Hi! I do have questions related to the Linux version of WD, but want to introduce myself first. I’ve been a weather station hobbyist since the mid-late 1990’s. Originally had an Oregon Scientific station, and ran that with Virtual Weather Station (VWS) for a good number of years, on a PC. I was originally a Mac person, but got seduced by the cheap fast hardware available on the Windows side at the time. I have since come back to Mac for my personally owned computers, but have a Windows laptop for work. So there came a time when I had no host for VWS, and went without posting the weather for a while. Then the hardware gave up the ghost. Then I bought an Acurite station at Costco, because we missed having something at home showing our local weather conditions. After a bit, I went looking for software to connect to it, and came across Meteohub. I’ve been running Meteohub for a good number of years now, on a Raspberry Pi, but I have grown weary of the lack of support. Seems as if they have moved on to Meteobridge as the current alternative. And I started assembling the gear I would need to run that. And I posted a question on the support forum, but many days later, there is still no response. I believe VWS is no longer (I think perhaps Ambient is re-packaging some version of Meteobridge with dedicated hardware as an alternative), but I got to looking around for viable alternatives.
I certainly remember the name Weather Display (in my recollection, there was a 32 after the name, presumably to note its modern 32-bitness as opposed to 16-bit), but I remember it being a Windows program. I am heartened to see it is still here, looks to be quite popular, and now runs on Linux! I have been using RasPi since the beginning for all kinds of things at home. In fact, my current Meteohub host is an original Pi!
I am a programmer by trade, and even helped the original author of VWS find a memory leak at one point (or was it a handle leak? it was a looooong time ago…). The company I work for has been porting/re-writing some (very) legacy Windows software to run on Linux, so it’s an active area of interest of mine.
In any case, here are my current questions:
- Is “HOWTO: ConsoleWD for Raspberry PI - Setup Instructions - New version” the current best place to start for an installation?
- One of the directions states, “Edit config.txt to configure consoleWD to talk to your logger (or device)” – is there more detailed help available for this? I would be hooking up an Acurite 1025 via USB.
- I note that there are 3 downloads for different versions of RasPi, but these also show different dates (on Weather Display - Downloads) suggesting that they are not all kept up to date. Specifically, the one for RasPi 1/2 is 2.5 years out of date. Is that one no longer being maintained?
- I ask because, while I have a shiny new 4 on order (it was going to run Meteobridge), the good old 1 has been running Meteohub for years and has seemed computationally up to the task. I would consider running wdconsole on that old machine if the software were going to be maintained. Certainly, the old gear ought to be sufficient for capturing data from a serial (USB) device, and posting some data to the web, but maybe if I do more than that, I’d want the newer box running WD.
- The folks over at Meteohub/bridge constantly harp about SD cards being unreliable. And, I don’t quite know what to do with that. I assume it’s based on their experience, but, for instance, I re-jiggered the software (via advice in a forum post) to write the weather data to a USB stick, but still the software has been less than reliable. What has your experience with SD been in practice? I do have an “industrial” card (approved by those folks) also on order, and will likely use that regardless. Also, I have 3 or 4 other Pi’s around the house running PiCorePlayer for years with no problems. Those even handle power outages with grace. Which makes me think that they might be abusing the hardware in how they write to it.
- I know someone in the forums here responded to a suggestion about providing an image with a comment about it going out of date too quickly, but I do wonder if you would consider something like basing an image on the PiCore base. I have no experience beyond being an end user of another piece of software based on it, but it seems solid as a rock.
If you’ve read this far, thanks, and sorry if this is all too long winded. It’s just that after years of mediocre support at best, I’m anxious and hopeful to be moving on to something better.
Hi tastewar and welcome!
I’ve been using WD for Linux / RaspPi (consolewd) for about a year now, and it’s been very stable. Far more stable than when I was running Windows. I’ve used it on a Vantage Vue and now on an Ecowitt station
To answer your questions:
1: yes - that is the best place to start. I’ve done a more detailed setup elsewhere as for me it wasn’t quite enough, but yes that is the easiest way to get started. Use the config.html page to make you changes initially, then save and upload the config.txt from there. Once done you can edit the config.txt directly, just be sure (of course ) to restart the app to pick up the changes.
2: Acurite is an Ecowitt clone. On mine I use a “collector” device (GW1100) and then retreive the info over the network via setting the IP address to the device. I’m not sure what setting you would or even could use for a USB connection. Others may be able to help here
3: The one you are after is either the 64bit Raspberry pi3/4 with 32 bit Operating System, or the 64 bit Raspberry pi3/4 with 64 bit Operating System, depending on what OS you are running on your Pi. Most currently use the 32 bit option
4: With regards specifically to support, it’s fair to say there are an active group of people on here that can provide support and are more knowledgeable about these things than me! I did get the author to add in one feature and sent him some money for that. Although it is Donationware it’s strongly recommended you pay something towards the software. If you want support from the author it’s fair to say these days you need to be prepared to pay for it. That said as I’ve mentioned above, while it does not have the full feature set of the Windows version, it is well and truly enough for most, and hopefully you will find that too. As a programmer, I’m sure you get it!!
5: No problems with my SD card (yet!) although it is a weak point in my setup, and I back everything up fairly regularly. Yes I’d strongly recommend you used a decent card
6: PiCore looks interesting. Again I suspect it’s something you would need to work with the author to see if there is any interest there.
I’m an IT worker but not a programmer, so have picked up alot about Linux by adding on bits and pieces (webcam, various uploads to websites). Thouroughly enjoyed the process. Yell out of you have any other questions
Cheers
Thanks, @gabba! I appreciate all the info!
I am still interested to know whether the version for the older Pi’s is being maintained or not. If I put this on the brand new Pi, I will likely do the 64-bit version, unless folks can tell me why not.
Being a software dev myself, I have (almost) always paid for donation/shareware that I use regularly. Or even things that have served me well for a single use! So I will happily pay – the $58 for the “normal” version is (I think) less than what I’d have to pay to get a license for Meteobridge. The price is in Euros, so I’m not 100% sure, but I’d rather not give them more of my money, honestly.
I would love to hear from others using the Acurite (or equivalent). It does seem that WD does support serial comm on Linux, so I am hopeful that would include supporting any model for which the serial support code already exists. I would not want to have to buy another piece of gear to act as a go-between. But never say never… Does anyone know for sure if the GW1100 is compatible with the Acurite 1025?
The Linux and Pi versions are different beasts. The Linux version is more like the Windows version with a full GUI and more like fully featured. The Pi version has fewer features and is more about getting data from a station and uploading it to the web (but not quite that cut down). I’m not sure if the Pi version has serial /USB capability, but I’m pretty sure the Linux version does. The Linux version won’t run on a Pi though because it’s compiled for x86 architecture rather than the Pi’s ARM architecture.
I don’t think the older Pi version is being modified to add new features, possibly because the older Pi’s are less capable due to less memory and lower powered CPUs. It might be maintained if a serious bug was to be found in it, but I suspect few are still using it so nobody will find bugs. I think it’s really there just for historical purposes in case someone wants to reload it after a crash (but I’m not the author so I can’t be sure what is in Brian’s mind).
Thanks for the additional info and insight, Chris. I anxiously await hearing about serial capabilities in the RasPi version!
I have a pi 4B running the WDconsole 64 app and it connects to my Vantage Vue via USB. I transferred the 64 bit OS to a USB thumb drive so as not to have to mess with the SD cards.
Thanks, @jloflin – that suggests that at least part of the code base that does serial I/O has been ported to the RasPi code base. Almost sounds worth a try…
I am still unclear on how to setup the config.txt file – is there a web page with a guide for that?
I set mine up in December, 2020, and haven’t touched it since. All I can tell you is that after you download the consolewd file to your pi and unpack it, you go to your home directory, and below that to the consolewd files directory, open the config.html file with your browser and fill in the appropriate information. Then you save that to config.txt (at the bottom of the page), which is saved in the download folder, and copy it to the consolewd directory and start the program. I was running WD for linux before, and printed out the configure file for that and used the information to fill in the blanks.
I can upload my config.txt if that might give you some idea of how to fill in the blanks.
Probably makes sense at this point for me to just dive in and come back with questions based on experience rather than conjecture 
Should those questions be posted in this forum, or in the more general “usage” forum?
You can post them in here because you’ll find most Pi/Linux users in here
OK, so, I have the software downloaded onto the Pi. I see that the config.txt file has some boilerplate contents that you are meant to edit, but I see no mention of Acurite there. Brian does have a YT video showing how to set it up using the full desktop (Windows) Weather Display, which seems to use a separate program VIS Reader to do the work of getting the data from USB. There doesn’t appear to be a Linux version of VIS Reader.
Does anyone know (definitively) if (and if yes, how) it’s possible to have wdconsole acquire data from my AcuRite station connected via USB?
As an aside, there is an intriguing series of blog posts starting here, talking about this very issue but from 7.5 years ago, and he mentions some source code in WD that was lost. He went on to write some code to gather the data from USB, but then moved on to doing it wirelessly via rtl-sdr. That’s a thing I might consider. In any case, there is software on GitHub. Looks like the latest project doing it directly via USB is here:
It does look like some work has been done on this one a year ago. And this one is the RF version, but from the original investigator:
Most recent commit there was 7 years ago, which means it’s unlikely to work as-is on current RasPi (ok, there’s no way, given that the 64-bit Pi is pretty recent…)
I can’t help with the Acurite question as I’ve never owned one, but you don’t have to use 64-bit OS on the Pi. I suspect the vast majority of people are using 32-bit without any real inconvenience.
Understood. If someone could point me to a certain 32-bit solution, I’d go for it. At the moment, all I can see for it would be the possibility of me attempting to get someone else’s project working, to read in the data, but that would still leave the problem of getting it from there into WD. But I would be happy to be pointed at a solution!