Davis VP data extraction at start up...works great

My weatherlink software is set at a five minute archive interval. I had a couple of crashes through the night on my pc about a month ago, and when I restarted the weatherlink software pulled the missing three hours of data in with no problems at all.

I only shut down when called to do so for installation of windows and symantec updates, which only costs me the odd minute of data which is not really too much of a problem.

What is a bit annoying is I like to do a weekly back up of my hard drives using Norton Ghost, but this takes about 45 minutes to do, so wd is off line for that long.

To mention it once again

It seems to be only a problem for us in europe, not for the USA!

Peter

my patience is beginning to run thin with WD. I’ve been using the program since I first bought my Davis Vantage pro some 4 or 5 years ago and it has never worked properly . The extraction overnight simply doesn’t work under european settings ( and : no , I’m not changing my settings to run WD , other software won’t work if I do that ) . I tested and tested this software all the time now from when I first purchased it : to no avail .

I’m now seriously considering chucking in the towel and switching to either Weatherlink ( not exactly ideal , but it works ) or even VWS - way overpriced , but from what I’m hearing it works as well .

The point is : all I want it do properly is extract the data and store it in a logfile , being able to see records and averages etc.

I’m not into all the "extras " like a website or whatever , just logging .

I think the priority should be to Fix the extraction and logging not adding all kinds of extra features . What’s the point of having all kinds of frivolous features if it won’t even log properly ???

kind of angry here now ( and this being a long-time user , you can imagine how new users would feel )

Well, I understand, that You want to have it working the kind You like it - bugfree and for Your understanding ok.

Who doesn`t want that - but some patience and understanding for Brian not being able to do everything at the same time would be nice!

I have the same problems with my “european” VP, but I know that it takes time, and sometimes more time than expected, to make a peace of software nearly bugfree - I think I can wait!

Peter

isn’t 4 years in waiting having patience ??

Like I said : I purchased WD immediately after purchasing my station , so I’ve been having these issues for the entire period .

4 years isn’t a
liitle patience in my book , it’s a heap of patience

What are you trying to achieve with your post? Do you imagine it will help Brian to work through this problem?

kind of angry here now ( and this being a long-time user , you can imagine how new users would feel )

that’s the purpose of the post . New users should be aware of the fact Weatherdisplay is NOT compatible with the Davis Vantage pro .At least it’s not compatible for users in Europe . Never has been either .

FYI : I have been supportive of Brian and his software throughout . If I’m not allowed to give my opinion in here then who is ???

You don’t even know me

If I'm not allowed to give my opinion in here then who is ???
Absolutely, we are both allowed to give our opinions here, I never questioned that. I just wanted to understand what your purpose was - which you have now explained, thanks.
You don't even know me
What's that got to do with anything?

[color=red]Lets all chill out a bit shall we?[/color]

Brian is aware there is a problem with stored data extraction from the VP data logger, and I am sure it will only be a matter of time before it is sorted.

I think Brian is away at the moment, so lets wait until he gets back before any more is said.

rikwes
I have looked at your old posts, and see you have had issues with your data extraction. You have been using it for a long time now, so what is the major problem you have with it? Is it the same as I have, in that the data is lost after a shut down of wd, or do you have different problems?

I will start a new thread To help Brian understand the issues we have.

If you really believed the software hasn’t been working to your liking for 4 years, why are you persevering with it ??

I really don’t understand how you can give Brian such a hard time here…development of WD is NOT Brian’s full time job…this is what he does in his ‘spare time’…remember Brian has a full time job AND a family to look out for before WD gets a look in.

There are only 24 hrs in a day, and Brian is entitled to have some for himself and his family before trying to fathom out what bugs need to be fixed, what really are bugs and what is a user problem.

If you are unhappy with a peice of software, the easiest solution is not to use it rather than have a go at one of the most helpful blokes (Brian), that I have had the pleasure of dealing with. :smiley: :smiley:

Before you start posting stuff like this , you might want to check my previous posts .

Obviously you didn’t bother to do that .

Hi
back now, but have to rush out to a pta meeting
i emailed back to rikwes a reply after he emailed me, and asked him to post that reply here, but he has not done that, so i am repeating it here…

i dont think its a european problem
its a problem when other than 1 minute data logging interval for the data logger is used.

this could be proved, by changing the time in the wdisplay.ini file manualy for when wd requests the data from the data logger, to a 5 minute interval, if you have a 5 minute data logging interval, under ,
[Davis download]
minute=

i.e the time might be minute 53, but that minute will not exist if you have 5 minute logging interval
so, change the minute in the wdisplay.ini file, as a test, manualy, before starting WD, to 55, for example, and then it most likely will work
if that proves it, then i just need to get wd to round the time to check the data to the data logging interval.

Hope that helps.

After my power failure at the weekend, I thought I would have a play with my VP consoles. On checking both of them, the data archive interval was indeed set to 5 minutes, and I could not get wd to change that interval. I put the wd console onto the weatherlink port, and changed the archive interval to 1 minute, and tested this in weatherlink, and it did indeed archive the data at 1 minute intervals for the 10 minutes I shut weather link off. I then put this console back onto the wd port, and did the same thing, switched off for 10 minutes, switched back on, but the 10 minutes of data was not extracted. I swapped the logger back to a clean version of weatherlink, where the data was imported OK.

WD has the following settings for data extraction:-

settings/control panel/weather station data logger

data logging intrval = 1 minute
data pad out = 1
time & date is that of the console
download archive data when program first starts is checked
clear the data logger daily is unchecked.

You may be right in saying it is not a european problem, as there are only two of us who seem to have the problem!

Hi,

I thing I am the third one!

Peter

hi
back from a very stressfull PTA meeting…
what happens is that WD asks the data logger for a time/date…
if the data logger cant find that time/date in the data record, then it wont work…
so , i was thinking, that will happen if the time asked for is say 07:34, but the logged data times is at intervales like 7:30, 7:35, etc
so the test is/was to change the time to reguest the data in the wdisplay.ini file, in the Davis download section, to a time that would coincide with that data interval
but if still no go, then there is something else going on…
so, i will get a beta version uploaded tomorrow that adds more debug code so that we can see whats happening.
as for using WD to extract a whole nights worth of data, then yes, that is cpu intensive (the checking and writting of the data to logs etc), and wd is not really intended to be run that way, and so i dont recommend you do that, and if thats the only way you can operate the setup, then I do sugest, at this stage, you use another software, like VWS, which handles that much better.

I posted that reply verbatim , brian , you can find it here :

'm also part of a weather-site and am "responsible " for uploading the satellite - imagery . When processing those images in my graphics - editor I must shutdown WD , if I don't it : crashes , because the processing of the images takes up a lot of CPU-cyles . That's another isue I brough to Brian's attention :
  • When the extraction process is ongoing , you can’t do anything else , it takes up too much memory or CPU- cycles for anything other to be possible . ( I just installed an extra 512 MB RAM also , so it’s not for lack of memory ) . There must be a way to reduce that .

On another note , Brian has answered my e-mail regarding this issue , quoting him verbatim here :

Quote:

i said on the forum that this coming week i will look into this issue
, as I am away this weekend, but I am also thinking that the problem is
when the data logging interval is seto other than 1 minute on the data
logger…i.e if you set the time to look for data at start up in the
wdisplay.ini file, under Davis download, minute, to a number that
corresponds to the time interval you have set, e.g 10:55 instead of
10:54, for 5 minute time data logging interval, then i suspect it will
work (change the time in the wdisplay.ini file before restarting wd)

This is most likely the problem, and something i need to fix when i get
back

end of quote . However ; I diasgree with this analysis . Both my logger and the WD-software has always been set to a 1-minute interval .He is suggesting one of them isn’t . Also , Where do I find that .ini file where the davis-download interval is located ?? I have found a wdplay.ini file , but there’s no entry in that one to control the Davis-download interval .
Shouldn’t this ini change when you apply the 1-minute interval in the program’s settings ???

I checked and the logger is set to 1-minute as is WD . I’m assuming by looking at those entries in the logfile I quoted in above post it’s something more complicated - could very well be , as I suggested , a date/time issue especially considering the "jumping from one day to another " - symptons you see in that logfile .

The fact that it jumps from 5 to 7 June and back again in an erratic manner suggests the logger gets extracted in a very odd way ( not chronologically at any rate ) .

Anyway ,we’ll solve this - or rather Brian will , with our help - in order to do this we’ll probably have to start with examining what could be causing this ( and looking a evry possibility ) . a Process of elimination .

This means there’ll be lots of different betas - probably - each one tryng to solve it in a different way .

was just in another topic : the European Davis VP and WD data extraction issues - to be precise :wink:

i have not had time to check any other threads, so i will stick to this one…
its the ini file, wdisplay.ini,found in c:\windows or c:\winnt
and its the entry:
[Davis Download]
Minute=

etc
and its the time that wd was last running
and wd ends a request to the data logger to look for that data record
if the data record is not found, then thats when you see the strange times/dates (i.e click abort, at this stage)
the reasons for not finding that time/date are either that the data logger time/date is wrong (i.e its a day ahead or a day behind or a hour ahead of a hour behind), or I am thinking that becuase if its not a every 1 minute data logging interval, then the requested time will not be found if its a odd time requested

http://www.weather-display.com/downloadfiles/WeatherDvp.zip

that zip of the main exectuable (unzip to where you have wd installed, when wd is not running), logs all the incoming data to:
view, ws2010/ws2500 data info and setup
let me know what appears there
also, is a file called vptemplog.txt created?
(you should find it where wd is installed)

if so, zip and email me that

the Davis VP is the most popular station with WD, but there are only 3 people reporting problems with the data extraction at start up…

I have just downloaded and installed the zipped file as requested. (This replaced the wd.exe with a newer version)

What file do I need to be looking for with this data in it?

I have the following three files which are all blank:-

newdavislog.txt
vpdownloaddata.txt
vptemplog.txt

programerrorlog.txt shows:-
ERROR: Access violation at address 00585A3A in module ‘WeatherD.exe’. Read of address 00000000 at time/date 21:23:04 21/06/2004 (which has appeared since switching to new pc)