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Last modified on May 16, 2010

wviewweather.com - home of wview

Davis Vantage Pro/Pro2 Console Controller
Vaisala WXT510/520 Controller
Texas Weather Instruments Controller
La Crosse WS-2300/2305/2310/2315 Controller
Oregon Scientific WMR918/928NX/968 Controller
Weather Station Simulator
Virtual Weather Station
Weather Web Site Generator
Weather Alarm Processor/Data Feed Engine
Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) Client
Weather Underground Client

Fast Generation • Non-GUI, Headless, Lightweight • Multi-Lingual • US or Metric Units • Extended Sensor Support • SQLite3 Archive Format • MySQL/PostgreSQL Export • RSS Weather Feeds • Runs on the Linksys NSLU2 and SheevaPlug • Embeddable • 24x7x365 Reliability

What Is It?

wview is a collection of unix daemons which interface with a supported weather station to retrieve archive records (if generated by the station) and current conditions. The stations currently supported are:

Davis Vantage Pro/Pro2
Vaisala WXT510/WXT520
Texas Weather Instruments (All)
La Crosse WS-2300/2308/2310/2315
Oregon Scientific WMR918/928NX/968
Station Simulator
Virtual Station

wview will generate archive records based on the sensor readings collected for that interval. The archive records are stored in an SQLite3 database. At a configurable interval wview will utilize the archive history and current conditions to generate weather images (buckets, dials and graphs) and HTML web pages based on user-configurable HTML templates. Other types of file generation are supported including PHP, XML, python, etc. to support custom web site designs.

Features:

24x7x365 reliability.
Fast image and HTML/XML file generation.
Non-GUI, headless, lightweight (size and resources).
Embeddable - can be deployed on low-power embedded systems such as the Linksys NSLU2 or the SheevaPlug.
Multi-Lingual - HTML/XML templates, labels and text.
US (Imperial) or Metric Units - can be easily configured for metric or US units of measure.
SQLite Archive Storage - archive data is stored in an SQLite3 relational database.
Remote Upload - web pages and images can be transferred to a remote web server via an ftp or secure ssh process included with wview.
Alarms - the wview alarm daemon wvalarmd can be enabled to deliver current conditions to TCP socket clients as a near real-time data feed engine. wvalarmd can also be configured to function as a weather data alarm generator to user specified scripts or binaries.
CWOP - can be configured to submit data to CWOP.
Wunderground - can be configured to submit data to Wunderground.
WeatherForYou - can be configured to submit data to WeatherForYou.
Awekas - can be configured to submit data to Awekas.
RSS Feeds - processes XML template files and includes a default weather data RSS feed template.

What Do I Need?

Weather Station - one of the following:

Vantage Pro or Vantage Pro2 Weather Station with Console
- WeatherLink for Vantage Pro or Pro2, Windows, Serial or USB - the windows software is not required, but this is the only way to obtain the serial or USB data logger
Vaisala WXT510/WXT520
Texas Weather Instruments
La Crosse WS-2300/2308/2310/2315
Oregon Scientific WMR918/928NX/968
Station Simulator (included for demos and testing)

PC or Embedded Device to Host wview - this can be any platform running linux/*BSD/unix/MacOSX with an available serial or USB port and a network interface

linux/*BSD/unix/MacOSX Operating System

Standard Installations of: libz, libpng, gawk, libgd2-noxpm-dev, libsqlite3-dev, libreadline5-dev, radlib

wview

libcurl (in the curl package) if you plan to submit data to the Weather Underground and/or WeatherForYou

How do I install it?

Debian/Ubuntu APT Install
See the User Manual APT Install Section for details on adding the wviewweather.com APT repository and automated installation.

APT Distributions and Architectures Supported:

Debian Lenny i386, amd64, armel, powerpc

Debian Sid armel, powerpc

Ubuntu Intrepid i386, amd64, armel, powerpc

Ubuntu Jaunty i386, amd64, armel, powerpc

Ubuntu Karmic i386, amd64, armel, powerpc

Ubuntu Lucid i386, amd64, armel, powerpc

Mac OS X MacPorts Install
See the User Manual MacPorts Install Section for details on how to install wview via MacPorts.

Source Install
Download the most recent tarball (wview-x.y.z.tar.gz) then extract it wherever you like by executing "tar zxvf wview-x.y.z.tar.gz". In the top-level of the distribution, consult the files wview-Quick-Start.html (or wview-Quick-Start-MacOSX.html if you have a Mac) and wview-User-Manual.html for detailed building and operational instructions.

Web Site Generation

Out of the box wview provides a full weather web site template which includes an almanac page, historical pages for the last 24 hours, the last week, the last 28 days and the last year. The home page presents current conditions and frequently viewed historical data in a space-efficient display:

Example Home Page

It is straightforward to start with this site template and customize it for your specific needs. PHP and XML are two common methods used to extend file generation and integrate with other applications or custom designs.

wviewmgmt HTML Configuration

wview is quite versatile and as a result has a high degree of configurability. This can often cause applications to be difficult to set up. With wview, the wviewmgmt HTML Management system makes configuration visually appealing and easy. The System Status Page displays the current state of all wview services:

Example Status Page

Configuration is broken up into logical sections with context sensitive help available by mousing over configuration items:

Example Station Page

wview Processes

wviewd The station interface daemon. Communicates via serial/ethernet/USB interface to obtain current conditions and archive records. Stores archive and HILOW data in SQLite3 databases.

htmlgend (optional) The HTML and image generation daemon. Communicates with wviewd and reads archive records generated by wviewd to create the weather images and HTML pages.

wvpmond (optional) The process monitor daemon.

wvalarmd (optional) The alarm processing daemon. Communicates with wviewd to receive current weather data values. Listens on port 11011 for data feed socket connections, sends current weather data to socket clients, and processes user-defined alarms.

wvcwopd (optional) The CWOP client daemon. Transmits CWOP data to APRS servers.

wvhttpd (optional) The HTTP submission daemon. Transmits data to wunderground/weatherforyou servers.

wviewftpd (optional) The FTP transfer daemon. Transfers image and HTML files to a remote server.

wviewsshd (optional) The rsync/ssh transfer daemon. Transfers image and HTML files to a remote server.

Debian/Ubuntu APT Instructions

Scripts

News

04/04/2010: 5.17.0 released - Added more verbose logging of WMR918 sensor initialization. Fixed timeout value for select call while waiting for first data packets. Added htmlgend timer to limit the wait time for wviewd data packets once requested. If packets are not received the timeout will produce log output to indicate a problem. Add back in the display of time for storm start. Added user contributed PHP code to do path and file sanity check for certain configuration items in wviewmgmt screens. Will indicate problems in red. Added "From" email address configuration and use for email alerts.

03/28/2010: 5.16.0 released - Added contributed java script code to wviewmgmt so the focus defaults to the login page's password entry. Added contributed moon rise and set utilites and html tags. If you are upgrading and you want to add them to your Almanac page, you will have to do so manually. Enhanced alarms datafeed archive sync so new archive records will not be sent if archive sync is in progress.

03/21/2010: 5.15.0 released - Added daily rain (since midnight) to the wunderground and weatherforyou data submissions. Added station time sync after DST change so stations like the Vantage Pro which time stamp archive records will heve the new DST time update in a *timely* manner. Added a 2 minute timeout argument to rsync for ssh file transfers.

03/02/2010: 5.14.3 released - Modified NOAA update to use a 30 second offset from midnight to avoid DB resource conflicts at midnight. Simplified update logic and fixed bug introduced in 5.14.2 for NOAA causing alternating update and no update at midnight.

02/25/2010: 5.14.2 released - Remove legacy FTP interval definition per rule and replace with one global interval value to allow control of the frequency of possible FTP transfers. Files are still only transmitted if new. Added more verbose logs describing per file status/action. Modified NOAA database update logic based on time stamps. Fixed bug in process monitor preventing restart of the station daemon if the wview-binary file included CR or LF.

02/21/2010: 5.14.1 released - Enhance serial read retry logic for the WS-2300.

02/19/2010: 5.14.0 released - Add user-contributed WS-2300 sensor data validation via multiple sample collection. Three "similar" readings are required before each sensor data is stored. Modified NOAA database behavior to allow replacement of existing NOAA records with newer data.

01/31/2010: 5.12.6 released - Fixed ssh rule counter initialization. Restart apache2 for APT installs (not upgrades) so the php5-sqlite module is activated.

01/28/2010: 5.12.5 released - Modified history rollup utility to better handle database and wview NULL values in station data. Removed obsolete station type selection during ./configure.