Topic: WeeWX and GW1000 API / no radiation picked up / Saratoga templates not ok

[jeanphi500]

Hi all

First post on this forum.. I've been reading it a lot but now time to start posting too

I've been monitoring the weather conditions for quite some time already. Back in 2012 I started with an Oregon WMR200s that was connected to a SheevaPlug running wview, uploading to my site and using the Saratoga templates to display.. It worked rather well but the sensors of the station started to break down (pluviometer already replaced twice, anemometer gripped, erratic signal).
Bottom line I deceided to buy a new station. I chose a Waldbeck Halley, a clone of the FineOffset WH2650. It did not need a console and this was a match.
Instead of wview, I went this time for weewx + GW1000 API + weewx-WD + Saratoga templates.

It is partly working but I found some strange things happening.

Initially I started weewx in simulator mode to check that everything was ok. Then I installed and enabled the GW1000 driver.
I ran the driver for a few hours and it was working fine. I remember seeing at that time the battery levels and -I think- the solar radiation too.

Once I was happy I thought I would purge the database to remove the initial simulator values (I didn't want those to appear in the history). To do that I simply removed all DBs and all generated files.

And here starts the issue I have now. Once weewx restarted the output would not look the same anymore. I don't see the sensor status tab nor the radiation graph.
I looked at the output of the driver and here it is:
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I still continued setting everything up, playing with weewx-WD and Saratoga. Got it to work but some values were incorrect (looked like the parsing of the raw data was offset somehow). For example, the update date in the ajax part is displaying the cloud height and not the date. That might be because I set radiation to true (and there is no radiation being sent by teh WD plugin because of the above bug).

So anyone has an idea about what is happening?
I run firmware 1.6.3 on the WH2650, weewx version 4.4.0, GW1000 API version 0.2.0, weewx-wd version 2.1.2

Thanks!

BTW: I enabled debug and looked at the syslog. No error or anything looking suspicious there

[jeanphi500]

I realized the weewx page was still open in the browser of my Pi. And that was right after I started to use the GW1000 driver.
So I can still see how iot was looking like before purging the data:
There I see the radiation value was N/A:
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You see the sensor status tab was there:
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And this is today, so after the purge and restarting:
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I wonder if before the purge it was not simply there because the simulator produced those values (and not reported by the GW1000 driver afterwards).
I read in another thread that radiation was initially not picked but that bug got resolved later on.. Can it be I'm looking at an older version of it?

[jeanphi500]

And so I should also learn the search function
Answer was given by Gary here: https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=40660.msg421853#msg421853

Will try it and report

[jeanphi500]

OK now the radiation values are back 
The GW1000 was reporting luminosity and that one needed to be translated into radiation in the weewx.conf corrections..

That is one part of the problem solved.

That said, the battery and signal levels are still missing. Is that an option? As they were present before, I assume it's not something I forgot to set in weewx.conf
And those values seem to be reported by the device: I see wh65 and wh25 (binary) battery and signal levels.

Unfortunately that did not solve the issue with the Saratoga templates.
A lot of values are still wrong in there.
You can have a peek at it here:
Weewx output -> http://jalhay.info/meteo2/index.html
Saratoga output -> http://jalhay.info/meteo2/wxindex.php

What I realize is that they go wrong as soon as an update is triggered (numbers get to green). If I hit Ctrl-F5 the values in the white part are correct.. Then they seem to get automatically updated and there it goes wrong. That might mean it's in the ajax part?

[Gyvate]

If I may suggest an approach for you which in my experience promises best results ...
i.e.  Do things step by step

1. see that you first get everything you want (and what is there) displayed on the Seasons skin of weewx.
Then you can be sure that the GW1000 API driver works properly, receives all it can receive and weewx processes the sensor data (weewx term: observations) and stores them in your defined intervals (weewx: archiving interval) in the database.

2. Look that you can properly feed WD (I guess that's Weather Display) - WD has the Ecowitt GW1000 driver which pulls the sensor data from the GW1000 console (similar to the weewx GW1000 API driver).

3. Look into feeding the Saratoga template.

as for 1.:
the Waldberg Halley is afaik the WH2650 (I guess you checked already our matrix: https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=40730.0 and the WH2650/GW1000 comparision; if not then it's time to do this now) + a WH32B (indoor temperature/humidity/pressure sensor) + the WH65/WH69 7-in-1 sensor array.
Your WH2650 can receive the signal and battery status from two devices only: the WH25 (old name for WH32B) and the WH65 sensor array - only the whole array, not every sensor in the array has a signal or battery status.
So, what you already see is all you can get with your current hardware. It's only if you have more/other sensors that you can also get their signal/battery status.
Therefore, to me, at first glance, all looks ok.

2. WD - I know it could be better documented but all the WH32B/WH65 info should be displayed by WD once you enter the IP address of the WH2650 in the station setup Ecowitt GW1000 section.
Then WD will start with an interface daemon called crongw1000.exe under Windows (I'm not familiar with the Linux version of WD, but in principle it should be similar) and all info will be shown on the main user interface/screen.

3. Saratoga - not my area of expertise. Haven't done anything with it so far.

[jeanphi500]

Thanks for the fast answer!

My post can seem a bit confusing because indeed it contains information about successive steps. I worked step by step but I did not stop progressing at the first error

1. Yes the weewx part is working now properly. All it needed was to readjust the radiation computation to use the luminosity. I found it out by reading your answer to a recent post about the same issue
2. I'm not really looking at weather display. It's just a work around. The Saratoga templates are not directly compatible with Weewx. You have to first get the data in WD format then use the WD input option in Saratoga, as if it was coming from WD.

For the rest of course I read the comparison in depth. And that's there that I actually realized the firmwares were identical and I could use the GW1000 API instead of the interceptor (that looked much more elegant).
Yes I understand that it will read battery status and signal strength from my 2 sensors only. But to be honest I thought these would be displayed in teh sensor status tab. But it seems that tab was there only because the DB still contained data from the simulator. As soon as that data disappeared, the tab disappeared.
What you seem to indicate is that I will only see the battery/signal status if I add more sensors. OK, understood then , and maybe something to add for a future enhancement: to be able to display the status even if only 2 sensors are connected.

(as for WD, as said it's only a work around)