To those of you who have a Davis Instruments station, I have a question. If I choose to purchase a Davis Vantage Pro 2 station, if I want to display the data on my website, do I NEED the USB Weatherlink software? That’s like $200 extra dollars! Seems kind of unreasonable a price for software, especially for a weather hobbyist!
Also, I learned that there are two different versions of this station - the imperial and the metric. Since I am in Canada, I would prefer the metric version. Can the imperial version be set to display metric data? This seems pretty standard. My WMR300 does this with no different versions of the station hardware.
Thanks to anyone who can help. Your replies will help me to determine if this is the route I want to go with replacing my WMR300.
yes you do need the data logger or the new Davis WLL (weather link live bridge)
not sure what you are refering to the metric or not…only thing there is the tipping spoon on the rain gauge , if that is inches or mm, that is all
you can set what units you like on the console etc
To connect you Davis station to your PC or internet you will need a datalogger which plugs into the back of the console and comes with the WeatherLink software.
They come in three versions, IP, USB or Serial. There is also the new Davis Weather Link Live, which removes the need for a console and uploads your data direct to Weather Link Cloud and you view the data via an App or listen to it from Alexa.
WD is able to get the data from all these, without using the WeatherLink software.
The metric/imperial question; When I got my VP2 the only thing I had to change on it was to add a small weight to the bottom of the tipping bucket on the rain gauge to change the tip amount from 0.01 inches to 0.2 mm. I recently purchase an old-stock VP2 Plus station (without the console), Davis 6328, and the box it came in was marked “Calibrated for metric units”, so I assume they may now preconfigure them. Saying that, the manual still has the instructions for the metric conversion.
The console can be switched from imperial to metric in the setup.
I’ve had my current VP2 since about 2008, I’ve added solar & UV sensors and daytime FARS to it, as well as soil sensors and a couple of temp sensors.
In that time I’ve had to replace 1 x anemometer, 1x ISS and 3x outside Temp/Hum sensors. Which isn’t bad seeing as it spent the first 9 years on an island off the West Coast of Scotland in a salt atmosphere.
I guess what I’m saying is; Sure, Davis stations are expensive but you get what you pay for.
Addition: Basically the same as Brian posted but I wasn’t going to waste what I’d already typed as we were posting at the same time.
Wow, thank you Budgie! Very thorough explanation, and I appreciate you taking the time to write all of that.
So this is what I understand:
If I purchase a DVP2, I do not need Weatherlink because I already own a copy of Weather Display which will already extract the data from the console. This will save me about $200.
If I purchase any model, I can switch the imperial units to metric units on the console and don’t have to worry about specifically buying the metric version.
The only thing I would like to add is a solar sensor but it’s not a huge priority yet. The basic DVP2 by itself is quite enough for my needs and will give me all of the data I need (as the WMR300 did). I may add other sensors later down the road, something I could not do with the WMR300. There are other plugs in it for other sensors, but they never released any other sensors. I hope the DVP2 will have the ability for me to add sensors whenever I want to within the next 10-15 years without the company going out of business or discontinuing the product.
Here’s another question: would you suggest purchasing directly from Davis Instruments, or would you recommend Amazon or Ebay? I’m presuming any place I purchase from, the product would come with a warranty.
