Registering on weewx map.

[Bent Jensen]

Hi again

I just wanted for the fun to see if my Weewx station was registered on the Weewx map. But it is not!

I checked if I had set the station_register variable to true, which I had. And according to the documentation that should be enough as long as there allready is set a station_url in the [Station] paragraph (which is set to station_url = https://detlillehus.info/weewx).

I have also tried to set a station_url in the paragraph of

[StdRESTful]

    [[StationRegistry]]

And tried with both my own domain and that of WU, but with no change. By the way WU works just fine.

Is there something else I could have done wrong?

Best regards

Bent (who is awed by weewx)

[Greg from Oz]

You need this bit:

[[StationRegistry]]

        # To register this weather station with weewx, set this to true

        register_this_station = true

[Andrew Milner]

It can take up to a week to actually register on the site.

[mwall]

there have been a few successful registrations by https://detlillehus.info:

2020.05.26 05:27:12

2020.05.29 04:54:07

2020.05.31 19:13:21

2020.05.31 19:20:42

2020.06.01 05:36:49

2020.06.03 05:43:42

and i can see it in the listing (expand the 'Stations' section):

http://weewx.com/stations.html

if you look in your weewx log file you will see the registration attempts.  if the registration was unsuccessful, you will see a log message with the reason.  use grep something like this:

sudo grep StationRegistry /var/log/syslog

for example, if you did not configure registration, you will see this:

Jun  3 08:09:58 7up weewx-sdr[6174]: restx: StationRegistry: Registration not requested.

registration happens immediately

it should never take more than 5 minutes for your station to show up on the map, assuming that it registered successfully

when registration is enabled, your station will contact the registry server once per week

if the registry server does not hear from your station for more than 30 days, it will be removed from the map

fwiw, we have been making some changes to the capture system, but this does not affect the registration.  (when a station is registered, the registry server attempts to make a screen capture of the website at the url used for registration.  that image is then displayed in the map.  there are a few skins that have been causing the capture system to fail.  many stations with belchertown fail - i think it might be caused by windy.fm, but have not been able to track it down yet.  possibly need more depth in the virtual colormap we use to do the captures...)

m

[William Burton]

Hello,

Thanks for providing some detail on how the site registration process works.

If the screen capture for your own site fails or if the site's skin has been changed, is there a way to get the registration process to retry the screen capture?

Is there a way to test the screen capture outside of the registration process to see if it will work correctly?

Thanks,

-Bill

On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 8:22:59 AM UTC-4, mwall wrote:

...

[Bent Jensen]

Yes, but my station has been running for years :-)

[mwall]

On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 1:55:15 PM UTC-4, William Burton wrote:

If the screen capture for your own site fails or if the site's skin has been changed, is there a way to get the registration process to retry the screen capture?

Is there a way to test the screen capture outside of the registration process to see if it will work correctly?

hi bill,

i made a wiki page to explain the registry:

https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/registry

i'm still working on the capture process.  the previous implementation used wkhtmltoimage, but that would periodically suck up every bit of memory and swap, bringing the capture server to its knees.  using phantomjs has alleviated that somewhat, but there are still some problems.  i'll try to remember to write up what i learn once its sorted out.

there is no way to force an update of the capture.  it is a somewhat stochastic process (intentionally, to avoid overloading the system).

once the capture process is more reliable we will be able to tune it.  who knows, some kind of waybackmachine-like abilities might even be possible!

m

 

[Bent Jensen]

Hi Greg

You need this bit:

[[StationRegistry]]

        # To register this weather station with weewx, set this to true

        register_this_station = true

As I wrote this has allready been done. Actually it's an station with about 2 years uninterrupted run (more or less). And has been activated from start. :-) 

[Bent Jensen]

Hi mwall

there have been a few successful registrations by https://detlillehus.info:

2020.05.26 05:27:12

2020.05.29 04:54:07

2020.05.31 19:13:21

2020.05.31 19:20:42

2020.06.01 05:36:49

2020.06.03 05:43:42

and i can see it in the listing (expand the 'Stations' section):

http://weewx.com/stations.html

if you look in your weewx log file you will see the registration attempts.  if the registration was unsuccessful, you will see a log message with the reason.  use grep something like this:

sudo grep StationRegistry /var/log/syslog

for example, if you did not configure registration, you will see this:

Jun  3 08:09:58 7up weewx-sdr[6174]: restx: StationRegistry: Registration not requested.

registration happens immediately

it should never take more than 5 minutes for your station to show up on the map, assuming that it registered successfully

when registration is enabled, your station will contact the registry server once per week

if the registry server does not hear from your station for more than 30 days, it will be removed from the map

fwiw, we have been making some changes to the capture system, but this does not affect the registration.  (when a station is registered, the registry server attempts to make a screen capture of the website at the url used for registration.  that image is then displayed in the map.  there are a few skins that have been causing the capture system to fail.  many stations with belchertown fail - i think it might be caused by windy.fm, but have not been able to track it down yet.  possibly need more depth in the virtual colormap we use to do the captures...)

m

Fantastic answer. Unfortunately I don't get anything from the suggested grep command, which indicates to me that there is nothing wrong, or is that a misconception?

I run the Byteweather-master skin. And if my memory doesn't fail me, I think it has been running before. But I haven't kept an eye on it, so I'm not sure, if it has worked. I don't know what should be the reason as to when it has stopped showing my station at the map.

:-) Bent

[Bent Jensen]

I think I found the problem. And it is very embarrassing to admit. :-(

I couldn't find any problems, when it stroke me. If everything seems to work and the station does not show up where expected to. Then it could be a wrong coordinate. So going to google maps and reading the expected coordinate and changing it in weewx, did the trick.

I'm so sorry to have wasted your time everybody. But it did get me back on track airing my worries with this awesome group.

Thank you everybody

Bent :-)

[Bill Burton]

Hello Matt,

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 4:10 PM mwall <mw...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 1:55:15 PM UTC-4, William Burton wrote:

If the screen capture for your own site fails or if the site's skin has been changed, is there a way to get the registration process to retry the screen capture?

Is there a way to test the screen capture outside of the registration process to see if it will work correctly?

hi bill,

i made a wiki page to explain the registry:

https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/registry

Thanks, this is helpful. Does the description come from [Station], location?

i'm still working on the capture process.  the previous implementation used wkhtmltoimage, but that would periodically suck up every bit of memory and swap, bringing the capture server to its knees.  using phantomjs has alleviated that somewhat, but there are still some problems.  i'll try to remember to write up what i learn once its sorted out.

I tried a few test captures using phantomjs 2.1.1 and there were a number of problems due to missing content or sections being rendered incorrectly.

there is no way to force an update of the capture.  it is a somewhat stochastic process (intentionally, to avoid overloading the system).

Yes, of course.

once the capture process is more reliable we will be able to tune it.  who knows, some kind of waybackmachine-like abilities might even be possible!

A couple of challenges I can see are some of the skins are sensitive to width such that a certain minimum around 1300px is needed and the second is that if the capture is done at a random time, it may not reflect what the site owner would like for the image due to the time of day or other factors.

-Bill