Running weewx with a Vantage weather station and GW1000 - soil moisture sensors

[Rich Bonavida]

I have had weewx working with my Vantage weather station for years and now have a GW1000 gateway with 8 soil moisture sensors.  I have installed Interceptor per Matt's instructions and I can see the data when I directly run interceptor.py with the appropriate switches.  My problem is that it seems I must change station_type to Interceptor vice Vantage in weewx.conf to see the soil sensor data.  

My question is do I need to run multiple instances of weewx?

Thanks,

Rich

[gjr80]

Hi,

Short answer is you will need to run two instances of WeeWX, either on a single device or separate devices. I am in much the same boat having run the vantage driver for many years and recently bought a GW1000 and a number of temp/hum sensors and soil moisture sensors. A given WeeWX instance can only run one driver so hence the need for separate WeeWX instances. You can have a WeeWX service that can obtain observational data and add it to loop packets/archive records emitted by the driver, some drivers can run as a driver or a service but the vantage and interceptor drivers cannot.

To run separate WeeWX instances you will need separate config files and databases for each. Reporting is up to you but if you intend combining data from both devices it may be easiest to have one instance handle the reporting, though if you intend having separate reports then each instance will require its own reporting. The wiki has a fairly good article on setting it up (https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/weewx-multi).

I have found the biggest challenge was remembering I have two WeeWX instances running and the need to use specific service names when controlling the individual services/instances (after being used to just using systemctl xxxxxx weewx that now affects both services). Getting your logs sorted is also important, log entries for each instance will be identified separately but I found it easier to send each to separate log files, This is covered at the bottom of the Put log messages from WeeWX in a separate file article in the wiki (https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/logging).

Both running fine now under WeeWX 4.1.0/python 3.

Gary

[Rich Bonavida]

Thanks Gary, two instances it is.

Rich

[Joachim Puttkammer]

The 2 instances ( Davis, Ecowitt ) run without problems with the season skin. Davis shows the soil moisture in "cb" and Ecowitt in "%". Unfortunately, I can only enter cb or % in the skin. Is there a solution so that the correct unit is displayed depending on the station?

Joachim

[gjr80]

There are a couple of ways you can handle this but the solution really depends on what you are trying to do. Do you have two separate Seasons suites (one for vantage and one for gw1000) or do you have a single Seasons suite display data from both stations?

Gary

[Joachim Puttkammer]

I am not sure what do you mean with a single Season suite.
Weewx was running with a Davis station. I only copied these weewx.conf twice  -> davis.conf and ecowitt.conf
and have kept the only one Season skin. ( = single Season suite ?)

Joachim

[gjr80]

You have two instances of WeeWX running; one running the vantage driver and one running (I presume) the gw1000 driver. Does the vantage instance use the Seasons skin to produce a set of web pages displaying vantage data only? Likewise for the gw1000 instance, does it use the Seasons skin to produce a set of web pages displaying gw1000 data only? Or are you trying to have one instance (let’s say the vantage instance) use the Seasons skin to produce a set of web pages displaying both vantage and gw1000 data? Or are you doing something else altogether? Just trying to find out how you are using Seasons, in particular what data is being used. That will affect the available solutions to your issue.

Gary

[Joachim Puttkammer]

The Vantage instance should only display the Vantage data in the Season skin, accordingly the Ecowitt instance should only display the Ecowitt data.
 1 Season-skin for both instances.
This works except for daysoilMoist in the skin.conf
Davis:
 [[[daysoilMoist]]
               y_label = "cb"

which does not fit Ecowitt:
There should be        
[[[daysoilMoist]]            
     y_label = "%"

Joachim

[gjr80]

In that case you can simply override the label used for soil moisture units (centibar) in the Ecowitt instance. In weewx.conf try adding centibar = % under [StdReport] [[Defaults]] [[[Units]]] [[[[Labels]]]], something like:

[StdReport]

    ….

    [[Defaults]]

        ….

        [[[Units]]]

            ….

            [[[[Labels]]]]

                ….

                centibar = %

Save and restart WeeWX and this will override the usual centibar label in the Ecowitt instance, instead of cb you should see % as the soil moisture label in report and plots. The Vantage instance will continue to use the usual cb label. Since you’ve made the change in weewx.conf the change should be safe across WeeWX upgrades.

Gary

[Joachim Puttkammer]

Thanks Gary, this was the solution.

Joachim