Ha this thread is a good blast from the past. I can't help the people looking for a way to directly intercept the wireless data from the Vantage Pro since I never did revisit that, but since the thread just got bumped I thought I'd post a quick 5 year report.
I'm still using the same system as described above: a Belfry data logger (
http://belfryboyweatherbits.blogspot.com/p/the-belfryboy-clone-usb-logger.html) outputs the data from the Davis console to a Beagle Bone computer (similar to a Raspberry Pi) that runs the weeWx Linux program. The system is reasonably stable but I have found that we need to reboot the Davis console every 3 or 4 months, which is a bit annoying but about what I expected. When it stops working the console seems to just stop outputting data although the display is still updating and displaying new wind data, and simply rebooting the Beagle Bone doesn't fix it. Oh well, but it's infrequent enough that it's not the biggest deal. Also hard to troubleshoot further when it's that infrequent.
The weeWX program is super flexible and I highly recommend it. I was able to use a modified version of the RTG ("real time gauge") plugin to upload it's wind data once every 2 seconds, which gets displayed on a webpage:
https://www.lawsonslanding.com/webcam.htmlThe direction indicator turns green every time it gets an update, which sholud be about once every 2 seconds. I posted my modified RTG plugin and the code that's on that site to github if anyone is interested (
https://github.com/wrybread). And on a sidenote, that webpage also displays the output from a Davis Airlink air quality sensor (those make their data available via a web interface, which is easy to work with).
The wind data is also displayed at the top right corner of a slideshow that runs in the company's store:
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
And I can easily use the data for a general report of the conditions:
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
WeeWX also makes it pretty easy to make custom charts, like this one showing wind speed and barometric pressure, which makes it easy to see when the front passes:
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
As far as the Vantage Pro itself, it's been great even here on the beach with all the salt air and storms coming through. As expected I've had to replace the anemometer about once a year, although I finally found that I can just buy the bearings from Davis, so the last couple of years I've done that (that's $20 versus I think $120 for a new anemometer). Davis has been awesome, always there when I've had questions. I'd buy the unit again for sure, though I do wish they'd make it easier to get the data from the unit. Just a simple web interface like the Airlink and maybe the same optional premium package that posts the data to their cloud service would do it.