Dear Paul, X-Air, and WeatherCat welcome wagon, . . . .
My name is Paul and I live in Detroit, MI. I'm a geologist and self-proclaimed weather enthusiast.
So by all means! Welcome Paul to the WeatherCat forum!
I'm a data/stats/graphs junkie and would love to upgrade to a Davis VP2 someday with fancy leaf & soil moisture/temperature sensors.
Not belittle your present station, but it sounds like you really have
da' Davis itch . . . . Should that itch start to really nag at you, let us know and we can tell you were to buy for a Davis station at some serious discounts!
Anyway, one of the main reasons I'm here is because I'd like to participate in CWOP. I'm on a Mac and would like to know the best way to start sending data that way. Could someone kindly please point me in the direction of a guide, topic, or better yet walk me through this?
Well, as you might expect - there is more than one way to skin a catfish! (Yes, that was the original version of the saying.) Of course WeatherCat will work with your present station (and Davis) and it will easily upload data to CWOP. However, there is one obvious caveat - your Mac has to run 24/7 in order to serve as the uploading platform. Most of us hard core
"WeatherCatters" leave our computers running 24/7 because WeatherCat can do so many things if you do this. In addition to submitting data to CWOP you can submit to data to Weather Underground and at least 6 other data services.
However, there is another mousetrap. There is a modest hardware box based on a Meteobridge design that you can put in between your weather station and your computer. There is the website of the open source project:
http://www.meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/HomeYou can have these small hardware boxes run 24/7 and have it do the submission to CWOP. In addition, Meteobridge has expanded its offering and can upload to apparently all the services that WeatherCat can upload to. There is one down side to this approach. Your station isn't presently supported by Meteobridge. Of course that could be an excuse to upgrade to that Davis -
or not! The big issue basically boils down to whether or not you have any problems running your Mac 24/7 and/or if you want to put up a custom website. WeatherCat will easily do what you want, but if you don't want to have to run your Mac 24/7, Meteobridge might be worth considering.
Sorry if that muddies up the waters a bit, but they keep telling me
knowledge is power. Alas, when it comes to
"toys for big-boys" though, it seems to me that knowledge tends to lead to painful credit card statements!
Cheers, Edouard