Weather Software > Macintosh Weather Software
Currently available Mac Weather Station Software
smorris:
This will be a list of currently available Macintosh native Weather Station software. As support changes and/or new products become available, I'll update this list. If anyone has an update, please post it below or send me a PM, and I'll add it to this post. Opinions and comments are mine, and do not reflect input from developers. Developer comments from web sites are in quotes. I am not affiliated with any of the following products, although I have tried out WeatherLink, WeatherCat, Weather Display, and WeatherSnoop.
Before purchasing, be sure that you review the web page and are sure that your weather station hardware is supported!
Davis' WeatherLink for Mac
Does not have all of the functionality of the Windows version. Almost everyone decides to move to one of the third-party options. WeatherLink for Mac is initially required for setting up the Davis Weather Envoy, but not for any weather station model with a Console. NOTE: Open "Get Info" and check off "Open in 32-bit mode" to operate on Mac OS X 10.6 and higher
Included with #6520 USB Data Logger ($165 USD) MacUpdate review link
--- Quote ---Add this popular model of WeatherLink to any Vantage station or Weather Envoy. Suitable for everyone from the home weather buff to the most demanding scientific user. Store weather data even when it's not connected to a computer. Later, download the data and use the software for detailed analysis and graphing.
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Trixology's WeatherCat
WeatherCat is probably the "middle-ground" option. It is very Mac-like in use and configuration, and meets many user's needs for customization, flexibility, and ease of use. Using built-in functionality and user contributed scripts and templates, it can send data to Weather Underground, CWOP, PWSweather, AWEKAS, UK Met Office, various international weather networks and Twitter.
Weather Cat is 42 GBP (currently $68 USD) A fully-functional 14 day trial is available. MacUpdate review link
--- Quote ---'WeatherCat is weather station software for Macintosh computers."
Trixology's WeatherCat is weather software designed to work with a variety of weather station hardware and featuring real-time gauges, synchronized graphs, daily data, and satellite imagery for any date in its database, a variety of reports for different time periods, webcam integration, custom graphs, and more.
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Weather Display
Weather Display is probably the biggest third-party weather software on the PC side, and has a wide following with Mac users, especially those who have moved over from using the PC version. It is extremely configurable and customizable, but has a steeper learning curve. Weather Display can send to all of the services WeatherCat does and more. Brian is good about answering questions seemingly any time of the day.
Weather Display is $60 USD. A fully-functional 30 day trial is available.
--- Quote ---Weather Display is the software to get the most from your weather station. Not only does it support a huge range of stations from all the major manufacturers but it's also stacked with features and options. These include real time, auto scale and graph history graphing, FTP of the weather data to your web page, pager and email notifications of extreme conditions, web download, Metar/ Synop emails, averages/extreme/climate/NOAA reports, web cam upload, grouped file uploads, FTP downloads, decoded metar download's, APRS output (internet and direct com port as well) ,WAP, direct web cam capture, animated web cam images, weatherdials, weather voice, weather answer phone, use of Dallas 1 wire sensors (such as lightning counter, solar sensor, barometer sensor and extra temperature/humidity sensors with any weather station), use a Labjack to add extra temperature or humidity sensor to your existing weather station (USB)... and lots more!
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Tee-Boy's WeatherSnoop
WeatherSnoop surpasses the others on simplicity and ease of use, but at the expense of customization. If you just want to see your weather station data on your computer and upload it to Weather Underground, CWOP, and WeatherBug, then WeatherSnoop is for you!
WeatherSnoop is $20 USD for the Lite version or $60 USD for the full version. Free Trial for unlimited 3-hour sessions. MacUpdate Review link
--- Quote ---WeatherSnoop® connects your Mac to your favorite weather station or Internet-based data source to provide you with a rich graphical representation of your weather data, along with numerous data management and sharing features. And it has the look and feel that you expect from a Mac application.
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Afterten Software's WeatherTracker
WeatherTracker has not been updated since 2010, and the support forum is closed (email support only.) There have been mixed reports on MacWeather.net about getting replies from emailed support requests. I would recommend trying to contact the developer about any pending updates and continued support.
WeatherTracker is $40 USD. A fully-functional 30 day trial is available. MacUpdate review link
--- Quote ---Get the realtime weather out of your console and in into your computer then into the world.
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[EDIT] Got a PM from AfterTen developer Dean Davis that "WeatherTracker from AfterTen is back to being fully supported. I just issued and update to version 1.5.3." Thanks Dean!
wview
I have no experience with wview, so be sure to read through the web page to see if it meets your needs.
wview is "donationware"
--- Quote ---Fast Generation • Non-GUI, Headless, Lightweight • Multi-Lingual • US or Metric Units • Extended Sensor Support • SQLite3 Archive Format • MySQL/PostgreSQL Export • RSS Weather Feeds • Runs on the Linksys NSLU2 and SheevaPlug • Embeddable • 24x7x365 Reliability.
wview is a collection of unix daemons which interface with a supported weather station to retrieve archive records (if generated by the station) and current conditions.
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WeeWX
I have no experience with WeeWX, so be sure to read through the web page to see if it meets your needs.
WeeWX is Open Source
--- Quote ---WeeWX runs on any version of MacOS(X) that has Python (I have tested it on systems back to 10.6.8, not sure about earlier versions), and it works with over 70 different types of hardware (see the 'hardware' link at the weewx.com web site).
Like CumulusMX and wview, WeeWX does not have a graphic user interface - it is a daemon that runs in the background. When data come in from the instrument(s), WeeWX saves the data to a database then spits out html, text, or pretty much any other type of report that you want. You can see some of the reports people have created by browsing the 'showcase' and 'map' links at the weewx.com web site.
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UnderTheWX
I have no experience with UnderTheWX, as I do not have the AcuRite weather station, so be sure to read through the web page to see if it meets your needs.
UnderTheWX is Free on the Mac App Store
--- Quote ---UnderTheWX reads weather data off the popular AcuRite USB Professional Weather Centers and uploads it to Weather Underground, Weathercloud.net, PWSWeather and WOW.
The app is a Status Bar Menu which displays Temperature, Humidity, Wind speed and direction, Rainfall and Barometer. UnderTheWX supports the AcuRite 01025, 01036, 02032, 02064 and 06037M USB Personal Weather Stations.
Uploading data to Weather Underground is also supported using the latest "Rapid Fire" update feature.
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Whichever route you end up going, be sure to join the user forums for that software for great tips, user supplied templates, camaraderie, etc.
Steve
elagache:
Hi Steve and WXForum Mac fans,
Thanks for putting together that very complete list of available Mac software. That really dots very i and crosses every T. Hope we'll see more Mac fans use their favorite computer platform to monitor the weather.
Cheers, Edouard UU
bwc:
Nice start in here, Steve! And I see they signed you right up to mod! (PS - I still think this should be an Apple forum, to include iOS wx software, which I'm sure will continue to grow along with that platform)
I'll add a little info:
Davis Weatherlink for Mac
Took me an hour to get running, it was that 32-bit mode problem. They don't document it anywhere on their site or in the included instructions. Once it's running, to say it's obtuse is an understatement. Within the hour, I had decided it was a massive waste of money. Davis are you listening? I'd love to talk to you about it!
Big Weatherlink note: does not upload to Weather Underground. Can not be extended to upload to Weather Underground.
I used the demo of WeatherCat next, which is excellent, but more than I need right now.
I bought Tee Boy's WeatherSnoop lite, because I didn't need the gauges. I really appreciate the ability to upgrade to the full version should I ever want the gauges, at no extra cost than if I had bought the full version out right. Big plus for Snoop: it can upload JSON and XML formatted weather to the server of your choice, if like me, you're interested in home-brew weather sites.
Snoop's been running for several days, but I'm looking at WU for the first time today, and see my station hasn't been uploading since 5am or so. I need to hustle home and figure that out! I also had a mulit-day, multi-hundred gig cloud backup started two days ago pulling on my system resources, so I wouldn't be surprised if the combo had somehow caused the trouble. We'll see.
(As an aside, I highly recommend CrashPlan for cloud backups. I run a Pro install at work (we're our own cloud), and separately use CP's consumer cloud solution at home. Works seamlessly.)
Note on both WeatherCat and WeatherSnoop:
If you're like me and have a Mac mini in your entertainment center, and you also use this as your interface to your weather station, beware! If you use an HDTV as your head, 720p is not high enough resolution to see the entire windows or either WeatherCat nor WeatherSnoop (lite or full). I don't understand why they don't just add in scrollbars for those of us with the TVs, but I understand we're an edge case.
For those investigating Macs as weather servers, I'm running a Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 1.83 GHz (Mac mini 2,1), with 2 GB RAM, from 2007. It's running OS X 10.7.5, which is the final OS available for this vintage. I use the USB data logger that came packaged with that WeatherLink software I complained about earlier. I found on the WeatherSnoop FAQs that you should update the driver for that data logger to the newest version available from the OEM, newer than Davis offers from their support site.
TheBum:
Weatherlink does have one important use that none of the other applications do: the ability to set up a Davis Wireless Weather Envoy. It cannot be done with any other software package I'm aware of. That's the only reason I keep it around.
I would steer well clear of WeatherTracker. I was a long time user and it had some good things going for it, but twice the developer went AWOL, the last time seems to be permanent. It kinda irks me that he's still selling it.
I'm currently using WeatherSnoop and have been generally happy with it. It's pretty well supported and does the job it's intended to do. I do wish it supported better web and iOS interfaces, but it does a good job uploading to Weather Underground so I can see my historical data when I'm on the go.
smorris:
Marz's logger discussion split off into separate thread: http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=19106.0
Steve
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