Author Topic: Weather Station History (and Software too)  (Read 769 times)

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Offline galfert

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Weather Station History (and Software too)
« on: December 05, 2019, 11:20:48 AM »
From reading some of the older posts on this forum anyone can learn how this forum started as a temporary solution in an attempt to get back the domain name of the old weatherforum.net address that was lost due to hosting/registrar that went belly up. That is all well and good and interesting saga to read.

I'm interested in some other aspects of how the forum then grew to be what it is now in respect to discussions regarding the different Weather Station brands. Looking at the following boards on this forum you can find the oldest threads with the following dates:

Davis:       Aug 2006
LaCrosse:  Nov 2006
Oregon:    Sep 2008
Acurite:     Aug 2011
Ambient:   Dec 2011

Okay so seeing Davis at the inception of this forum is no surprise, shortly followed by LaCrosse a couple months later. What I find rather interesting is that both the Acurite and Ambient boards did not start until mid to late 2011. Surely both Acurite and Ambient had stations prior to 2011....no?  Where were Acurite and Ambient discussed prior to 2011 on this forum? I looked in Other Weather Station Hardware and found no evidence of either. It just seems strange. Was board data lost? I do remember reading that both Ambient and Acurite had their own forums by those companies so perhaps most users of those brands did not even venture to even consider wxforum.net. So I think I may have answered my own question. I can only imagine that this forum got more busy when Acurite and Ambient shut down their forums. What year did each of those forums get shut down?

LaCrosse enjoyed some interest from 2006 until around 2013 and then interest fizzled.

It looks like Oregon came into the scene on this forum in 2008 but around 2015 it fizzled too.

What happened around 2013 to 2015 that caused both LaCrosse and Oregon to not be as popular? Was it new stuff from Acurite and Ambient? That is what seems logical based on price point. It does seem as though both LaCrosse and Oregon have not come out with anything new in some years, or if they have then it seems that the competition is stronger.

So question for those of you that have been around since before 2011...where were these brands discussed? I'd like a some history into the various brands and what they were like and their capabilities and what people were doing with them back then. What software supported them...or anything else of interest. How far back were Acurite and Ambient making weather stations?

You know those neat time lines that show version history on Wikipedia for various things. You can for example see these some of which require clicking in order to enlarge and be readable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_web_browser#/media/File:Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Macintosh_models
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Microsoft_Windows#/media/File:Windows_Updated_Family_Tree.png

...well it would be neat to see some time line of weather stations. Not necessary in graphic form like above but at least to start just in text written out. But lets not leave out weather software too like Cumulus, Meteobridge, Weather-Display, and WeeWx that seem to be popular now but also defunct ones like WUHU, VWS, VVP, and less popular ones like Weathercat and Weathersnoop...etc.

I also find it interesting that there is no Davis Instruments topic on Wikipedia. There is no Acurite either. There is a very small Ambient Weather reference.

Please share if you have any information.
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Offline saratogaWX

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2019, 11:53:58 AM »
There used to be an Ambient Forum, but it was shut down in September, 2008 -- the VWS area ramped up here then as we'd welcomed refugees from that forum.

There were discussions on that forum (as I remember) regarding Ambient-branded weather station hardware (in addition to the Ambient software like VWS, WeatherFlash, ImageSalsa/MovieSalsa), but all was lost as the testy admin of that forum just nuked it w/o backup.
There were also discussions on the original weatherforum.net that were also lost when that forum died and no good backup was ever found.
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Offline waiukuweather

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2019, 01:01:03 PM »
and I have been there through the whole lot  :grin: :shock:

Offline ocala

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2019, 05:43:30 PM »
Didn't this place originally start actually start a long time ago when Accuweather started getting heavy handed with with the moderation of their forum. I seem to remember something about starting a forum that was independent of all vendors, software, etc.
Brain is kinda foggy on this one.
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Offline waiukuweather

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2019, 05:54:20 PM »
there was a guy called Gary Oldman (i think?) with the original forum

Offline ocala

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2019, 06:03:23 PM »
Yeah, that name sounds familiar. I think he was a fireman if I'm not mistaken.
Soo long ago.
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Offline CW2274

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2019, 06:23:28 PM »

Offline saratogaWX

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2019, 06:33:00 PM »
It was Gary Oldham who'd started the original weatherforum.net site (and a precursor one on proboards before that).  Yes, he was a fireman, and yes, he started the forum(s) specifically to be independent of any weather software/hardware sponsorship.  At the time, weathermatrix (subsumed by accuweather) didn't really have discussions for weather hardware/software. The Weather-Display forum handled WD software (and some support for various station hardware).  The ambientsupport forum handled Ambient products (wasn't run by Ed, but by a heavy-handed admin).   Seeing the lack of a hardware/software agnostic forum, Gary established one.  We are the inheritors of his legacy :)
Ken True/Saratoga, CA, USA main site: saratoga-weather.org
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Offline saratogaWX

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #8 on: December 05, 2019, 06:33:34 PM »
Ken True/Saratoga, CA, USA main site: saratoga-weather.org
Davis VP1+ FARS, Blitzortung RED, GRLevel3, WD, WL, VWS, Cumulus, Meteobridge
Free weather PHP scripts/website templates - update notifications on Twitter saratogaWXPHP

Offline ocala

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Re: Weather Station History (and Software too)
« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2019, 08:11:53 PM »
Weathermatrix! That was the site.
The blues had a baby and they named it Rock & Roll