The Station:

 Davis Vantage Pro2 (VP2) Model 6152 Wireless Weather Station:

• Console with AC-power adapter and battery backup. Firmware version 1.82, released December 2008.
• Integrated sensor suite with rain collector, temperature and humidity sensors, and anemometer.
• 40-ft (12 m) anemometer cable.

To mount the ISS and Anemometer, I used the following material and hardware:

• Fence post (10ft) and concrete mix for anchoring, for the ISS.
• 10 ft, 2.5" Stainless Steel Piping for Anemometer mounting on side of balcony.
• 2 electrical conduits of various length to help securely connect cabling from Anemometer to ISS (definitely a unique setup).
• Mounting hardware (came with the original station equipment).

For more information on the Vantage Pro2, click this logo:  

• 2 x Dell Optiplex GX260 PCs, one to run the weather station software and the other as a webcam server.
• Both PCs have combined 1 GB RAM and 100 GB HD space and are running Windows XP SP3.
• ATI TV Wonder 200 PCI TV Tuner/Capture Card and A/V Input extension cable.
• Network and USB drives are being used for backup/archiving purposes.
• APC UPS for battery back up (on weather station PC only).
• Console is hooked up to weather station PC via the Serial Datalogger.

• Q-See QOCDC36 (Wired) - currently offline until further notice.

• WeatherLink 5.8.3 by Davis Instruments (commercial) - this software comes together with the datalogger. It is used to update
  current conditions and reports on this site.
• Cumulus 1.8.8 beta by Sandaysoft (freeware) - a fully featured weather program that, like Weatherlink, I use to upload weather
  information to this website. This is becoming the preferred source of much of my online weather data.
• VirtualVP 1.2.1.1  by SoftWx (registered shareware) - in conjunction with a 3rd party virtual com port driver, N8VBvcom by
  Phil Covington, VirtualVP enables the VP2's data to be sent to up to 8 different weather software programs.
• VPLive 1.1.10.14 by SoftWx (freeware) - Displays live data from the VP2. Calculates station and MADIS barometer readings (amongst
  others). I am using it primarily for its CWOP/APRS upload feature.
• StartWatch 1.1.1 by SoftWx (registered shareware) - a program that can start up and monitor selected programs. I like the fact you
  can start programs in a certain order. Its monitoring features can restart crashed or hung programs. Thanks to this program, the PCs
  have almost become "set and forget"!
• ImageSalsa 2.0.13 Beta by ImageSalsa.com (registered copy) - customizes webcam images and uploads them to web.

Currently Being Tested:

• No software is currently being tested.

Website:

This Website: Uses a combination of modified templates from Weatherlink and Cumulus and pages originally created with Microsoft FrontPage
2000 and as of July 2007, its followup Microsoft Expression Web. This was updated to Version 4 in 2010. I also use ConTEXT from time to time to
edit PHP scripts. Numerous customizations were later added from online and text resources.

Upload Intervals: Website - Every 10 minutes for Weather Readings, 30 minutes for Reports. CWOP/APRS - Every 10 minutes.
Wunderground - Every 2.5 seconds (Rapid Fire). Cumulus pages - realtime gauges every 5 seconds, other pages every 10 minutes.
The webcam's images are uploaded every 30 seconds.

Hosted By: Mochahost (since Feb '06), and before that - my own ISP webspace (Nov '05 - Feb '06).

Other Information:

The station and some of the software were purchased online. All other equipment was obtained locally.

If you would like to view my particular outdoor setup, please look at some photos here.
View the changelog for the station and the site here.

Jump To:  Station - PC - Webcam - Software - Website and Bandwidth

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