Anybody here have a Davis Instruments weather station?
Received recently, works locally, having some difficulty maintaining link to the Weather Underground
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website apparently related to keeping time synch.
Couldn't find a group that seemed to have the subject; Davis appears not to have a forum of their own for some inexplicable reason so thought I'd see if anybody here has any experience or knows of a more suitable forum. (Did find one web-based that looked useful but half-dozen failed attempts at registering ran me off... :( )
You don't say what station you are using or what software. I assume it is a Vantage Pro 2 and you are using WeatherLink. There are lots of forums out there covering these devices. The Davis site, itself, has a lot of information. Make sure you go the correct site, though.
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is their site.
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is NOT. One forum I use is the Yahoo vantagepro group. It is active from time to time, but not in the last few weeks.
Regarding your actual problem, I use a number of weatherlink features including uploading to my own website, but I have never tried uploading to weather underground.
It has a FAQ section which didn't seem to address the question other than pass the buck. I didn't find any user interactive forum link; did I miss it?
If there are some other forums I'd appreciate any link(s) you're aware of. As said, my search found only one and it's signup/registration page defeated my patience. :( It did have a number of similar related queries on the link w/ Wunderground but not the specific symptoms quite that I'm seeing.
I'm not terribly interested in posting a page of my own I think altho I supposed that would be a possibility I have no interest in keeping up anything and was just looking for the link for the grandkids who are far away to see what the farm conditions are and it's the site I typically use otherwise...
It occurs to me, Wunderground, which I assume you are referring to, has some rather stringetnt requirements, not jes letting any ol' tom/dich/harry become an included station. We have an iffy station listed on Wunderground which is sometimes online and other, not. Not reassuring and not sure why Wunderground keeps them.
That said, I hope you get it sorted out, as I think the more stations, the better. I also hope yer station equipment holds up. For the price, I've heard some rather discouraging feedback on Davis and am no longer enamored with that option. For ppl considering an equipment purchase, a rather unlikely, but not suprising, review source is ham radio fans. Check it out:
AFAICT there's no restriction by Wunderground regarding uploading any station that has a compatible software link. Those are "PWS" stations. There are some reqm'ts to get on the NOAA MADIS network, but I've not yet futzed around to see just what it takes there.
The problem I've had w/ staying connected to Wunderground seems to be totally related simply keeping an absolute time synch; get even a few seconds behind and Wunderground doesn't show the data on the upload as current if the minute hasn't flipped when it's time--the data goes into some archive that I've never figured how to get to rather than the current view and the station looks like it's not responding even though the communication is continuing.
My frustration w/ the Davis end is there seems to be no way to set the clock that accurately; the firmware response is slow and seems also to be variable and the only way to set that I've found is manually. So, I can get it close enough on the right side and it'll function fine for some period of time then drift seems to cause a time mismatch and it'll never recover until reset the time on the Davis console. I ain't got the patience to keep this up. Unless others have figured out a way around the problem I'm seeing I can understand the large number of unresponsive stations.
My son got this for me and did all the digging into it so I can only hope he made a smart choice. He did a bunch of installations for a research installation of some sort in the Raleigh area but they were $10k/station kind of things; obviously out of the question for the purpose here.
I'm going to have to move it; the silo and barn appear to be blocking wind far more than I thought they would where I put it first (it was convenient more than anything and I didn't want yet another pole somewhere to have to go around so it's on a post on the loading chute at the moment only about 100-ft away from the 60-ft silo.
When it dries out enough I can get the manlift down there w/o getting stuck I may try sticking it on the top of the light pole down in the feedlot; that'll be pushing the communications distance probably, though as the elevator and Butler bin are in between. Amazing w/ all the area out here there doesn't seem a good place to put it... :)
I think whatever you can do is good enough. Micro climates being what they are, jes measure what you have and want to see. Definitely locate the anemometer in the most optimum wind location, wherever the felt wind is the most prominent. nb
It "worked" only too well for me. After about a half-dozen trials trying to figure out what the silly-looking munged-on characters are supposed to be only to be told my best guess wasn't it, I finally got another step farther and then it didn't like something else. I gave up.
Well, depends on what you want. I see no point in it at all unless values are at least reasonably accurate. We had 30-40 sustained gusts to 60+ last Saturday and in the location it is sitting it registered only in the 20's on average w/ one gust of 59 mph.
The wind was from the NW and while I figured was going to be far enough from barn and silo to not be shielded too much, either it was or the anemometer isn't up to W KS (altho is supposed rated to 100+ mph).
So, I'm going to at least try it some other place(s)...
BTW, for some reason the Wunderground link has survived overnight now for some reason...guess we'll see how it does for a while.
I sent query to Davis re: time synch'ing and how they recommend accomplishing same and why don't use a time-server in the firmware to do it. See if they respond w/ anything useful in addition.
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