WeatherCat and Mac OS 11 Big Sur

[rpg]

The text in the panel sure, but look at the header and footer of the window.

[xairbusdriver]

Just a shot in the dark (or whatever Appearance" you might be using)... Do you have "Use font smoothing..." enabled in the System Prefs->General->last item, bottom of window (at least in Catalina)? Another possibility is you might be using a "Scaled" resolution instead of the "Default for Display" in System Prefs->Displays.

[rpg]

Thanks... font smoothing seems to have disappeared from the Big S, so maybe that's it.

At least, I can't find it!

Display is default, not scaled.

[xairbusdriver]

Others are complaining/noting that "font smoothing" disappeared even in the Beta versions of Big Sur.

One thing you can easily do is to enter "font smoothing" or just "smoothing" in the search box of System Prefs. If there is still a manner of adjusting smoothing, it should highlight the appropriate pref.

There are comments at MacRumors that suggest this is more applicable to non-retina displays. There are also a couple of posts offering Terminal commands that adjust a couple of defaults. I'm not running Big Sur (I only installed Catalina yesterday!) and cannot vouch for the credulity of the comments nor the effects of any of the Terminal commands. These are relatively safe commands; defaults write ... The safest first step is usually the change the text from "default write..." to "defaults read..." and copy and paste that normal state into a text document. If your "...write..." command causes undesirable results, just copy that original status back into Terminal.

Good luck young Will Robinson!

[rpg]

Yeah, I tried looking for 'font' and 'smoothing' in the prefs. Not a sausage.

Also found those posts... not terribly inclined to worry too much at the moment—we're only interested in the slope of the graphs after all, aren't we?

Cheers for the help. Looks like an Apple thing so... who knows?

Richard

[bcurry]

Just FWIW I thought I’d share my experience with Big Sur and my weather setup.
I use the iMac I have as my main computer (I also have a laptop) which means it is also the one the USB dongle from the Davis Vantage Vue Pro 2 console is connected to. I have it on 24/7. Due to that last piece, I thought that Big Sur would give me a chance to test something out.
I bought a Davis WLL (Weather Link Live), which is a Bluetooth adapter that reads directly from the ISS and then reports through Bluetooth to my router and on to Davis Weather Cloud site, and from there the reports can go directly to Weather Underground and CWOP. With that in mind, I updated to Big Sur and indeed WeatherCat crashed and would not report, but I had the Davis Cloud going with the WLL so my WU and CWOP were unaffected.
After reading the thread here, I re-booted my machine and tried to get the new driver, but was unsuccessful, and so thought I was done. I then saw the thread about the Comm check, so I wiped the Comm in WeatherCat and re-booted. I entered the Davis Vantage Pro 2 as the source and viola – WeatherCat again reporting as it’s supposed to.
The upshot – I now use the Davis WLL to feed directly to Davis, WU and CWOP, and have the iMac via Weathercat reporting to PWS and making my website work (see my link to have a look at the website - gauges and all!)
In the end, it’s all good.
Thanks to the WeatherCat community for being so helpful!
Bill

[xairbusdriver]

Nice! Thanks for the positive and helpful report!

[ColdnFrosty]

Here's an updated process for folks with comms issues running WeatherCat under Big Sur 11.1. If WeatherCat is not communicating with your Davis weather station after installing Big Sur for the first time, here’s a fix for getting your Mac to recognize the Silicon Labs 5.3.5 UART driver. These two procedures were recently posted on the Silicon Labs website, and both worked for me:

1.   If you have already installed the 5.3.5 driver, remove it from your system.
2.   Shut down your Mac.
3.   Restart your Mac while holding the Command +R keys until the Apple logo appears. This will put you into Recovery Mode.
4.   Start a Terminal session from the Utilities > Terminal menu item.
5.   Enter the following command:

        /usr/bin/spctl kext-consent add 52444FG85C

6.   Reboot your Mac.
7.   Install the 5.3.5 UART driver following the on-screen instructions. You might see an error at the conclusion, but just ignore it.
8.   Reboot your Mac.
9.   Reconfigure WeatherCat for the newly installed driver from the Tools > Configure Station Comms menu item.

If the above process proves unsuccessful, you can try the following. Note that the poster on the SiLabs website has a disclaimer, “It is a delicate process so be careful if you try it. I’m not responsible for any damage to your data.”

1.   Remove the 5.3.5 driver from your system.
2.   Shut down your Mac.
3.   Restart your Mac while holding the Command +R keys until the Apple logo appears. This will put you into Recovery Mode.
4.   Start a Terminal session from the Utilities > Terminal menu item.
5.   Disable SIP by entering the following command:

csrutil disable

6.   Reboot your Mac.
7.   Open a Terminal session and enter the following commands:

        sudo su
        sqlite3 /var/db/SystemPolicyConfiguration/KextPolicy
        delete FROM kext_load_history_v3 WHERE team_id=’52444FG85C’;
        delete FROM kext_policy WHERE team_id=’52444FG85C’;
        .quit

8.   Install the 5.3.5 UART driver following the on-screen instructions. You might see an error at the conclusion, but just ignore it.
9.   Shut down your Mac.
10.   Restart your Mac while holding the Command +R keys until the Apple logo appears. This will put you into Recovery Mode.
11.   Start a Terminal session from the Utilities > Terminal menu item.
12.   Enable SIP by entering the following command:

        csrutil enable

13.   Reboot your Mac.
14.   Reconfigure WeatherCat for the newly installed driver from the Tools > Configure Station Comms menu item.

[xairbusdriver]

Excellent instructions. I vote for you to have free access to the forums for the rest of the year!

Hope I can remember to search for this topic when/if I install B.S. (surely no one thought about the initials of this thing... I'm sure they had another nickname for it... and don't call me shirley!!! )

[WyomingWinds]

I then saw the thread about the Comm check, so I wiped the Comm in WeatherCat and re-booted. I entered the Davis Vantage Pro 2 as the source and viola – WeatherCat again reporting as it’s supposed to.

Thanks.  Your solution worked for me.  In the Tools menu on the menu bar, I scrolled down to 'Configure Station Comms', selected 'Configure Comms and Exit', rebooted, entered Davis Vantage Pro 2, selected the USB option, and reconnected with Vantage Pro 2.  The Weather Station Gauges window still strobes uncontrollably, however. 

(I'm new and don't know how to post quotations.  I hope what I did works.)

[xairbusdriver]

I have no idea which of the icons are for creating the beginning an ending tags. Hovering your mouse over them will reveal what each does. However, all tags are surrounded by left and right brackets “[]” and “[/]” respectively. Fora “quote” you would use... wait for it... ‘quote’. 

A really handy app, if you visit/post to lots of forums, is something like Typinator. You set up text that you type a lot and then a short group of nemonic letters the you type instead. I copy the text I want to quote and type a “.” and “cq”. That prints out the copied text with the appropriate quote tags on either end.

Once you’ve done this, you can insert a quote in many forms that use the same and similar forum software. Let your computer do the simple, repetitive work.

[WyomingWinds]

I haven't participated in a forum for some 17 years, so your information is quite helpful.  Thanks.

[xairbusdriver]

"17 years"?! That must have been AOL? I still remember when there were things called "Bulletin Boards"! And you didn't need thumb tacks to stick a message on them!! Text only, of course, unless you got really ambitious and created ASCII "art"! Those were the daze and sounds of telephone phone modems.

Now I can easily mess up my posts with all kinds of garbage!

[Tony Lacey]

I am running weather cat ,and a davis vantage pro 2 on big Sur and basically it no longer works as the silabs usb driver is now defunct ,any ideas that i might understand, i have already had to quit weatherlink for the same kind of reason. Rather frustrating all round

tony l

[Blicj11]

As this is your first post, welcome the Forum, Tony. I assume you have already tried this?

https://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=3196.msg30962#msg30962