I looked through the docs, help and FAQ’s and had couple questions. I may well have missed them somewhere - this is a very comprehensive application.
I’m a COOP for the NWS and do daily readings at 7AM. I’ve looked all over for a place to set my system to run 7AM to 7AM local time but haven’t seen to have found it yet. I didn’t find an option to reset at Midnight and at 9AM. As much as I like math it gets a bit complicated to keep the records straight with one system on midnight and a second system (the NWS paperwork) on a 7AM schedule. Or maybe as a future enhancement the capability to generate reports and web items based on a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ schedule. Most people are use to a midnight to midnight schedule so generate web items based on a ‘primary’ midnight reset and generate NOAA data reports based on a ‘secondary’ schedule. Then allow the view of the main display to be switched between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ depending on which is your primary concern at that point (for example, switch the view to secondary when making spot reports to the NWS during weather events)?
I am currently testing WD with the main display in my shack (Amateur Radio) and running WD in client/server mode on my laptop in the house. It allows me to have the main display for quick reference during SKYWARN operations but a full WD display in the house without having to purchase a Echo or another Vantage Pro display. As near as I can tell when WD is run in client mode all features are active with the exception of the COM ports. Is this correct???
If that is correct it seems like it opens up the possiblity of using smaller, cheaper PC’s in a distributed computing enironment. I have slews of 486, Pentium and Pentium II boards, smaller 1 and 2 GB drives, etc laying around on my workbench in the shack among the power supplies and radio parts. Making the server distribute information to those ‘outdated’ PC’s and allowing them to handle 1 piece of the job vs 1 ‘big’ PC to do everything seems like a good option and a second life for those ‘worthless’ PC’s everyone has around. Say four PC, three of them clients, one in the house as a ‘repeater’ display, a second to generate web page items, a third to handle the CWOP/APRS/Weatherunderground data distribution. Anyone see any reason something like this wouldn’t work???
Which brings us to fault tolerance/redundant systems. If the distributed computing enviornment is possible then we could also have ‘duplicate’ machines to provide fault tolerance. A primary machine with a small client/server app running to the secondary system. If the primary system ‘dies’ then it would allow failover to a secondary system or a system doing some other task to pickup the load of the failed client. The only thing off the top of my head I can’t see this working for easily is the primary data logger connected to the weather station - but that would be simple to do if you wanted to purchase a second Echo/Vantage Pro station and Weatherlink datalogger. Might even integrate it with WD so the primary system transfer’s it’s data to the secondary system and secondary system acts as a QC of the primary system and if too many QC failures occur it fails over to the secondary system and takes the primary system offline and notifys the administrator of the failure. Thoughts???
David C - KC9DBE/AR567
Cazenovia, Woodford, IL, USA
1. I'm a COOP for the NWS and do daily readings at 7AM. I've looked all over for a place to set my system to run 7AM to 7AM local time but haven't seen to have found it yet. I didn't find an option to reset at Midnight and at 9AM. As much as I like math it gets a bit complicated to keep the records straight with one system on midnight and a second system (the NWS paperwork) on a 7AM schedule. Or maybe as a future enhancement the capability to generate reports and web items based on a 'primary' and 'secondary' schedule. Most people are use to a midnight to midnight schedule so generate web items based on a 'primary' midnight reset and generate NOAA data reports based on a 'secondary' schedule. Then allow the view of the main display to be switched between 'primary' and 'secondary' depending on which is your primary concern at that point (for example, switch the view to secondary when making spot reports to the NWS during weather events)?
since Brian has the 9 AM reset (they use down in New Zealand), if you ask him nicely :wink: I bet he woul add a 7 AM reset. It may take some time though. The primary and secondary schedule is a neat idea, and could be something to add in the future, the only thing is a doubt many will use it, so that could be a "long term" thing.
2. I am currently testing WD with the main display in my shack (Amateur Radio) and running WD in client/server mode on my laptop in the house. It allows me to have the main display for quick reference during SKYWARN operations but a full WD display in the house without having to purchase a Echo or another Vantage Pro display. As near as I can tell when WD is run in client mode all features are active with the exception of the COM ports. Is this correct???
I believe so
If that is correct it seems like it opens up the possiblity of using smaller, cheaper PC's in a distributed computing enironment. I have slews of 486, Pentium and Pentium II boards, smaller 1 and 2 GB drives, etc laying around on my workbench in the shack among the power supplies and radio parts. Making the server distribute information to those 'outdated' PC's and allowing them to handle 1 piece of the job vs 1 'big' PC to do everything seems like a good option and a second life for those 'worthless' PC's everyone has around. Say four PC, three of them clients, one in the house as a 'repeater' display, a second to generate web page items, a third to handle the CWOP/APRS/Weatherunderground data distribution. Anyone see any reason something like this wouldn't work???
I don't know why that would work, but I don't think that weather display is such a power hunger program that it would need that many extra computers.
Which brings us to fault tolerance/redundant systems. If the distributed computing enviornment is possible then we could also have 'duplicate' machines to provide fault tolerance. A primary machine with a small client/server app running to the secondary system. If the primary system 'dies' then it would allow failover to a secondary system or a system doing some other task to pickup the load of the failed client. The only thing off the top of my head I can't see this working for easily is the primary data logger connected to the weather station - but that would be simple to do if you wanted to purchase a second Echo/Vantage Pro station and Weatherlink datalogger. Might even integrate it with WD so the primary system transfer's it's data to the secondary system and secondary system acts as a QC of the primary system and if too many QC failures occur it fails over to the secondary system and takes the primary system offline and notifys the administrator of the failure. Thoughts???
you can actually purchase "little devices" that will send the signal from the vp over a ethernet. you could therefore, have two computers doing the same thing. You should be able to write a little script to tell the other computer to take over.
I hope we can get some others talking, so good ideas here.
OH…I didn’t mean to imply WD was power hungry at all. It’s just I was a system designer/consultant for a few years and I got to be anal about system fault tolerance, failover capabilities, clustering, etc. It’s still pretty much ingrained to think like that when dealing with systems I consider to be ‘mission critical’ and being so involved in Amateur Radio Emergency Communications(EMCOMM), SKYWARN and weather in general I consider my weather station and it’s associate computer to be a ‘mission critical’ system. If I could get two carriers out here I’d have two phone lines from different carriers and two different dial up ISP to back each other up for the sake of redundency.
I did figure out the 7AM thing - only with a quirk. If you go to etup, Units and Other Setting down in the right hand side there’s a couple spin controls that allow you to set the time for the daily reset of both rain and daily hi/low values. Set this, stop and restart WD and it shows up on the main title screen as ‘Values are reset at 7 hour’. The only quirk to this is that on the etup, Value Reset Times Option it still shows a midnight reset but the values do not actually reset until 7 AM. Easiest way to take care of that quirk would be to add a menu item that said ‘Other’ or some such thing I suppose.
David C - KC9DBE
Instruction Manual ?!?!?! - I don’t need no stinking instruction manual - I can break it perfect well on my own!!!
That’s just the attitude we like to see here :lol:
Seems to me that there’s not much point in adding redundancy after a single weatherstation, you should have 2 stations, feeding 2 computers, feeding a voting system to get where you want to go.
Actually, one of my mad scientist project is a portable long range wireless weather station with weather cam support - alot like the NWS RAWS minus the satellite support.
