wdconsole questions

Greetings, all!

I am testing consolewd on a Pi3 connected to a Vantage Pro2 via a Davis USB logger. The program is working and is updating and sending the clientraw.txt and clientrawextra.txt files to a test web server running WDL. I am comparing the WDL display on the test server with the display on my live server. The live server is running WD on a PC connected to a second Vantage Pro2 console. The two Vantage Pro2 consoles are connected wirelessly to the same instruments, so ideally the web displays should be identical (other than discrepancies in the display of rapidly changing values like wind speed which are caused by slightly different polling times).

The consolewd installation is working very nicely for the most part and running it on a Pi looks like a great alternative to a dedicated PC running WD.

I have the following questions that I hope someone can help me with:

  1. The test system is displaying 24 hour time format. Is there a way of switching it to 12 hour format?

  2. The test system is showing slightly different times for sunrise/sunset and grossly different times for moonrise/moonset compared to the live system. Both are configured for the same lat/long corresponding to my location in Hartland, WI USA. For example, today (12/21/17) the information is:

          Live System         Test System            Actual
    

Sunrise 7:22am 7:19am 7:21am
Sunset 4:21pm 4:19pm 4:21pm
Moonrise 9:37am 10:10am 10:37am
Moonset 6:37pm 7:35pm 8:38pm

(“Actual” figures are from the website timebie.com)

The sunrise/sunset discrepancy doesn’t bother me, but the moonrise/set values are obviously wrong. Is this a configuration issue or a bug?

  1. Whenever I start consolewd the windspeed starts at 0.0 and slowly steps up to the correct speed in 0.1 or 0.2 increments. For example, currently the console is showing a steady wind speed of about 12 mph. However, when I start consolewd it initially reports a speed of 0.0 mph and then takes about 3 minutes for the speed to ramp up to the correct value. The incorrect values are appearing both on the Pi’s terminal display and in the clientraw.txt file. Meanwhile, the reported gustspeed and wind direction information is correct right from the startup.

Any suggestions will be most appreciated. Thank you!

re the moon rise/set
make sure to be comparing the same day

re the average speed
the davis console only supplies 1 windspeed value (i.e the current/gust speed)
I could make consolewd set the rolling average faster on start up (by setting the intitial values to the current speed instead of 0)

Hi, Brian;

Thanks for the quick response.

Moon rise/set: The times I listed are from the live and test sites on the same day (today).

Wind speed: I would prefer that consolewd start with the rolling average set to the current speed instead of 0. Otherwise whenever it is necessary to restart the program the “Wind” gauge display of WDL starts at zero and crawls up to current values very slowly. On a windy day that looks odd.

Any way to change the time display to 12 hour mode?

–John

its not clear to me where exactly you wanted the times display to 12 hours?

re the windspeed on start up
try a new update

I will download the update. Thank you!

The 24 hour time format is being displayed on my web page in the “Station name” display and in the sun/moon times.

Thanks!

Hi, Brian;

I installed the revised version and it doesn’t appear to change the behavior of the wind speed during startup. I downloaded consolewd64.tar.gz, copied the consolewd executable over the old version and restarted consolewd. Do I need to do anything else to get the new version active? The timestamp on the consolewd that I am now using is 12/21/17 19:44.

FYI, you should probably change the download link in the “ConsoleWD for Raspberry Pi Setup Instructions” sticky. In step 2.1 of those instructions it indicates that the program should be downloaded from http://www.weather-display.com/downloadfiles/consolewdfilespi.zip. That appears to be an obsolete version – at least when I download from that link the copy I get has an 11/28/2014 date stamp. The copy that I am currently using is from http://www.weather-display.com/fileslinux.php and it has the 12/21/17 datestamp.