rtldavis help

[Danny Ciarniello]

Hi, 

I just purchased a Davis Vantage Vue which I would like to use with weewx but I'm not having any luck getting it running.

I have built the rtldavis receiver program and it looks to be receiving data from the Vantage Vue without issue (see the attaced rtldavis.log).  Unfortunately, it's not working with weewx where I'm getting a TypeError (see the attached weewx.log).

Any ideas as to what the problem is and how to fix it?

I am running weewx 5.2 on a raspberry pi 4B+ running Trixie with weewx installed via apt.  The Vantage Vue is the US metric version.

The RtlDavis section of weewx.conf has

[Rtldavis]
    # This section is for the rtldavis sdr-rtl USB receiver.
   
    # cmd = /home/pi/work/bin/rtldavis [options]
    cmd = /etc/weewx/bin/user/rtldavis
    # Options:
    # -ppm = frequency correction of rtl dongle in ppm; default = 0
    # -gain = tuner gain in tenths of Db; default = 0 means "auto gain"
    # -ex = extra loopTime in ms; default = 0
    # -fc = frequency correction for all channels; default = 0
    # -u  = log undefined signals
    #
    # The options below will autoamically be set
    # -tf = transmitter frequencies, US, NZ or EU
    # -tr = transmitters: tr1=1,  tr2=2,  tr3=4,  tr4=8,
    #                     tr5=16, tr6=32, tr7=64, tr8=128
   
    # Radio frequency to use between USB transceiver and console: US, NZ or EU
    # US uses 915 MHz, NZ uses 921 MHz and EU uses 868.3 MHz.  Default is EU.
    transceiver_frequency = US
   
    # Used channels: 0=not present, 1-8)
    # The channel of the Vantage Vue ISS or Vantage Pro or Pro2 ISS
    iss_channel = 4
    # The values below only apply for Vantage Pro or Pro2
    anemometer_channel = 0
    leaf_soil_channel = 0
    temp_hum_1_channel = 0
    temp_hum_2_channel = 0
    # rain bucket type (0: 0.01 inch, 1: 0.2 mm)
    rain_bucket_type = 1
   
    # Print debug messages
    # 0=no logging; 1=minimum logging; 2=normal logging; 3=detailed logging
    debug_parse = 2
    debug_rain = 0
    debug_rtld = 2    # rtldavis logging: 1=inf; 2=(1)+data+chan; 3=(2)+pkt
   
    # The pct_good per transmitter can be saved to the database
    # This has only effect with 2 transmitters or more
    save_pct_good_per_transmitter = False
   
    # The driver to use:
    driver = user.rtldavis

[bell...@gmail.com]

Check out this thread

https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-user/c/yhh0nAsNJZc/m/sngAI0UTBQAJ

rich

[vince]

Not breaking much used (yet previously working) third-party legacy code folks rely on is tough sometimes.  Here's another case - rtldavis hasn't been touched in 5 years now. That thread is a bit short of words but it seems like Tom updated crc16.py in the weewx github repo to try to unbreak those cases in a future weewx release.

Upcoming version is at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/weewx/weewx/refs/heads/master/src/weewx/crc16.py if you wanted to test that and verify it fixes things before weewx 5.next comes out.

[Danny Ciarniello]

Thanks to rich and vince, that was indeed the issue.  I replaced the installed crc16.py with the upcoming one that vince pointed to and it looks to be working perfectly.

Now that I have things working, I have another question.  Is there a way to get rtldavis to lock on to the data stream more quickly?  It seems to take a while to do so.  I'm wondering how quickly it locks on is related to the fc and ppm parameters.  If so, how do I determine the best values for those?  If not, is there any  other reason that I might want to add those two parameters to the command line?

[vince]

No ideas here, but does it really matter if it takes a little while once to get locked on ?

[Danny Ciarniello]

I suppose it doesn't really; just impatience on my part with how long I had to wait while testing things out. :-)