software • hardware • books

Reviews of Software for the Davis VantagePro Automated Weather Station

By Gary Oldham

Note: this page was reconstructed from weatherforum.net cache by K. True, 23Aug2006

Last Updated 14 March 2006

Late breaking news! There is a new application available, entitled VirtualVP, that communicates directly with the VantagePro console AND establishes four virtual com ports that will allow you to use (or test...) up to four different weather software applications with your VantgePro. I'll be including a full review of VirtualVP here soon, but this is truly a breakthrough product that merits your evaluation. You can download the application and its excellent Users Guide at www.softwx.com/weather/virtualvp.html, and I encourage you to do so. There is a free 15 day trial available (full featured), and if you like it, registration is only $30 US. This product works, folks! There are already a number of very pleased users. Many have tried to achieve bi-directional use of a virtual com port for use with a VantagePro, and this is the first success. Calling this a breakthrough is no exaggeration; use of more than one weather software application simultaneously has long been a "Holy Grail" for many, most definitely including me, and that ideal is now a reality.

This review will cover all the software available on the Windows operating system for the Davis VantagePro weather station as of this document's publication date. (Of the software reviewed here, only WeatherLink is presently available for the Macintosh.) These software packages are Davis' WeatherLink version 5.6a, Weather Display version 10.33k, Virtual Weather Station version 12.07, WxSolution version 1.6.5, WsWin 32 2.85.00, and WeatherView32 Version 6.0.0090. Each package was tested under Windows XP, on a fairly high end PC; an HP Pavilion with a 3.0 GHz processor, 1 GHZ of memory, and a 250 GB hard disk. Unless otherwise noted, each piece of software performed adequately on this platform. Many earlier versions of these applications were run on much less capable computers as well. For readers of past versions of these reviews, I have left past content intact where things have not changed, adding or deleting things as appropriate to current versions.

Every effort has been made to make these reviews and the information contained herein as accurate as possible, but we cannot be responsible for errors or omissions, nor for changes enacted by the developers or providers. Decisions made are your own; remember, caveat emptor!

Testing has taken place over the past five years or so, starting of course with earlier versions of each of the software packages. The weather station used in testing is a wireless VantagePro Plus (includes solar & UV sensors) with a Fan Aspirated Radiation Shield (FARS).

I have used each of these packages extensively, and believe I have truly put them through their paces. I have written custom web pages using each piece of software, written Javascript routines to extract even more data, and corresponded electronically with each of the developers (except at Davis, where the developer(s) is/are faceless, anonymous employees).

One thing to consider - in order to use your VantagePro with a computer, you must purchase the Davis datalogger, which comes with WeatherLink software. Some have complained that the WeatherLink software is too expensive. I disagree. The datalogger and software retail for $165 as of this writing, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the cost of the datalogger and WeatherLink is free. Other weather station manufacturers charge far more for dataloggers with considerably less memory. You may very well find that WeatherLink meets all your needs.

Remember, the opinions presented here are my own. If you have used these software packages, or if you do so in the future, you may form a very different opinion than I have. That's fine, and it is your perogative as it is mine. I have been as objective as I can in these reviews, but they are by their very nature an expression of my opinion. I make no claims that these are the only valid opinions. The results of the review are based on those things that are important to me and in what I look for in weather software. Your priorities, your needs, your preferences, and your own experiences may indeed differ. For these and many other reasons, I heartily offer the recommendation in the following paragraph.

If you think you might like to utilize one of the fine third-party software packages out there, my most emphatic piece of advice is this: each developer offers a free, fully functional, trial version of their software - download it and try it! Sure, it is useful to get opinions from others and to read reviews like this one, but nothing beats trying it for yourself. Several of these software packages have rabid fans who battle with fans of a competing package. Sometimes it reminds me of the mindless "tastes great-less filling" commercials. Each of these packages has commendable strengths and noticeable weaknesses. Each has features the others do not. The features I like may be of no importance to you whatsoever. The choice of weather station software is a very personal one - I encourage you to select the one that best meets your needs regardless of what anyone else likes. If you purchase one of these software packages based upon the reviews included here, please let the developer know of that fact.

Which one should you buy? Asking that is something like asking an unqualified, "What kind of car should I buy?" What you buy largely depends on what you plan on doing with the software. For a car, hauling six kids to soccer practice, transporting construction material, impressing clients, or maximizing gas mileage for a long commute would all point towards a different type of vehicle. The software reviewed here is equally diverse. Unlike with cars, however, in my view each of these software packages is of high quality, and the result of countless hours of programming, debugging, and modifying, and probably without a huge profit or many thanks. Each of these packages work and work well for their intended purposse. The best one for you will largely depending on your needs, your likes, and sometimes perhaps, your patience. Again, I highly recommend trying each of them, the best way I know of getting a true feel for the product's capabilities and peculiarities.

There is no significance whatsoever about the order in which these reviews are posted - I quite literally drew lots to determine the order. Now, on to the reviews...

A Note on Davis' Agricultural Module availability and pricing: Davis removed the Agricultural Functions module from WeatherLink effective in Version 5.5.1. They now charge $95 for that feature (probably worth it for farmers, vineyard operators, turf managers, nurserymen, or even serious gardeners). But if you can prove that you owned a version of WeatherLink that was 5.5 or earlier, Davis will mail you a CD containing the Agricultural Functions Module at no charge. When I first raised this issue with Davis and was told of this "longstanding policy," I emailed tech support requesting a copy. They knew nothing about it and wanted to charge me the $95. This was resolved quickly enough, and I suspect that by now, all Davis tech support staff are aware of the corporate policy. In my mind, this is another indicator of what a class company Davis proves themselves to be. From after-market support to general customer relations, they're a class act.

Update: March 2006 - I have received an email from a VantagePro user who received a contrary response from Davis. I cannot validate that this person owned WeatherLink 5.5 or earlier, but there may be miscommunication at Davis or a new policy to which I cannot presently speak.

WeatherLink Version 5.6a
Davis Instruments
www.davisnet.com

$165 USD (includes datalogger that is mandatory to use the VantagePro with any computer, so you will have WeatherLink whether you like it or not!) Price shown is Davisi' MSRP; lesser costs can be found by shopping around the internet.

WeatherLink is perhaps the most underrated software package here. While there are some definite shortcomings - a somehwat primitive appearing, completely non-customizable main screen and a real shortage of HTML tags first come to mind - this is very stable, very responsive software with tremendous graphing capability. By "responsive", I mean that at virtually the same time something appears on the console, it also appears on the WeatherLink screen. This is most noticeable with changes in wind speed and direction, and this level of responsiveness is only shared with WxSolution - there is a palpable delay of up to 3-4 seconds between something registering on the console and appearing in VWS or Weather Display - sometimes resulting in completely missed wind gusts, both on screen and in those programs historical files. WeatherLink is relatively bug free, and Davis uses a good "public beta" program to do final debugging before releasing a production version. The other products generally use a select group of beta testers - sometimes I've been among them - and this is effective, too, but will result in fewer people doing fewer thorough tests under less comprehensive conditions. Probably due to WeatherLink being the only product produced by a "faceless" corporate entity, the user community has much less ability to influence the future direction of the product. On the other hand, the product - with all its "missing" capability - is pretty much rock solid in performance before released as a production version. WeatherLink, as of version 5.3, also provides on screen and HTML tag based data for all the sensors available for the VantagePro.

As of version 5.6, WeatherLink can now provide HTML tags for the station's forecast, for average wind and peak gust for 1, 2, 5, and 10 minute periods. WeatherLink also can perform CWOP uploads using the NOAA preferred 2 minute wind average and 10 minute gust, however, WeatherLink does not presently send CWOP altimeter pressure, which is NOAA's much preferred format.

WeatherLink is the only product reviewed here that you cannot "test drive", but since WeatherLink comes with the mandatory datalogger, you will have the opportunity to try WeatherLink out regardless.

WeatherLink's "current conditions" graphics are a bit boring, mostly "tank" type graphics that do little to convey conditions or trends. The possible exception to this are the wind graphics, which are moderately attractive and relevant. Let me take this time to mention that one very nice graphic from the pre-VantagePro days of WeatherLink has unfortunately gone by the wayside. The "old" versions of WeatherLink used to produce a very nice wind rose to show the direction and speed of wind over time, and this is nowhere to be found in the contemporary versions of WeatherLink, which is a real shame. Wind run also needs better treatment in WeatherLink; closely aligned with a wind rose depiction, wind run is the best measurement of how much wind an area receives. While, possibly due in part at least to my continual prodding, Davis has added a wind run history chart, also providing an HTML tag for daily/monthly/annual wind run would be a most welcome addition to this software (and bring it up to speed at least in this measure with all the other software here - except WV32.) Bringing the wind rose back would be a great bonus to that. I suspect many of us customer-types are ready for Davis to start bringing great features back into this software rather than stripping them out and charging us for them! (see below) My comments about the "current conditions" graphics do not apply to historical graphs, to me among the most flexible, easy to understand at a glance, and attactive, of all the software reviewed here.

WeatherLink supports sending data to both the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) and to Weather Underground (including the new "Rapid Fire" feature that feeds near-real-time Flash graphics at Weather Underground), and provides GLOBE-formatted data output. It does not support Weather for You or Anything Weather.

An absolutely reprehensible change made in version 5.5 was the removal of "agricultural" functions from the base software, and charging $90 to buy that module as an add-on. The agricultural functions included the ability to run reports on various degree days (other than the standard Heating and Cooling Degree Days, which remain a part of the base WeatherLink software). These reports are useful for farmers and serious gardeners in determining when to apply pesticides, when various pests can be expected to develop, when certain crops are ready for harvest, etc., and for simple reports like determining the number of hours below freezing in a given period. Heating fuel consumption was another now-lost capability. Rumor has it that some users have simply maintained a copy of WeatherLink 5.4 and use its executable when they wish to run agricultural reports. See note in the sidebar on the top of the page for the straight scoop on the agricultural functions module, and a possible late-breaking development. Davis also now has available an e-mail module that was provided for a test period with the 5.5 Beta - the e-mail module works very well (though like most others has trouble with authenticated e-mail) and could be a nice enhancement for sending you alarms and periodic "weather reports" from your station. This module retails for $35 US - consider that WsWin 32 costs about $32 US (which can be given to an approved charity), includes e-mailed weather reports and alarms and a LOT more.) And bear in mind that e-mail capability is built-in to VWS, Weather Display, WxSolution, and WsWin32.

WeatherLink is one of the slowest evolving software packages for the VantagePro. No stunning changes or improvements have taken place since the initial WeatherLink 5.0 release in 2001. A few more items are now tracked and available for graphs or tags. Equilibrium Moisture Content (a measure of how much moisture can be contained in wood at the current temperature, pressure, and humidity) is available (and is a nice component for use in calculating fire danger), as is air density (though measured in a very non-standard Imperial unit rather than the nearly universal grams per cubic kilogram). Wind run is now graphed, but mysteriously is not available in a tag. This is a major shortcoming to WeatherLink in my mind, as is the overall dearth of HTML tags.

The HTML tags that are provided with WeatherLink tend to be more logically and intuitively named than those from the other providers. WeatherLink lends itself particularly well to enhancement through use of Javascript. I commend you to John Z's Gretna Weather page. John has done some tremendous things with Javascript and WeatherLink. Much of the Javascript used on my pages is from John - I've expanded on some, and done some of the others from scratch, but the most sophisticated is derived from John's outstanding work.

WeatherLink has tags for daily, monthly, and annual (but not all-time) highs and lows, but only shows time of occurrence for today's records; not even the dates of occurrence are shown for monthly and annual records.

I continue to wonder what the future holds for WeatherLink - since the software is provided "free" with the datalogger, and several very good third party software options exist, what motivation does Davis have to continue to improve its software product? Several other weather station manufacturers do not develop their own software, rather, they provide "free" or resell at profit one of the other programs listed here or others that are on the market but do not support the VantagePro.

Strong Points:

Superb on-screen (and printable) graphs/strip charts that can display any/all data in numerous configurations and time spans

Good graphs for the web, considerable flexibility in time span (1 hour, 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year)

HTML tags for making your own custom web page are the most intuitively named of any of the packages

Provided web page templates are among the most attractive of any of the pages; if you don't want to go to the trouble of designing your own pages or learning HTML, this may be important

The response time of seeing something that shows up on the console appear on the computer screen is the best of any of the software packages

Shows the VantagePro forecast on the main screen

Good, reliable monthly and annual NOAA Climate reports

Very stable, good public beta process for debugging

Uses minimal computer system resources

Allows uploading of your data to the Citizen Weather Observer Program and Weather Underground(though without wind gust as that data is not tracked by the VantagePro or WeatherLink)

Very easy to set up and get operational

The "browse" database exports easily into a .csv file that can be manipulated and analyzed to your heart's content in a spreadsheet or database program.

Weak Areas:

Davis is removing features that have been an integral part of the software since its inception and is now charging for them - this is an abysmal and reprehensible business model.

Primitive (though easy to use) user interface

Monthly and annual highs and lows do not have their associated dates and times of occurrence tracked

No provision for "all time" high/low data; only current month and current year

Very busy main screen if you're using a VantagePro Plus, even more so if you add extra sensors

NO ability to customize what is displayed on main screen

Very low number of HTML tags for use in making a custom web page; VWS, Weather Display, WsWin 32 and WxSolution shine in this area

Though alarms will now sound a "beep" on the computer, the user has no ability to have different alarms on the console and in the software, and the software does not offer any additional alarms beyond those on the console

Want a custom feature? Good luck! Little if any ability to influence direction of product or enhancements

E-mail capabilities requires an extra-cost add-on

No developer-supported online forum (and Davis does not appear to visit any of the VantagePro forums on the web, or if they do, they lurk only)

Screen Shot

$99.95 USD for internet-ready version, lower costs for versions with lesser capability

Virtual Weather Station, or VWS to its friends, is one of the more mature weather station software packages out there. It has a huge international user base, and rabid fans - and detractors. For the detractors, the most common objection is that additional features often cost additional dollars, while the base cost of the product is pretty significant to begin with, particularly when compared to Weather Display or WxSolution. Its proponents like the visually stunning graphics, large suite of HTML tags, and stability. VWS, while not bug-free, is quite stable, reliable, and well supported. As mentioned before, the graphics are very attractive and descriptive, though JPG format (rather than GIF) is used, which tends to make the file size larger, thus somewhat slowing the transfer process and causing web pages to display more slowly, particularly for visitors with dial-up connections. As an example, image VWS295.jpg, the wind rose image, is 43K as a JPG at 100% quality, but is only 14K as an equivalent GIF. For a single image, this isn't a tremendous difference, but if many graphic images are used, will definitely slow down page loading. Apparently concern over the still-lurking .GIF licensing issues have caused VWS to stick with JPG images. Some users producing VWS-based web pages unfortunately use graphic images even for textual output (rather than using HTML tags) and these pages thus load excruciatingly slowly.)

Like some of these other packages, VWS lets you download METAR data from anywhere in the world (from up to 30 stations), and display that data on screen, as graphic images on your web page, or through HTML tags. This is a nice feature; VWS goes a step further. Rather than just having the NOAA server available, you can also use the Hamweather server (with some reasonable frequency and quantity constraints) to download data from Weather Underground stations or even Remote Automated Weather Stations used by fire protection agencies in the United States. This is a rather cool (and undocumented) feature!

VWS isn't the quickest in responding to weather changes, and just flat-out misses many wind gusts. I've seen lots of discussion on this on the VWS forum, but I've seen it many, many times with my own eyes, and is probably VWS' biggest weakness. Another problem for many is that the HTML tags produced by VWS produce a leading and trailing space around the value. This makes some formatting efforts quite difficult.

VWS is rather easy and intuitive to set up and use, and rarely do you have to search for how to enable or disable a feature. The documentation is very strong and complete. There is a wizard-like feature for creating web pages using the standard provided templates that makes establishing basic web pages rather easy for the HTML-challenged. In addition to hundreds of HTML tags, VWS also has a number of "HTML File Tags" that allow you to incorporate text documents into web pages. This can be very slick for including NWS forecasts, watches, and warnings, or your own NOAA-style climate reports onto your page. Some of the VWS-generated files you might wish to use with the HTML file tag feature include a daily, monthly, and annual summary of highs, lows, and averages, as well as a interval based summary on almost any (or all) data items collected by VWS. These intervals can be from just a few minutes to several hours.

Since the last review, VWS has added some very slick features. My favorites include the "Smart Forecast" (some call this "Smart Current Conditions," which is probably more accurate), the mesomap, and the ability to retrieve average and record data for the date from WeatherUnderground and display them on the Broadcast image and/or as HTML tags. The Smart Forecast allows you to set up boolean arguments that will then "set" the current conditions icon which can be both a stand alone image and/or which will display on the broadcast image. As an example, you can say that if the rain rate is > 0.00 in/hr, the conditions are "drizzle." If the rain rate is > 0.10 in/hr, conditions are "Light Rain," and if over 0.30 in/hr, conditions are "Heavy Rain." This is a very flexible feature, and the derived "current conditions" can be sent to Weather Underground with the other data. The mesomap allows a user-provided map to be used as an image overlaid with current observation data from stations reporting to Weather Underground (and METARs). This produces a nice "TV" like map. And the "almanac" data for today's date - presuming you have a climate reporting station near enough to your station to be relevant - can provide the average high and low temperature for today's dates along with record highs and lows and the years of their occurrence; this is a great feature in my view and that increases the value of your web site to "serious" visitors.

I have mixed feelings about including descriptions of the extra-cost add-ons available for VWS. Much more detail about them can be found at Ambient's web site, but simplistically: WeatherVoice is a text-to- speech converter that can generate an audio file that "reads" the weather data that you tell it to. This can be used (and would be a great thing for the visually impaired) to announce weather data from your PC on an interval you specify, can be used with a call-center application to provide weather details in lieu of the omnipresent "music on hold", and other applications limited only by your imagination. (A very similiar feature is included free in the basic Weather Display product.) WeatherVoice works as advertised and sounds as good as the voices you use. WeatherFlash is an ingenious and elegant Macromedia Flash^TM-based application that provides virtually real time updates over the internet, and can display graphs, gagues, text, web cam images, and other features. It appears quite easy to set up in terms of designing the screens, and somewhat more complicated to configure for live internet updating. A fine example can be seen at Lighthouse Weather.

VWS has nice integration with Weather Underground that allows for retrieval and usage of things like forecasts, weather advisories/watches/warnings, climatological extremes and norms (for which most users can find a nearby applicable site) and a "mesomap" - a bit complicated for some to set up - that allows display of current conditions from stations reporting to Weather Underground plotted on a user-provided map.

There is also another add-on for VWS also created by Dr. Tim West that produces SQL formatted data from VWS to allow "real time" manipulation of that data online using PHP or ASP so you - or your web visitors - can run queries resulting in nice graphs. This feature was also not tested.

Strong Points:

Very, very visually attractive and colorful graphics, making it easy to assess conditions at a glance

Nice windrose feature on main screen

Generates daily/monthly/annual tables of highs/lows/averages

Produces tabular report of daily data at a user-defined interval

Provides HTML file tags making placing weather forecasts or other text files onto your web pages quite easy

Allows uploading of your data to Weather Underground and Weather For You

With a (free) applet, allows uploading of data to the Citizen Weather Observer Program/APRS

Outstanding collection of HTML tags for making custom web pages

Active support forum at Ambient's site

Large international user base

Quite stable and mature

Elegant and stable feature that allows the opening of Davis' WeatherLink software to download data into WeatherLink and to generate the Davis NOAA monthly and annual reports at a user defined interval (I do so on an hourly basis)

Very good documentation.

Flawless downloading of data from the VantagePro datalogger, done fairly quickly.

Main viewing screen can be customized to an almost unlimited extent.

Format of graph for each data element can be customized as to graph type, color, and period of time graphed (to about one month or less).

Weak Points:

Seemingly becoming static; only scattered bug fixes have been released over the past year or so with no major enhancements or improvements

Some users have found that VWS uses a lot of computer system resources; I have never experienced this problem

There are a growing number of add-on programs that expand VWS' own capabilities (a text-to-voice program called WeatherTalk, an easy-to-use program that allows the user to generate a Macromedia Flash^TM web page that displays VWS graphs, gauges, and text in very-nearly-real-time with a full-time internet connection (LAN, cable modem, DSL, etc.), and Image Salsa, another elegant program that will place dynamic text and graphics (including your web cam) onto a "canvas" and update at user defined intervals on the web. These features are very nice, but each costs extra, considerably so (in my opinion) in some cases. This philosophy can be argued either way - if you don't have any use for a feature, why pay for it or consume disk space with it? Conversely, one of the competing products, Weather Display, is frequently adding features for which there is no charge.

For some reason, in my experience, the graphs and other graphics that VWS generates seem to lose some of their colorfulness when uploaded to the web, even with graphic quality set at 100%.

Graphics for web uploading are in .JPG format which is better used for photographs and the like, and are larger than a .GIF version of the same image. VWS tends to completely ignore .GIF images.

Data that is displayed on the console - say current wind speed - takes several seconds to appear on the VWS screen, even with the communication rate set at its fastest rate.

More expensive than its competition - except WeatherView 32.

Doesn't seem to like usage of a serial-to-USB adapter

Screen Shot
Virtual Weather Station Screenshot

Weather Display Version 10.33k
www.weather-display.com
Weather Display logo

about $70 USD (developer is New Zealand based; currency conversion done at time of purchase)

Along with VWS, Weather Display is one of the longer-offered weather software packages available. Weather Display was the first third-party product to support the VantagePro, though it took a while to get some of the bugs out and provide full support. WD now fully supports all aspects of the VantagePro. Weather Display was the first third party product to be able to extract the full text forecast generated by the VantagePro Weather Display has several "factory provided" web pages that are rather attractive and provide lots of weather data. Graphs are strong and detailed, and individual dial images can be uploaded to a stock or custom web page. Images used are GIF (though with the option of using JPGs), so take up less space and allow pages to upload more quickly than those making use of JPG format (see the VWS review for an example).

Weather Display is clearly a "labor of love" for New Zealand based developer Brian Hamilton. Being a weather buff and maintaining this web site are hobbies for me, but I sleep sometimes. I cannot imagine that Brian does. He releases new versions of Weather Display almost daily (and sometimes multiple times a day!), maintains a very active presence on the Weather Display online forum (as well as several others), makes just about any enhancement any user requests, and appears to be an outstanding father and husband while he's at it. His user base is large and international, and are very enthusiastic supporters of Brian's software and Brian himself.

Weather Display has a somewhat more "homey" appearance than the VWS or WeatherLink, and its evolutionary nature shows in the sometimes confusing configuration setup and lack of documentation. The frequency of updates almost invariably results in the introduction of new bugs or the cessation of functioning of a feature that had worked in earlier versions. This is unquestionably a mixed blessing - while the introduction of bugs is of course frustrating, Weather Display's users - me among them - anxiously await each new release to see what grand features Brian has introduced. Most amazingly, these new features are added at no additional cost beyond the very reasonable original purchase price. Recent examples include the inclusion of a text-to-speech feature called Weather Talk, which works quite nicely and can use either .wav or .mp3 (much smaller file size) formats, and a client viewer which will allow for seeing your data in virtually real time over the internet. Weather Display also offers integration with Weather Underground - perhaps to a lesser degree than VWS - and provides for a "mesomap" and climatological data. Weather Display can also function as webcam software, including making of a daily movie of your webcam images (including use of custom tags as an overlay to the image!) If you wish to do so, you can release information that will allow others to view your real-time data using a free, downloadable client application (or to the add-on, extra cost program, MesoMapLive).

In addition to MesoMapLive, another add-on product, Weather Display Live is available to show your data in near-real-time via heavily customisable screens using data from the clientraw.txt file optionally produced by Weather Display. It is interesting to see the growing number of "companion products" that take advatnage of Weather Display's capabilities.

Weather Display was the first third party product to my knowledge to allow uploading of weather data to the Citizen Weather Observer Program, and "Weather Display Lite" is available at no cost that will do this uploading to CWOP without offering all the other functionality provided by Weather Display. Brian has received a commendation from the National Weather Service for his yeoman contribution to the professional world of meteorology through enabling data from hundreds of private weather stations worldwide to be received and used by the NWS in their forecast models.

Weather Display has a feature to output data in SQL format; this is a no-cost component of Weather Display. Weather Display also does a number of things with webcam images; one can be animated and included in the "summary" image that gives basic weather data in a GIF image. A page showing incremental photos from the webcam can also be produced on a automatically generated web page. Weather Display also produces monthly, annual, and all-time record data. In addition to providing almanac data from Weather Underground, Weather Display can do the same with your own data once you have two years of data accumulated. In my view, this is a very strong feature. Weather Display can download an unlimited number of METAR stations, which is pretty astonishing (note that each download consumes some time, there will be a pratical constraint in there at some point, but this software can download as many as your system can handle!)

Weather Display has a large and diverse international user base (including the US Navy!), and supports a dazzling number of different weather stations, including the ASOS systems used at airports, and the very high-end Campbell weather systems products. There is a very active online support forum for Weather Display that is a great resource. The number of HTML tags is also amazing, and will allow almost anything you can imagine to be displayed on a web page (and in fact this huge number of tags is probably my favorite aspect of Weather Display.)

A review of Weather Display cannot be objective or complete without adding that Brian is hands-down the most responsive software developer I have ever encountered. His support is truly mind-boggling.

Weather Display nicely handles all the VP's extra sensors, and can provide uploadable graphs and HTML tags for these data.

There is an add-on program for Weather Display entitled Weather Display Live (WDL) which produces "live" data on your web page (or locally on your hard drive, for that matter) using Weather Display's clientraw.txt file which gets uploaded at intervals as short as 3 seconds. WDL uses Flash to produce animated graphs and gauges; conceptually this is like Weather Flash for VWS, but seems much less particular about configuration and hosting items. While screen layouts are less configurable than with Weather Flash, they're much easier to setup, and viewing a WDL page consumes far fewer resources. Last but not least, WDL currently retails for only $20 US and seems a tremendous value. A fully functional demo version is available for download.

Strong Points:

Lifetime upgrades included

Features added daily

VERY responsive support

Unlimited number of METARs

Active support forum

For most of the planet, the fact that Weather Display uses metric units natively is a big plus.

E-mailed weather reports and alarms works very well, even with authenticated email systems

Large international user base

For most of the planet, that Weather Display uses metric units is a strong point.

Outstanding number and selection of custom HTML tags for making your own custom web page(s). Up to 30 custom pages can be generated over and above the stock web pages automatically generated by Weather Display.

Good graphs, both online and on your computer, with considerable flexibility and detail.

Many strong major features keep getting added at no additional costs. Weather Display's base cost has crept up over the years - largely at the insistence of Brian's loyal users - but remains a very strong value

Growing number of "companion products" becoming available

Works seamlessly with a serial-to-USB converter

Weak Points:

For most of the planet, the fact that Weather Display uses metric units natively is a big plus. Brian has mitigated the former confusion when manually entering records by making provision for using Imperial units for us backward Yanks

The fact that features are added almost daily is a mixed blessing; sometimes bugs are introduced or features that formerly worked do so no longer.

No meaningful users manual though one is under development

The continually evolving nature of this software has resulted in often confusing and counter-intuitive ways of selecting features. Sometimes just the right combination of boxes must be checked on multiple pages.

Inconsistent quality of downloading of data from the VantagePro datalogger; works best when you use an archive interval of 1 minute.

Considerable learning curve; payback may be the extreme flexibility offered by this product

Screen Shot

WxSolution Version 1.6.5
Thunderhead Technologies
www.thunderheadtech.com

$39.95 USD

WxSolution is no longer the newest entry in the stable of products supporting the VantagePro. Earlier versions of WxSolution have supported the Davis Weather Monitor II and Weather Wizard, as well as the venerable Heathkit ID-5001 and 4001. WxSolution's strongest discriminator are its reporting features. WxSolution produces daily, monthly, and annual "Local Climatological Data" reports that go far beyond that presented on the NOAA reports generated by the other software reviewed here. These reports are based on those used by the US National Climate Data Center in Asheville, NC. You can compare how closely they match by visiting the NCDC's site and downloading an LCD for an area of interest. For the serious weather and/or climate enthusiast, these reports are tremendous. A new feature offered as of version 1.3.2 is that of importing data files from Davis' WeatherLink, and producing these LCD reports from that data. While some elements of the LCDs generating through WeatherLink imports are not included (as they would be if WxSolution had natively been processing the data at the time), there is still an incredible amount of information presented that could not otherwise be viewed short of doing your own programming or exhaustive work from a database program. WxSolution also produces wind rose diagrams for daily, monthly, or annual periods, and strip charts for any period from one hour to 30 days.

Narrative descriptions of these reports cannot do them justice. You are encouraged to view "real world" examples on my Climate page.

There are three screen views available in WxSolution. The "main" screen is the primary one of interest to most people. All the most pertinent information is presented here, including a compass rose showing wind direction and speed, as well as average one-minute speed and, optionally, the five second average wind speed. Highs and lows for the day are also presented here. Information is pretty comprehensive, though the presentation is a bit primitive, reminding me of graphics generated in the DOS days, using ANSI characters to build graphic images (however, I finally realized that the screen is intended to resemble that of a Heathkit station, which it does well. Even though I never had the privilege of owning a Heathkit weather station - though always having wanted one - I now find this rather charming. The other two screens are the "detail" screen which is text based and shows current, high, low, and average figures for all data elements, and the "graph" screen which presents a fixed graph of primary data elements for the past 60 minutes. The graph screen is far, far too small to be of any use, even on an 800 x 600 screen. On my primary computer, which runs at 1600 x 1200, the graph is utterly useless. A tip of the rain bucket is shown by a single green pixel - try finding that among the 1600 x 1200 pixels on my screen!

Dan Hanson, the developer of WxSolution, has been very receptive to my requests for more HTML tags, and now WxSolution is very, very competitive in this area. Tags are available for user-based all-time records, and this is a great feature not universally available (not at all with WeatherLink or VWS, for instance.)

WxSolution now allows an essentially unlimited number of web pages to be created and uploaded at intervals from 1 to 60 minutes. The internal FTP program works almost flawlessly.

WxSolution uploads data to the Citizen Weather Observer Program, Weather Underground, and Weather for You but requires a full time internet connection. Like Weather Display and VWS, WxSolution can send e-mail notifications of alarm conditions being met or routine "weather reports", but also can send by e-mail (in HTML or text format at your option) yesterday's LCD report, monthly, and/or annual LCD reports.

WxSolution also has a client application that can allow you (or visitors) to view data in real time using a free client application. This feature also, of course, requires a full time internet connection. A nice aspect of this application is that the client application looks exactly like the native WxSolution application (the only exception being that the "graph" screen is not available on the client.)

WxSolution documentation is very good, and includes detailed breakdown of the various data files generated by WxSolution.

E-mail works well with WxSolution, though like most it has trouble with authenticated e-mail. "Real-time" graphing will be a most welcome future addition to WxSolution. This software is beautifully documented and releases are paced and disciplined. Nearly all upgrades to WxSolution are well worth the download and make a real difference in the user experience. WxSolution has no "factory supported" forum, but I've hosted one myself - the link can be found on my Weather Links page.

WxSolution handles all the currently available extra sensors for the VantagePro, including showing their data on screen and making it available via HTML tags. WxSolution does not provide the VantagePro forecast, either on-screen or via HTML tag.

As a pretty serious weather nut, I strongly feel that purchase of WxSolution, if only to gain the reporting capability, as an adjunct to WeatherLink is a completely worthwhile investment.

Strong Points:

Simply outstanding Local Climatological Data reports in daily, monthly, and annual formats; I can't say enough about these detailed and informative reports.

Very stable

Uses minimal system resources

Has an included ability to act as a web server and present live data via a facsimile of the regular screen that can be accessed via a free client app.

Main screen presents most relevant data in an easy-to-see manner.

Data appears on screen very quickly; I can't measure any delay between data appearing on the console and on the computer screen.

Outstanding value.

Allows data to be imported from WeatherLink into WxSolution for generating those outstanding reports. In my opinion, this capability alone makes WxSolution well worth the price.

Allows uploading of your data to the Citizen Weather Observer Program, Weather Underground and Weather For You (with a full-time internet connection).

Can e-mail to you yesterday's LCD, a monthly LCD, and annual LCD in either HTML or text format.

Very good documentation, including data file format, a real plus.

Weak Points:

Most internet features require a full-time internet connection.

WxSolution uses your time zone for the LCD reports, but only has US based time zones available, reducing its effectiveness for international users to an extent. This may be because these NOAA style LCD reports are only used in the US, but I can't imagine ANY weather enthusiast anywhere who wouldn't appreciate the capability provided by these reports.

The main display screen, while providing key data, is somewhat antiquated looking, appearing somewhat like a graphic derived from ANSI text characters in the DOS days.

Only one "real time" graph is available and is a bit primitive; cannot be uploaded to your web page.

All graphic generation is natively done in .BMP format; the BMP-to-JPG program is used (at your option) to convert to a JPG format. While it works, this is a bit primitive and time consuming, and if you don't take the time to manually delete the BMP files, they can quickly consume quite a bit of disk space.

Screen Shot

WeatherView 32 Version 6.0.0090
Weather Information Systems
http://www.weatherview32.com/
NOTE: Version 7 is now available, but has not been tested by this reviewer.
$250.00 USD for "Internet Version". Less expensive versions are available, but this is the only version comparable to the others reviewed here.

The VantagePro version of the venerable WeatherView 32 was supposed to have been released in, I think, January of 2002. I've lost track, frankly, over the years. Various delays kept cropping up, e-mails to the developer often went unaswered. No upgrades to the product - long available for many other weather stations - had been forthcoming for years. I've long anticipated the VP release of this software - though sometimes figuring it'd never happen - as I've long thought of WV32 as the "granddaddy" of weather software. I believed that when it finally did come out, many new features would be available.

Well, I've been wrong before and it has happened again. WV32 for the VantagePro finally came out in late summer 2004, and it works really well. It should, for 2 1/2 times the cost of the next most expensive software. The custom made graphic images can be beautiful and informative. Thre responsiveness of the software to real time changes from the VP console is instantaneous. Anecdotally - I don't have a means of measuring - it may be faster than WeatherLink. The wind rose graphic is great. The mesomap that can be produced is really of TV quality, and the easiest to set up of any. But there are almost no HTML tags available, save for the many METAR stations that can be downloaded. Probably the biggest discriminator with WV32 is the climate data that is included. Presuming here's a climate station relevantly close to your own, you can have high/low data for the date as well as record values and years of occurence as HTML tags (or on WV32 graphics). This is a nice feature, indeed, and buying the data from the National Climatic Data Center isn't cheap, and presumably accounts in part for the very high price of this product. Interestingly, unlike the other software reviewed here, you buy your copy of WV32 for your specific weather station. If you decide to dump that weather station for another, your version of WV32 will be useless. But you can move anywhere in the country and have copies of climate data available. This seems kind of an odd trade off. With some of the competition making climate data available from Weather Underground, this disciminator is of extremely reduced value to most users.

WV32 will allow you to download an astonishing 150 METAR stations and use their data on a mesomap, on any graphic screen, or with HTML tags. I'm not sure just how long it would take to download that many METARs from the rather slow NOAA server, but if that's something you need, no other software comes close.

WV32 is heavily graphics oriented, and can produce an astonishing 100 different, highly configurable graphics. These can include downloaded images (think radar pics) from the web, various graphs, "indicator objects" - some attractive dials and a very nice wind rose for instance - and numerous text objects. These text objects can show numerous data items from your station or any of the 150 potential METAR stations. You can also produce up to 100 different web pages, but here's where the ball gets dropped. WV32 is so graphics oriented that you can have text objects in your graphic showing, say, wet bulb temperature or wind gust, but those same items are not available as HTML tags! This is such a shame; there's a nice variety of data elements available in graphics, they really should be available as HTML tags, too. Many people want to produce more text based web pages, if nothing else than out of consideration for the many dial-up visitors that can't or don't want to wait for intensive graphics to load. Please, please, on the next version, more HTML tags! The wind rose is so slick, producing an HTML tag (and even a text object) for daily/monthly/annual wind run would seem a natural extension.

Configuring files and images for upload (and download) is a bit daunting in its flexibility. The average novice user who wants to treat all web pages and images the same may find this overly complex, but the more sophisticated user who wants to vary upload schedule, with some files uploading only once a day with others uploading every five minutes, will have supreme flexibility.

WV32 can produce a number of reports, including the venerable NOAA Climatalogical Report, but too many of these can only be printed, not saved nor uploaded. This is another surprising shortcoming.

The shipped version of WV32 (as opposed to the download version) comes with a very nice users manual, velo-bound, with relevant illustrations. I'd recommend the shipped version if for no other reason than the shipped/CD version comes with the national climatological data that is not a part of the downloaded version.

WV32 also has an elegant ability to do an HTTP download of an image, say weather radar, and incorporate that downloaded image into graphic images produced by WV32. This feature works quite well and reliably.

WeatherView32 cannot accomodate any VantagePro sensors other than the standard ones that come with the base unit plus Solar. It cannot display UV, leaf wetness, soil moisture, soil temperature, additional temperature and/or humidity sensors, etc. This is a major limitation.

WV32 does not provide the VantagePro forecast, either on-screen or via HTML tag. WeatherView32 uploads data to CWOP and Weather Underground.

Though WV32 has not been updated in several years (beyond the release of the VantagePro version), the upgrade policy is the least generous - by far - of any here. While each other software application thus far offers no cost upgrades to registered users, full version upgrades of WV32 cost 50% of the original purchase price. So, if WV32 ever releases a 7.0 version, that will set you back an additional $125 beyond the $250 you've already paid. Long term "cost of ownership" is something to consider when making your purchase decision.

Strong Points:

Stunning graphics

Good climate data

Very, very responsive to real time changes in weather

Pretty stable

Superb, and easy to set up, mesomap

E-mailed, user configurable alarms, work well (with usual caveat about authenticated e-mails, easily solved with SMTP Auth freeware, below)

Weak Points:

NO output to CWOP, the only such crippled software in this review

Prohibitively and mysteriously expensive

Next to no HTML tags. Does great graphics for wind run, for instance, but doesn't even produce a wind run tag

Did I mention prohibitively expensive?

Stagnant; no discernable improvements or enhancements in several years

Screen Shot

WsWin32
PC-Wetterstation version 2.91.7
http://www.pc-wetterstation.de/enindex.html
~$32.00 USD, to author or as donation to approved charity

WsWin 32 can operate in two modes with the VantagePro - it can "watch" the "native" software package for the weather station and updates basesd on updates to the native software, or it can connect directly to the VantagePro. However, in the latter mode - unless I'm really missing something - the WsWin screen will only update with each archive period on the datalogger. In other words, if your archive period is 5 minutes, that's how often your WsWin screen will update.

WsWin 32 offers hundreds (maybe more) of HTML tags, and includes the ability to nest tags inside one another. This makes for some really clean code and the ability to have some rather elegant text on one's web page. As an example, you can show "High tempeature for November 2004" by using HTML tags to show the current month and year, and have this update automatically on month rollver (along with the value, of course.) Many highs, lows, and averages are available in tags, as are daily (or 24 hour period), monthly, annual, and all time highs and lows. And unlike with WeatherLink, you can show the date and time of occurrence for each. WsWin produces some wonderful graphs, arguably even better than WeatherLink. WsWin shows many things that WeatherLink "cannot" - though WeatherLink obviously has access to these data, since that's the source from which WsWin32 gets them - such as the VP forecast, the current ISS reception quality in percentage, and many others. My only two complaints, probably better termed "wish list" items for HTML tags would be to have a "real" wind run tag - the one available shows only the hourly wind run as best as I can discern, and would take the calculation of that value times 24 to show the daily wind run - and for the barometric pressure to be shown to three decimal places when using inches of mercury. WsWin does indeed track daily wind run, as that information shows up on its very nice wind rose and wind distribution graphs. Providing it in a tag would seem very simple.

One strong enhancement that WsWin brings the WeatherLink user is that WsWin understands the concepts of wind gusts and handles them accordingly. For whatever archive interval you're using with WeatherLink, WsWin shows the peak gust for that period. This might be less meaningful if you're using an archive interval of an hour or more, but for most of us who use a 30 minute or less periodicity for archiving, this works very well.

WsWin also offers some other nice features - such as e-mail capability for alarms and "weather reports." You can create a custom weather report or use the default. The main screen is a quite configurable graph of data elements you choose, along with textual synopses along the bottom or top of the screen as you choose. This is not a screen you'd sit and watch, as it only updates at whatever WeatherLink's archive interval is set, but it does give you a great snapshot of weather conditions and trends for the selected view. WsWin also autogenerates (based on your selections on a setup screen) some very nice summary pages for the month and year showing highs, lows, and averages, and can produce daily summaries showing snapshots of all parameters of each archive interval.

Perhaps WsWin's biggest challenge to native English speaking users is that its very comprehensive users manual has been translated from the original German. I hesitate even mentioning this, as I'm among the majority of Americans who only speaks English fluently, while most of the inhabitants of our planet speak at least one other language at least passably. Werner Krenn and the others who put together this outstanding software and comprehensive users manual communicate in English much better than I communicate in German (or any other language) so I hope my comments aren't interpreted as criticism -- they're most certainly NOT intended that way! I have the utmost respect for both the effort put into developing this great software, but also in developing a tremendous manual AND translating it into other languages! With that caveat, though, it is sometimes hard to follow the manual and to get the most out of these extraordinarily flexible HTML tags.

When you use WsWin, you can either let WeatherLink do the CWOP and Weather Underground upgrades, or you can have WsWin take care of it. For CWOP, you'll also need to run Dr. Tim West's freeware APRS-VWS applet, which works just fine. I prefer using WsWin to update CWOP as WsWin handles wind gusts that WeatherLink ignores.

I highly recommend you give this software a try!

Strong Points:

Very strong graphs and graphics (e.g., wind rose, wind distribution)

Expands the library of tags exponentially for the WeatherLink user

Strong e-mail functionality

Very stable

Very reasonably priced; lowest priced software in this review - and can be purchased as "charity-ware" which benefits others

Weak Points:

Users manual can be hard to understand for native English speakers

Does require running WeatherLink concurrently

No English language support forum (though you can go to the German language version and use online translation tools - this isn't great, but I have gotten rapid and helpful assistance from board participants this way)

For big fans of wind run like me, the absence of a "conventional" wind run tag is a little disappointing
Screen Shot:

Image Salsa
www.imagesalsa.com
ImageSalsa WebCam Software

$49.95 US for the "weather version", which is the one reviewed here

Image Salsa is an add-on piece of software that was originally designed to work with VWS, but that can work equally well with any piece of software rerviewed here. It's a little hard to categorize Image Salsa, frankly, but let me start out by saying that I like this software very, very much! Image Salsa can be used to produce graphic images of your own design and configuration that can include other graphic images such as a webcam image or a downloaded weather radar picture as well as textual information of your own design and choosing derived from the output of any of the weather software here. In other words, you can have Image Salsa create an image with a blue background that shows your webcam image and a local radar picture, with text data showing the current time, temperature, wind speed, rainfall, and daily highs and lows from your weather station. Using Image Salsa with other software here would let you produce a graphic image much like that from WeatherView 32 (at a much lesser cost, even when you combine the cost of the weather software and Image Salsa).

Image Salsa does not work reliably and consistently under Windows 98 (even Second Edition), but to be fair, it so states on the Image Salsa web site, indicating that Image Salsa requires a stable operating system (and no one would argue that Windows 98 fits that bill!)

Image Salsa works most simply with VWS (or Weather Display, using Weather Display's feature of outputting a VWS-compatible .csv file), as it has some true built-in integration where you can select the data elements from VWS that you wish displayed. But even then, those data elements are a small subset of the ones potentially available from all of VWS' tags. To use Image Salsa with any other software, you merely have to create a template for use by that software that outputs a comma separated text file; with that approach, you can take advantage of any or all tags from that software (including VWS). A script is available to "call" on that template file and utilize any output within Image Salsa.

Image Salsa can make powerful use of Visual Basic scripts, and a couple are available for the taking; one performs the interaction with your HTML template as just described, the other downloads and includes a National Weather Service forecast for inclusion in your Image Salsa produced image. Image Salsa has an internal FTP server that works well.f

This is very cool, very well written, creative software that I heartily recommend. A trial download is available and I highly recommend it. The developer, Jason Gayman, says that there is definitely a learning curve to get through - I suppose that is true, but I didn't find it painful at all. Jason provides very strong support and there is an active section at the VWS/Ambient forum dedicated to supporting Image Salsa. Also available is Movie Salsa (not tested) that can take your webcam images from throughout the day and produce a movie (.avi) file for uploading or archiving.

Strong Points:

Very powerful and flexible

Open, in that it can work with any software reviewed here

Use of VB Script allows those capable of developing scripts in that powerful language to do many more creative things with this software

Good support from developer and forum

Weak Points:

Some learning curve may require some patience (but worth it!)

Unstable performance on Windows 98 may be an issue if that's the only OS you've got to work with

SMTP Auth
http://netwinsite.com/dmail/smtpauth.htm

FREE

OK, this software may seem really, really odd to have included in this review. However, since most software reviewed here has real trouble working with authenticated e-mail, I felt compelled to introduce this nifty little freeware applet. SMTP Auth takes care of authenticating your email. I tested this extensively with Verizon email, one of the tough ones out there, and it worked flawlessly. SMTP Auth runs in the background; it is set up in a DOS window. You simply tell it a few things - your SMTP mail server address (e.g., outgoing.verizon.net), your user name, and your password. Then SMTP Auth runs in the background, and when you set up your email capabilities in your weather software, you just use SMTP Auth's "phantom" address for the mail server - 127.0.0.1. Presumably then, your weather software sends the message to/via 127.0.0.1 which is then grabbed by the mail server in SMTP Auth, which then goes to your "real" mailserver, authenticates the message, and sends it off. This is nice, special purpose freeware that really does run transparently in the background without consuming enough resources to care about, and in my mind, is a must-have until the weather software developers all figure out authenticated e-mail. So far, Weather Display is the only reviewed software that handles authenticated e-mail, and it does so extremely well.

Feature Comparison

Key
WL = WeatherLink	VWS = Virtual Weather Station	WD = Weather Display	WxS = WxSolution	WV32 = WeatherView 32	WsW = WsWin32
	X = Included in base product or with no-cost applet	$ = extra cost	L = Limited	F = Future offering

Feature	WL	VWS	WD	WxS	WV32	WsW
User Definable Alarms	X	X	X		X	X
E-Mail of Alarms	$	X	X	X	X	X
E-Mail of wx condiitons	$	X	X	X	X	X
Text-to-Speech		$	X	F		X
Client Viewer			X	X	X/$
Configurable Screen(s)		X	X		X	L
Upload to CWOP	X	X	X	X	X	X
Upload to Weather Underground	X	X	X	X	X	X
Upload to Weather for You		X	X	X
Upload to Anything Weather			X
Dynamically Configurable Graphs	X	L	L		X	X
Uploadable graphs	X	X	X	L	X	X
Internal FTP Server	X	X	X	X	X	F

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