Topic: VWS publish wind direction on web in degrees?

[greghughes]

I have a weather page up for our local small airport weather station, located at http://twinoaksairpark.com/wx as well as a brief METAR test output from VWS at http://www.twinoaksairpark.com/7S3.TXT

The HTML tag/variable available to display the wind direction in a regular web page appears to only output a general direction, and there is no option I can find to display actual degrees. However, every other wind direction tag/variable displays its data in actual degrees. I wondered if the station hardware was just reporting a generic direction (NE, S, SSW, etc), but then realized the METAR output contains the *exact* wind direction in degrees.

Below is a sample of the actual output from the various wind direction related variables. The first line is the wind direction, and as you can see it just reads "S" rather than a numeric-degrees value. The weather station is a Davis Pro 2.

Any way to get the actual degrees in real time for the web page? The only variable (which I am not sure about due to lack of detailed info) that I was thinking *might* be it is Wind Direction Running Average - vva001. But I think that's averaged over the previous 60 minutes maybe? If so, it'd not what I need. But if that is close to what I want, does anyone know how its calculated?

Thanks!

S Wind Direction
263 Wind Direction Daily Hi
1:28am Wind Direction Daily Hi Time
59 Wind Direction Daily Lo
2:55am Wind Direction Daily Lo Time
154 Wind Direction Running Average
0 Wind Direction Daily Avg
0 Wind Direction Month Avg
0 Wind Direction Year Avg
28.4 Wind Direction Rate
76.5 Wind Direction Rate Hi
1:28am Wind Direction Rate Hi Time
-99.6 Wind Direction Rate Lo
2:55am Wind Direction Rate Lo Time
360 Wind Direction Monthly Hi
2/1/14 Wind Direction Monthly Hi Date
5 Wind Direction Monthly Lo
2/2/14 Wind Direction Monthly Lo Date
360 Wind Direction Yearly Hi
1/2/14 Wind Direction Yearly Hi Date
0 Wind Direction Yearly Lo
1/14/14 Wind Direction Yearly Lo Date
338 Wind Direction Yesterday Hi
6:21pm Wind Direction Yesterday Hi Time
12:39pm Wind Direction Yesterday Lo Time
148 Wind Direction 24hours ago
23 Wind Direction 24hour difference
° Wind Direction Units

[LFWX]

I use the "Wind Direction Running Average" on my website, showing the average direction over the past 5 minutes (which is also the update interval for my website) and works very well.
You can adjust this under Settings > Advanced Parameter Settings.
Screen shot of my settings: http://screencast.com/t/PyyGLqrGqbU8

Even though it is inside the "Wind Gust Calculation" area, the "Filtered Average" controls all the "Running Average" values produced by Virtual Weather Station.

Examples on my page:
"Wind Speed" is the 5 minute average (and "Wind Gust" is the max speed in the past 5 minutes).
"Feels Like" is the 5 minute average THW Index (this more closely matches the NWS method of calculating wind chill). This is also the value I use to create the "Comfort Index".
"Wind Direction" (in the "Current Conditions" box) is the 5 minute average (e.g. from 74°), I use this value in a JavaScript to create the text descriptions (e.g. from the East North East).
Example screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/8qcAyUgH

PS - When I checked your site it showed a wind speed of 15, but a gust of 0 
Screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/i1N1j8imvm
What settings do you have in the Advanced Parameter Settings?