recommendation: "open-friendly" hardware; ideally ethernet; feature set equivalent to Vantage pro 2

[burton]

hello!

been running weewx with a vantage vue with the USB davis dataloguer. all around great.

organizing another project and looking to upgrade a few things:

 - solar radiation

 - friendly protocols

 - ethernet connectivity 

i dislike having to keep the clumsy vantage vue console hardware in the setup. i dislike having to use USB between the host and datalogger/station. i dislike the fact that the station and console communicate with an unfriendly proprietary protocol.

budget could be up to twice the cost of a Vantage pro 2+datalogger. could also be the combination of a few independant sensors or platforms, but it has to be reliable and serviceable (i.e. not a sparkfun DIY kit). (i've seen the effort to connect directly to the station through a SDR (thus skipping the console and USB) which i personally find interesting, but it's a little too fringy for this project).

thanks for any pointers!

[Tom Hogland]

Two simple Davis options - #6100 Weatherlink Live replaces the USB datalogger, console and PC, directly receives and uploads data via ethernet. But, it also eliminates weewx and is over $200. (Can it also upload to an IP? Not sure - I'll have to read about it now...) Or, a #6316 Weather Envoy replaces the console with a smaller wireless receiver that then uses your existing datalogger and plugs into your existing PC setup. (This is what I use.) Can be had easily for under $150.

This doesn't fix your sensor and protocol issues but simplifies the hardware as you listed. You can also easily add the solar rad sensor to an existing VP2.

[burton]

a-ha: i had confused the "weather envoy" with the "weather link subscription service" -- i need the local weewx software as i use weewx to also aggregates some soil/plant sensors.

just to confirm my understanding: (the davis documentation is not completely clear) the little cable coming out of the Weather Envoy as seen images is actually the tail of a Data Logger — but has to be purchased separately, right? So in essence the Weather Envoy is replacement for the Console?

And also yes: actually the VP 2 Pro PLUS (lots of qualificative there) includes the solar radiation. so that would be a complete solution, and skips the console. I'll keep looking a bit into non-davis solutions (i'm interested in learning more about the field), but i now have a fallback plan.

thanks!

[Tom Hogland]

The VP2 Plus includes solar radiation, but otherwise is identical so it still requires either the console and datalogger or a Weatherlink Live. You plug your existing datalogger from the console into the Envoy and it does the uploading, which frees up the console to go somewhere you might actually want it. The Envoy will also receive other sensors like the leaf moisture, soil temp etc. just like the console does.

I poked around some this morning but haven't yet found the docs on the Live to see if it will save/upload data locally. I use weewx to upload to WU, CWOP, AWEKAS, etc. and I believe the Live only supports WU (and maybe not that). So, while I'd love to move from a Envoy/logger/PC to a Live, I still need weewx to upload elsewhere and save local data.

[vince]

On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 12:25:42 PM UTC-8 tom.h...@gmail.com wrote:

I poked around some this morning but haven't yet found the docs on the Live to see if it will save/upload data locally. I use weewx to upload to WU, CWOP, AWEKAS, etc. and I believe the Live only supports WU (and maybe not that). So, while I'd love to move from a Envoy/logger/PC to a Live, I still need weewx to upload elsewhere and save local data.

You might look into meteobridge but that thing's documentation confuses the heck out of me, so your mileage may vary.