VP walk through

[offroadjosh]

Is there someone on here that would be willing to talk through using virtual vp? i have tried several times to get it to work and have failed(trial version) i also loaded the drive and still could not get it.(could it be cause i am using serial?)


Josh

[George Richardson]

Josh,
Not to be a smart a*s, but, have you read the manual?
George

[Carson Weather]

I just bought it a few days ago.

I got stuck on the port settings for a couple minutes.
In Virtual VP. at the com port settings, where it says "com16", you need to use "com6" on the software your trying to make it talk to.
(You can tweak the associations with the driver if needed)

Oh.... You did install the separate driver, didn't you??? 

[saratogaWX]

You need (in addition to VirtualVP) a COM port driver setup to make it all work.

I use the N8VBvCOM driver on my system (available from SoftWX at same page as VirtualVP download)

COM3 is the Davis VP console

The N8VBvCOM driver is set to map

COM15 -> COM5
COM16 -> COM6
COM17 -> COM7
COM18 -> COM8

I have VirtualVP set to use

COM15 for WeatherLink
COM16 for Weather-Display
COM17 for VWS
COM18 for Cumulus

For each weather software, I configure them to use the other half of each mapped port-pair

COM5 for WeatherLink
COM6 for Weather-Display
COM7 for VWS
COM8 for Cumulus

and it all works just fine   The trick is to have the port-pair mapping set up, have VirtualVP talk to the high-value of each port-pair and the weather software talk to the low COM value of the port-pair.

Hope this helps...
Best regards,
Ken

[offroadjosh]

i tried all that and cannot get it too work


josh

[saratogaWX]

What part(s) don't work?

Can the VirtualVP talk to the Console?

On the VirtualVP screen, does it show Heard From (never)?

On the weather software, does it say 'unable to connect'?

Lots of points to break the chain.. try isolating it from the Console -> VirtualVP -> weather software.

[lddaly]

i tried all that and cannot get it too work


josh

Hi Josh,
When I first started using VirtualVP, I missed the step of selecting the Disconnect and Connect option next to File in the menu bar. This is required after making communications port changes. 

[offroadjosh]

What happens is i set it and it connects to the console no problem. Then i set the ports like 4/14 and so on then i try to connect to them on weather ling first and get nothing nor or vws. i have downloaded the drive


Josh

[Ray Proudfoot]

Hi Josh,

Have you rebooted the PC after assigning the COM port? That foxed me for a day or so before I tried it and then everything worked just fine. 

Cheers,
Ray
Cheshire, England.

[offroadjosh]

OK so i have  done a reboot and tried several otherthings and i keep getting the message error specified comport does not exist.


Josh

[mmorris]

So this is a picture of what my setup looks like it might help or not.

http://www.itswebsitehome.com/VP2.jpg

[tinplate]

Here are some screenshots that may help. The first three show the driver config, VirtualVP config, and VPLive config in a typical setup. The 4th picture is a schema of the connections. The 5th is a typical configuration of WeatherLink. Two common problems: 1) before trying to use VirtualVP, the user had WeatherLink configured to communicate with the console using the USB (USB Express) selection. This puts the datalogger into USB Express mode. Once in that mode, other software can't talk to the console using the USB to serial driver that Davis provides. You have to use a little utility program that comes with WeatherLink, and can also be downloaded from the Davis website to put the datalogger back in the normal mode that allows the use of the USB to serial driver. 2) the N8VBvCom driver gets installed multiple times. Check the Device page in Windows to ensure there is one and only one instance of N8VBvCOM. If there are more than one, uninstall them all via the Devices page, and then install it again (just once).

[tinplate]

final pic (was allowed only 4 pics per post)

[offroadjosh]

Thanks George actually got me up and running but those pics i will save for when i get the full version so i can set it up fast:)

thanks!!

Josh

[DaculaWeather]

ANOTHER UPDATE - I read in another post that VP needs to finish downloading the archive before it accepts any connections. Am I not being patient enough for it to make the connections? Should I wait until the archive box goes away before I panic?

UPDATE More info...

Ok, trying to get it going here and having an issue.

My com driver is installed (from the Virtual VP site) and it's installed only once (with no little yellow or red thingys).
It's setup exactly like the pictures in terms of port matching.
Davis is talking to COM 5 and to Virtual VP

6 <---> 16
7 <---> 17
VWS is set to COM 6
WeatherLink to COM 7

VP is set to 16 for VWS
VP is set to 17 for Weatherlink
VP talks to the Vue no problem.

VP never hears from VWS or Weatherlink.

I do a scan from Weatherlink and it finds no ports so obviously VP has captured COM 5.

Everything looks like it should work but no. And yes, the computer was restarted. If it matters, I managed computers for a living for 25 years so I know a little about what's going on... of course I could still be the village idiot.  

Not sure where to start looking now. I'm trying to get this going so I can use StartWatch but can't get past this problem.

[DaculaWeather]

Nevermind... I wasn't waiting for the archive transfer to take place. My bad.

[DaculaWeather]

How long does it normally take VP to read the archive data when it starts. A couple of times today when I was testing it took almost 4 and a half minutes! I want to make sure that I put enough of a gap between VP and VWS in StartWatch. One time VP hadn't finished reading the archive and VWS loaded and just sat there, even after VP was done.

[W3DRM]

I believe VVP only reads the entire archive when it is first loaded. After that it only has to read those records that have been captured since the last update. It's been a long time since I installed so I don't remember exactly how long it was the first time. But now, it loads in a few seconds max.

What baud rate is your console connected at? I run my VP2 at 19,200 without any problems at all.

[DaculaWeather]

It's set at 19200. I was surprised how long it took the first two times. It's seems it's settled down now. My only concern was the timing of the loads from StartWatch. I Virtual VP isn't ready to accept connections and VWS loads, VWS just sits there forever doing nothing.

[jmcmurry]

There's also a port monitor option and you can set your weather program to start after the port becomes available.

- Jim

[DaculaWeather]

I saw that but when I tried to enter a com port it prompted for an IP address. Now after you said that, I realized that it was asking for the local host address... duh. I kept thinking "I'm not using IP?"

Thanks for your help in jogging my brain, I'll make sure to get that setup!

[Kamakzie]

I'm having problems as well.  I had to use the com0com driver because its the only one with 64 bit support.  I disabled windows digital signing in Windows 7 and the driver shows up as working.  Anyways when my Davis Vantage Vue connects to com 3 USB datalogger the data transfer is way slow.  I gets new data once every 20+ seconds and I'm not sure what I did wrong...

[DaculaWeather]

Weatherlink doesn't communicate very often with the datalogger. It grabs a bunch of packets at once and disconnects. It will then wait a minute (or however long it is, I'm not at home to look) and do it again.

[WXMoab]

Very strange. I was just having issues and could not get green on the two virtual consoles I needed so of course the software wouldn't connect (VWS and WL). I had a good connection to the actual console via COM5 and it downloaded the data fine. I read this thread and the full manual and nothing. I finally went into the configurator and clicked "install driver" and that fixed it. I don't understand why the driver wasn't already installed because I installed it via the exe setup program. I thought I was seeing it in the device manager and even after clicking install it still looks the same unless I'm looking at the wrong one. Anyway it works now and I figured this might help someone else in the future. Sure is nice to be able to run more than one program. Now I just need to register VVP some point.