Laptop, Desktop, or something in between on your weather station?

[Mark / Ohio]

  Bump for the new members to join in the poll.   

[DaculaWeather]

WOW! I just saw that 608MB memory usage!!! Holy crap that's a lot! You must be generating every graph that's possible! I will get up in the 150MB range but never higher than that and it's usually it's much less. WD uses more memory than VWS in my system.

[ed2kayak]

Not sure if that was an anomaly on that day. I switched to Weather Display shortly thereafter for a variety of reasons.

[Mark / Ohio]

I've been impressed with the little netbook over several months now of operation.  I used it for a few days for web surfing and forums to burn it in some before putting the weather station on it.  I found compared to my Aspire 5610 the screen and keyboard are just too small for me to comfortably spend several hours at a time using everyday.  But for quietly running weather station duties it has worked great for my needs.   I mostly VNC into it with my 5610 to make any changes or adjustments.  Here's a screen print showing the typical numbers for the vitals on my Acer Aspire One:

[DaculaWeather]

I see you use a serial connection. Do all the Acers come with a serial port or are you converting to USB?

[Mark / Ohio]

I see you use a serial connection. Do all the Acers come with a serial port or are you converting to USB?

No serial port, using an old Radio Shack serial to USB adapter.

http://support.radioshack.com/support_accessories/doc69/69667.pdf

I bought the adapter probably a good 5-6 years ago after a close hit of lighting cooked the motherboard serial port on my old desktop.  The original driver for it came on a floppy.      When switching over to the netbook I found Radio Shack still had the latest driver available for download on their website.

Given all the problems some have using adapters I guess I got lucky with it.  It's several months past it's 90 day warranty.   

[Mark / Ohio]

I see netbook usage has now passed laptop usage.   

[dogdad]

I live in an 40ft motorhome RV, so space is always at a premium.  I am currently using an older 500 Mhz WinXP Sony Vaio laptop that was an eBay rescue (cracked display, no ac adapter, needed lots of TLC), but it has a serial port and 2 USB ports for my LaCrosse and Davis VantagePro.  It fits in a tight corner with just the bundle of wires to/from it, and a nearby 19” display.  Almost a year and doing well.

I had a home-grown tower pc (2+ Mhz, XP Pro) for maybe 2 years, until it just quit one day.  I suspect my wife may have sabotaged it because she was always complaining about how it was too big to fit in anywhere.

All that said, I’d prefer the larger format simply because of the expansion capability.  The machine has a 6G HDD (remember when that was a WOW! COOL! size?) and there’s nothing else on it so it is sufficient, but I’d like to have more USB ports as most/all USB/serial adapters I’ve tried have some issues when converting.  I want to experiment with VVP as well as try to build a few of the Davis-esque add-ons (solar, etc), but it’s a bear to disconnect everything and move it to the kitchen table and then back again when done.

I envy you guys with lotsa space… but then again I am in the Florida keys and am right on the water.

[DaculaWeather]

And we envy you being right on the water in the Keys... rough life! 

[tobyspond]

Since I am running 24/7, I wanted to purchase a computer that does not use much energy, so I  settled on a fit pc2 to use as my dedicated weather computer.  My power consumption is 6 watts. To access the computer I use teamviewer and/or windows remote desktop.

[Andy Thompson]

I'm now running my station with a Cyberpower Gaming Computer. I don't use it for gaming, but it has much more power than the laptop I used to have. It has the Intel i5 quad core processor, and 8 GB of Ram. Plus it has a separate graphics card along with the graphics card with the mother board.

[Bushman]

Overkill?

[Ryan Hothersall]

When I did the big upgrade to an i7, my old core 2 duo parts were used in my second pc for the weather station. It also has the solar connected to it to monitor how much electricity is generated each day.

Also has an SBS 1 for monutoring aircraft flying around.

[Mark / Ohio]

Bump.

[Sigdigit]

Still using my Acer Aspire One netbook, 100% reliable so far.  Haven't found a cheaper low power alternative.  And I use it all the time to surf the web.  Posting with it now.

[ed2kayak]

I'm switching my vote.  Been using netbook since 7/2010, now think its somewhat underpowered. CPU is often above 90%. Will probably upgrade to small Dell tower (scratch & dent) within 6 months.

[Bushman]

Which processes are chewing up your Netbook?  Sounds like something has gone sideways.

[fadiaz]

Hi all,

In my case, for my weather computer, I am using an old Dell Inspiron 530 (mini tower).  It used to belong to my father, but after its HDD failed we got him a new computer and I saved the Dell from the recycling and/or landfill    

This Inspiron comes with an Intel E2160 (Dual Core, Single Threaded 1.8 GHz) CPU.  I upgraded the original 2 GB RAM up to the maximum of 8 GB RAM (I did had to put the latest BIOS for the computer to recognize the 8 GB).  I also had a 500 GB SATA HDD (I had "new" changed from warranty from another computer that I replaced the HDD) around, so I changed the old failing HDD with that one.  I do use the build in graphics right now (hmmm maybe add video card later if I get one???   ).

For Operating System (OS) I upgraded the machine from the Windows Vista that it came with Windows 7 Professional 64 bits (and yes is legal, is from the MS Academic Alliance I have at work).

Since the machine does not have a serial port, I added a PCI Dual Port Serial  Card, but unfortunatedly I can not make it (or any other PCI Serial Card).  I think might be the drivers, since the machine and windows recognize the card and the 2 serial ports.  They just do not communicate.  All card I have tried say they are win7 64bit compatible.  Well, so for a serial port I am for the moment using a USB to Serial Dongle, probably try to change it later to a 2 or 4 port edgeport I/O.  (and yes I need serial port, but not for the weather station).

I am running right now the following software.  I run Cumulus for the weather station and to update my weather web page.  I also run (full time) GRLevel3.  I also decode NOAA APT images using wxtoimg.  For the webcam/weathercam I use Yawcam.  Also full time I have running 2 of the satellite programs I use; gpredict and orbitron.  I also keep running from CPUID the program Hardware Monitor (HWMonitor) to keep an eye on temperature, fan rpm's, voltage, etc.

The serial port is used to control the APT radio.  I have an R2FX.  As mentioned before, the software used to decode the images is Wxtoimg (Pro version).  I also use an external second USB sound card to decode the images, instead of using the internal (keep the internal just to play the windows sounds).

Right now this machine also plays as a backup computer, since my primary computer monster is down    Actually right now I am posting from the Dell.

Maybe in a future, I might change the computer for a Nettop, and delegate this computer to another function or duty, but except for the not so much electric economy, this machine is working great so far (knock on wood!!!).

[SLOweather]

I thought I'd posted here, but I guess not. My main SLOweather computer is a Dell Optiplex quad core. The server at the colo is a Colomachine running Fedora 12. And all of the WeatherElement Data Hubs are little Freescale CPU boxes with 8 megs of RAM.

[Andy Thompson]

I know its an overkill, but i use it as a multi-task computer for everyday use, along with running my weather station. Its a nice computer.

[DaculaWeather]

I don't do squat on either of my weather computers. They just sit there working away. 

[smorris]

Didn't see this thread before. I'm running my WeatherCat software on a 27" iMac with an i5 processor and 16 GB RAM.
I guess that would be a standard desktop in the poll. (No external CPU. Everything is there at the bottom and behind the screen)



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[DaculaWeather]

Wow, pretty expensive weather computer! I'll stick with my 5 year old laptop and 6 year old desktop!

[smokeybandit]

Has anyone ever run Cumulus or any of the publishing software for a WS 2080 on a Windows Embedded or Android laptop?

[Mark / Ohio]