Topic: Weatherlink 6.0.3 and publishing measured values

[zwik]

Hi all,

Let me give you a little background story. We're quite a popular and successful public astronomy club based in The Netherlands which is ran by all volunteers. We've several telescopes and even have a couple of unique instruments and work with some schools and universities. As it is our duty to inform the public we also want to teach them about the weather. We got a Davis Vantage Pro weather station and we try to gather the data from it into a database and publish that data with some background story to the public. We do not want to publish the data to the internet yet.

So, we got the weatherstation the display which is currently at the reception and a datalogger that is connect trough USB on a Windows computer. We've installed Weatherlink 6.0.3 and tried to set it up but we're not entirely sure how to do that. We've found some templates that can generate HTML but that's not really what we want. We want to save all data every 1 minute to a database and we're not sure how to do that with this software. We've found some other Python and Node.js programs that should be able to do this but those require an IP that we believe to an IP datalogger while ours is serial (USB).

Can you help us out with either Weatherlink or maybe some other software that allows us to publish the data coming from the weatherstation to a our own database. Alternatives are welcome, in fact, it would be great if we could use (CLI) software in a Docker container so we're not bound to Windows anymore. We're quite handy with software overall, there's Python and Javascript knowledge in house so we could code the database link if necessary. Thanks for any help and input in advance!

[PaulMy]

Hi,
As an alternate to WeatherlinkPC you can use CumulusMX.  CumulusMX saves data to its own txt files but also has built-in MySQL feature for realtime, dayfile, monthly log, and custom.  And you can customize for your own DB requirement.  I don't use it and not familiar, but many others are.


Enjoy,
Paul

[zwik]

Thanks Paul! We'll have a go at it.

[zwik]

Alright, we had a look but we can't get it to work properly.

We've installed CumulusMX latest version downloaded from Github. We configured it to use the Vantage Pro 2 weather station and we see it connecting it in the terminal and downloading data, once. The results however are just 0 values. When we have a look back in Weatherlink we do see result that are a realistic. Also back in CumulusMX we don't see any "data logs", we expected those to be filled with data. The two programs didn't run at the same time, we closed one before we used the other. In Weatherlink we set to update every 1 minute, the same in CumulusMX but it only appears to download at the beginning of the session. We've let it run for over an hour but no extra data seems to be downloaded, according to the terminal.

Any help is appreciated .

[PaulMy]

Hi,
Correct, only one program can access the console/logger at the same time.
Do you know if previously Weatherlink was using the logger in Serial mode and not USB mode?  It needs to be set in serial for third party programs to access the station.


When you started CumulusMX the first time I presume it gave a message that it would need to be restarted after you set the station type in the Settings - Station settings on the localhost:8998 dashboard, is that correct?


In the CumulusMX folder is a MXdiags folder.  There will be detailed diagnostics on start up and running. It will create a new file at each new start.  Have a look in there, and if not familiar zip it and attach to a reply post.   


You will find great help here but more seasoned users at the Cumulus Support forum [size=78%]Cumulus Support - Index page (hosiene.co.uk)[/size]


Enjoy,
Paul

[zwik]

Thanks for the quick reply!

We use Weatherlink in USB mode, so I'll change that first to serial and try to get it working again there. We restarted CumulusMX several times indeed to make sure the changes were being picked up. I'll post the logs here if we're getting stuck again. Thanks again for the quick reply!

[PaulMy]

Hi,
You're very welcome.
There is a specific process to get it into serial mode and there are posts here on the forum on that, and Weatherlink will also run in that serial mode.  I run my Weatherlink 6.0.5 that way on another Windows 8 PC.
You will likely check through Weatherlink what COM port the station is connected on as you'll need that in CumulusMX settings.


Some good discussion here on Davis data loggers  [size=78%]Understanding USB logger modes - Davis Weather Stations Knowledgebase - 1 (manula.com)[/size]


Enjoy,
Paul

[zwik]

That last post was right on time otherwise we were stuck on that again .

We want to update the data every minute, but that still doesn't seem to happen still. Or, we don't see any data logs being added while we do see things happening in the mxdiags logs.

[PaulMy]

Not quite sure if I understand if it is working at all, and if you have been able to go through the settings, which would include the logging interval and can be at 1 minute.  Is there any text in the DOS CMD screen after you run CumulusMX.exe other than a few lines of progress before the Normal running?  If it is working it should display on the localhost:8998 dashboard, and write to the Data Logs monthly file which is now 03-21 and press Load.  You can also check the file in your CumulusMX\data folder.  Not sure if I can diagnose everything but if you were to zip the MXdiags and attach we can have a look.


Enjoy,
Paul

[Mattk]

Firstly the USB logger and WeatherLinkPC has no problems logging data at 1 minute to the logger, From that you could do a variety of things with the 1 minute data depending on how you wanted to push it out. For example you could upload a data archive (ascii file at user selected intervals) with auto download of the station first and parse that into basically whatever system of you choice and ability. It's all doable   

[zwik]

The logger is indeed working but we're not sure how to software is supposed to work . I've attached the logs as a zip and a screenshot to this post.

As you can tell from the screenshot, there are only 11 data log entries which are from yesterday evening, while if I look at the gauges I see data that is current and reflects this mornings readings. I do see entries in the logs though but not in the console/terminal of CumulusMX itself, only the first time when the program started. Is this how it should work?

After I restart CumulusMX we see in the terminal that it downloads archive data and we see a "progress bar" in percentage that is it processing the archives. If we then look at the data logs we see there are over 700 data log entries. See the diags and screenshot again . Is it supposed to work like that?

[Mattk]

I would forget about CumulusMX, that's just extra software you don't need.

Set your USB logger to a 1 min archive interval Setup>Set Archive>Interval and accept the prompt to clear the data logger

Now depending on what you actually want to do with the 1 min data you could say export/upload that as a 2 day Data Archive (downld02.txt) to a local directory (or FTP and/or Internet transfer) automatically, downloading the Weather Station first and at a user selectable upload interval. What you do with that data file and data is then up to you. WeatherLinkPC needs to be open and running to do this

Have a look at Setup>Internet Settings>then one of the 8 Profile Configuration options and report Files to Upload>Select report Files and tick the 2-Day Data Archive box. You will also need to go into [Internet Connection Settings] and setup the Local Transfer Enabled>Local Path   

[PaulMy]

The programs work quite easy when it is successfuly connected to the logger, and that is usually just by completing the Station settings - i.e. station type, Davis connection settings = Use serial


From the attachments that looks like only console data (inside temp, hum. press) and nothing from the ISS.
That first image marked at MXdiags is not the diags file.  In your CumulusMX\MXdiags folder should be files named with datetimestamp.txt  These will give you a blow-by-blow what is happening in the program.  Zip up the last 2 or 3 files and then we can look what is happening.


Enjoy,
Paul

[zwik]

Hey guys, thanks for the help once more. Sorry for all the questions every time .  That Weatherlink software isn't the easiest to use .

We're playing with Weatherlink again and we're able to export to some HTML file every minute now. However we don't like the templates, at all. Is there a ways that we can just output every sensor to just a text file? It doesn't need to be HTML at all. Can we change the templates? Can we generate a template in some way? What we want is to read the output file and put it into a database ourselves.

The awesome part about CumulusMX is that it can run as a service, which is nice we think. We didn't tinker with it anymore but if this can output to an external program, like a homebrew Python script that would be great as well. That way, we as a data reader program don't need to monitor a file anymore, in contrast to Weatherlink, which makes things a little less complicated.

[mcrossley]

Cumulus MX can output data to files, MQTT, MySQL, or URLs with data in the URL string.

Alternatively you can pull data from it on demand using http GET or POST.

[PaulMy]

Hi,
Weatherlink has sample templates.  You can use them, or modify them, or create your own.  So you can pretty well create your own template and use the many Weatherlink webtags.  Attached is a list of the webtags.  I have in the past modified the sample template ones but never attempted to create a new webpage with them.  But I am sure you'll find lots of resources through some search .


My preference is still Cumulus for what the program offers and what you can do with it, and the ease of it.


Enjoy,
Paul

[johnd]

Weatherlink has sample templates. 

Also, the Weatherlink webtags work with any sort of text file template - doesn't need to be HTML and could just be a vanilla text file if that's what you want. I imagine that Cumulus is much the same.

[mcrossley]

Weatherlink has sample templates. 

Also, the Weatherlink webtags work with any sort of text file template - doesn't need to be HTML and could just be a vanilla text file if that's what you want. I imagine that Cumulus is much the same.

Indeed, the output could even be a python script if you want.

[zwik]

Hey all,

Instead of using Weatherlink we're using CumulusMX instead. Weatherlink is the extra software we don't need . CumulusMX is, in our opinion, easier to configure and can directly push data into our database. It also can run as a service which makes it less error sensitive if someone touches the computer. We got everything up and running now.

I'd like to thank for everyone's valuable input!

[PaulMy]

Glad you got it to your liking.


Enjoy,
Paul