Author Topic: Thinking of moving to WeatherCat  (Read 3944 times)

Wrongway

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Thinking of moving to WeatherCat
« on: August 07, 2012, 10:30:21 PM »
As I mentioned in the New Members forum I have had a weather station for about 18 months which started life primarily for monitoring weather for my other hobby. Flying RC planes and heli's. I bought a Davis Vantage Pro 2 and have that hooked up to a dedicated low power Zotac PC. Running Weather Display software and providing a web page for local flyers using Weather Display Live.

As I have been a keen Mac user for the past 9 years and seeing WeatherCat I am interested in moving over. I have a Mac Mini sat doing nothing which I don't think would cost any more to run than the Zotac. I suppose it's a bit unfair asking, but I can't find any comparisons between Weather Display and WeatherCat. I would like to hear any opinions preferably if anyone has experience of both. The WDL page gives a live view of my station that updates about every 15 seconds and is one of the features I like. I am not sure if I could do this with WeatherCat. Also can data I have collected over the last 18 months be imported.

There's a possibility I could run both systems in parallel until I am sure as I also have a Vantage Vue console I use as a sort of slave display. I would need to buy another Davis interface for it unless anyone knows how to split the Vantage Pro output 2 ways!

elagache

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Davis supported (Re: Thinking of moving to WeatherCat)
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2012, 11:06:21 PM »
Dear Wrongway,

Sorry, I just wrote a fairly detailed reply to your previous posting here: http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=406.msg3573;topicseen#msg3573.  You have answered my key question about stations.  Yes, WeatherCat supports all Davis hardware, so that is definitely an option.



As I have been a keen Mac user for the past 9 years and seeing WeatherCat I am interested in moving over. I have a Mac Mini sat doing nothing which I don't think would cost any more to run than the Zotac. I suppose it's a bit unfair asking, but I can't find any comparisons between Weather Display and WeatherCat.

There are not many folks here who have used Weather Display.  However, we had one user from New Zealand try the Mac version of Weather Display.  However, it appears that the Mac port of Weather Display wasn't well done - he was very disappointed with the performance.  I don't know how the PC version of Weather Display would compare to WeatherCat.  Perhaps someone else on the forum can comment on this.

I would like to hear any opinions preferably if anyone has experience of both. The WDL page gives a live view of my station that updates about every 15 seconds and is one of the features I like. I am not sure if I could do this with WeatherCat. Also can data I have collected over the last 18 months be imported.

There is a number of data import tools for WeatherCat, but I don't know if there is a path from Weather Display to WeatherCat.  Again, perhaps another member of the forum can answer this one for you.

There's a possibility I could run both systems in parallel until I am sure as I also have a Vantage Vue console I use as a sort of slave display. I would need to buy another Davis interface for it unless anyone knows how to split the Vantage Pro output 2 ways!

That is correct.  You would need a second data-logger.  There is no way that I know about to split a data feed.

Hope this is helpful

cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

WCDev

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Re: Thinking of moving to WeatherCat
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2012, 09:03:27 PM »
Welcome to the forum Wrongway.

There are templates that can provide frequent data updates on your web-pages. In no particular order we have the Saratoga AJAX/PHP templates from Ken True (http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=158.0) - here's a typical example - http://www.oamaruweather.net.nz (Oamura Weather)

Another is the 'Ajaxeline' Ajax and PHP templates by Todd Atkins (http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=200.0) - example at http://wx.atkinsfamily.org (Ashford Weather).

More info is available in the web templates forum (http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?board=5.0) and the WeatherCat features these templates use are described in the WeatherCat manual (http://trixology.com/downloads/WeatherCatUserManual.pdf)

I'm not aware of an importer from Weather Display - we haven't received any requests for this facility (until now!).

Hope this helps,
Stu.


Wrongway

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Re: Thinking of moving to WeatherCat
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2012, 09:33:12 PM »
Thanks for the help and recommendations folks. I will probably order an interface for the Vantage Vue and use a Mac Mini, running it in parallel with the existing system for a bit to see how I get on.

Mike. Thanks for the offer. I have sent you a PM.

Rob

HairyMcLeary

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Re: Thinking of moving to WeatherCat
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2012, 01:47:31 PM »


I'm not aware of an importer from Weather Display - we haven't received any requests for this facility (until now!).

Hope this helps,
Stu.

I think this might be a great idea for WC, I have been asked on several occasions by WD uses what would happen to their often many years of data if they switched to WC.

WD has an option to export as MySQL ( I think), perhaps if this was implemented in WC you could kill to birds with one stone. I like the idea of having my station records user searchable from my website, I believe MySQL would allow this feature. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Tony