Davids Software

zxweather

zxweather is the weather station software written for weather.zx.net.nz. It provides a modern web interface and desktop client. It works with any hardware compatbile with the FineOffset WH1080. It is written in a combination of Python, JavaScript, C++, PL/pgSQL and ANSI C.

Current Development Status

Development on zxweather happens over at github: https://github.com/davidrg/zxweather. There you can see the current development status and progress towards a first "stable" release. You can also grab the latest code thats currently running weather.zx.net.nz if you want to have a go at running it yourself. The rest of this page covers ancient versions of zxweather built many years ago and does not reflect the current state of the software. This website will be replaced once v1.0 is finished off (currently a few years behind schedule)

An alpha-quality v0.2 release (download) is available for anyone who wants to give it a go. Note that it requires exclusive access to the weather station and the sample interval must be set to 5 minutes. This means you can not run it alongside something like wview and if you have previously used wview you may have to reset the weather station console to put the sample interval back to 5 minutes. It is compatible with both Linux and Windows but Linux is recommended.

Main Features

• Optional desktop interface. It talks to the database only allowing it to run on a different computer from the data logger. Supports Windows and Linux.
• Modern web interface supporting HTML 5 Canvas charts with SVG and PNG fallbacks for older browsers. This can be run on a separate (linux) computer from the data logger.
• Support for weather stations 100% compatble with the FineOffset WH1080.

Coming in the Next Release

The next release (1.0) is suffering from feature creep a little and is now a bit behind schedule. It currently has the following major new features over v0.2:

• Support for Davis hardware (Vue, Pro 2, Pro 2 Plus)
• Desktop interface overhaul
  • High-speed charting
  • Now works over the internet
  • Data export
  • Reporting engine
  • Display of archived images and time-lapse videos
  • Show data in a grid
• Support for multiple weather stations in the same database and web UI (this was partially present in v0.2 but fairly broken)
• Instant data updates in any web browser supporting WebSockets (IE10+, Firefox 7+, Chrome 14+)
• Fast interactive charts using the HTML5 Canvas
• Efficient binary protcols for moving weather data between servers
• Support for logging webcam images

I currently have a prototype WeatherLink IP emulator which can serve up data in the database from a Davis Weather Station to other software (such as WeatherLink and cumulus) which may be tidied up and included in a future release too. This would allow the use of other software in parallel with zxweather provided you're using a Davis weather station.

You can see a preview of the new version at weather.zx.net.nz which is currently running development snapshots of the v1.0 branch. Source code is currently available on bitbucket in the default branch. Running code from v1.0 is not advised currently as the database schema is still undergoing changes occasionally so you may have trouble upgrading in the future.

Desktop Client v1.0

The new desktop client in v1.0 can run either directly from the database or pull data from the web interface. No direct contact with the weather station hardware is required (or even supported) allowing it to be used anywhere. It runs under both Linux and Microsoft Windows.

The chart feature is generally much faster than the web interface allowing large charts containing months of data. Performance depends on how much data there is to plot. A full year of indoor and outdoor temperature data on my old Core i7 box is still fairly smooth.

Charts can be exported as png, bmp, jpeg or as a vector graphic PDF.

A beta version of the desktop client along with setup instructions and more screenshots is available from here