
--- Logitech HD Pro C920 webcam (off-line)
--- RIPE Atlas Probe - 32849

Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #132 on: February 03, 2014, 10:49:46 PM »
My Acer Aspire One is still puttering along since July 2010 24/7.  Showing almost 31K hours on the clock now.  8-)   Still running the original XP home. 
Mark 
2002 Davis VP I Wireless, WeatherLink (Serial), GRLevel3, VirtualVP, StartWatch, Weather Display, Windows 10


Offline W3DRM

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #133 on: February 03, 2014, 11:55:32 PM »
Mark,

Wow, is that true that you have had only 49 power cycles since 2010? That is amazing.  =D&gt;
Don - W3DRM - Emmett, Idaho --- Blitzortung ID: 808 --- FlightRadar24 ID: F-KBOI7
Davis Wireless VP2, WD 10.37s150,
StartWatch, VirtualVP, VPLive, Win10 Pro
--- Logitech HD Pro C920 webcam (off-line)
--- RIPE Atlas Probe - 32849

Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #134 on: February 04, 2014, 11:24:48 PM »
Mark,

Wow, is that true that you have had only 49 power cycles since 2010? That is amazing.  =D&gt;

I know I've had a plenty more reboots then that but as far as full power downs that might be a correct count.  I've had a couple lockups that I had to power it down and some power failures and a few times to clean it but that is about it.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2014, 11:27:49 PM by Mark / Ohio »
Mark 
2002 Davis VP I Wireless, WeatherLink (Serial), GRLevel3, VirtualVP, StartWatch, Weather Display, Windows 10


Offline Mark / Ohio

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #135 on: July 21, 2015, 12:07:01 AM »
Bump.   O:)  Since I last posted here I've updated the Aspire One to Win 7.  Been online for 5 years 24/7 this July with no hardware failures.  (Knocking on wood plus hoping and praying not to jinx myself here.   :lol:)  I really had my doubts it would hold together this long and so did my computer guy.  It's a little under powered for the number of programs I'm running on it and could use some more memory but as long as it ain't really broke I'm not going to fix or replace it just yet anyway.   ;)
Mark 
2002 Davis VP I Wireless, WeatherLink (Serial), GRLevel3, VirtualVP, StartWatch, Weather Display, Windows 10


Offline Skyview

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #136 on: July 21, 2015, 12:42:10 AM »
I had to mark other as I just use a TP-Link router flashed with Meteobridge.

Offline mcrossley

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #137 on: July 21, 2015, 02:35:16 AM »
I had to tick 'other' as I use a Raspberry Pi with CumulusMX.
Mark

Offline W3DRM

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #138 on: July 21, 2015, 11:53:06 AM »
Just changed my vote from Netbook to Laptop.

I am in the process of switching from an Acer Netbook to a new HP Envy laptop. It has a i7 Intel processor in it and lots more memory and disk capacity than the old Acer netbook. The Acer is beginning to fail (touchpad and mouse buttons no longer work thus forcing me to use an external mouse) and the system runs extremely slow. So, I bit the bullet and decided on going to a faster laptop.

Hope to be back on-line in a couple of days and will also be adding at least one more camera...
Don - W3DRM - Emmett, Idaho --- Blitzortung ID: 808 --- FlightRadar24 ID: F-KBOI7
Davis Wireless VP2, WD 10.37s150,
StartWatch, VirtualVP, VPLive, Win10 Pro
--- Logitech HD Pro C920 webcam (off-line)
--- RIPE Atlas Probe - 32849

Offline C5250

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #139 on: July 22, 2015, 12:19:31 AM »
Wow, is that true that you have had only 49 power cycles since 2010? That is amazing.

Late... That's only an average of once per month! To me, anything less than six months is too often.

Precious little in your life is yours by right and won without a fight.

Offline PamG1

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #140 on: July 22, 2015, 12:29:05 AM »
I still learning about what all you do. Otherwords just a weather fan. But it is great it I could find something that help others also to be weather safe when weather do get bad. So even though, i'm on a laptop acer c7. I have to say just none on the weatherstation.

Offline PamG1

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #141 on: July 22, 2015, 12:35:29 AM »
I still learning about what all you do. Otherwords just a weather fan. But it is great if I could find something that help others also to be weather safe when weather do get bad. So even though, i'm on a laptop acer c7. I have to say just none on the weatherstation.

Offline Farmtalk

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #142 on: July 22, 2015, 10:55:13 AM »
I run Cumulus 1.94 and GRLevel 3 on my Compaq Presario CQ57 (I believe Ryan AKA Cospringswx uses the same machine).  8-)
Joe Fitzwater
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Offline yahtah

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #143 on: August 09, 2015, 11:25:54 PM »
A little late to the party here, but I figured a small dedicated device was the best answer. Low power, (almost) always on (until I come up with battery backup, then always on) and able to store up to 10 years worth of data (if the power doesn't go out, until I get the battery). Raspberry Pi B+ with Meteohub and a Meteostick receiving data from a DVP2. Data storage isn't critical right now as everything is sent to WU Rapid Fire, and I have the Davis Console on battery if I need the data.  ;)

Edit: I voted "Other"
« Last Edit: August 09, 2015, 11:36:49 PM by yahtah »
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Offline hydrocynus

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Re: Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?
« Reply #144 on: October 29, 2015, 04:33:47 PM »
I use a 5 watts drawing mini PC LIVA running windows 8.1 with 32GB. Works very well. It is tethered via usb to a 4G verizon wireless jetpack. The other USB is connected to the Davis console data logger (Vantage Pro 2 plus). The setup is remotely operated and it is powered by a 12V battery with a 12 to 5V converter and recharged by a 100W polycrystalline solar panel.

 

anything