WeatherLink to HomeSeer Plug-In Available?

[jmonaco]

Is there a plug-in available that creates about 40 virtual devices in HomeSeer, like the plug-in for Ambient's VWS, but instead, takes real-time data from Davis Instrument's WeatherLink S/W rather than VWS?

Specifically, the need is to accurately bring in data from three sets of soil moisture/temperature sensors to trigger the Rain8s for the irrigation system.

[Rupp]

JohnM,
Weather Display can read a Davis weather station. Then all you have to do is setup a very simple script to read the data and post it as virtual devices. I have my sprinkler system turn off when it rains or is real windy as an example.

[jmonaco]

Rupp,

Thank you so much for the reply. Yes, I looked at Weather Display. It's scripts are set up for 10 virtual devices.

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
I'd prefer not to have to buy another S/W package on top of my investment in VWS (VWS seems to have bugs in that it is not parsing the channel 1 soil moisture data correctly).

I've never written scripts and am a bit apprehensive in the time it will take me to get them right. If I decide to take the leap, are there script examples or assistance you would be willing to share?

As for an alternative to script writting, would you know of ways or plug-ins to pull data in from the WeatherLink S/W?[/list]

[Rupp]

John,
Not knowing the format of the WeatherLink S/W make it hard to know the difficulty level. What is the output of the WeatherLink S/W? Maybe I could help you write something if the format is parse-able.

[Rick Tinker]

I use a plug-in like what you are looking for. It was written quite a while ago by a buddy of mine. I modified it to track some historical information (e.g. rain the past week and the past month) as well as setting device last modified date/time for the high and low temps to the actual dates that those events occurred.

The thing is, it is an old version 1 API plug-in and it really needs some work. It should store data differently, be upgraded to a version 2 API plug-in so it can support some triggers and conditions.

I do not have the time to do this, but I'll email this thread to the original author and see if he is interested in doing so.

The interface to the Davis directly using the Weather Display box's serial interface, so the PC software does not have to be used. The protocol that the Davis talks is absolutely the most convoluted and bizzare protocol I have ever encountered. It is even worse than the HAI polling protocol. The Davis protocol actually SPLITS bytes and thus a byte and a half will be used for one thing and the other half of a byte plus another will be used for something else. If you buy software to interface a Davis with anything, it is worth the money you paid to not have to mess with this yourself.

Knowing now what I did not know then, I will never buy Davis again.

[jmonaco]

Rick,

Thank you for forwarding this thread to the original author to see if he/she'd be interested in updating the plug-in.

With respect to Davis systems, I was quite happy with the Oregon Scientific wireless weather station. But I needed to get wireless soil moisture readings into HomeSeer. Davis Instruments had the only viable solution I was able to find; hence my migration to Davis. I can understand steering away from a solution given your experience.

Thank you again for your reply. I look forward to learning of the response from the author of the plug-in you use.

Regards,
John.

[jmonaco]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rupp:
John,
Not knowing the format of the WeatherLink S/W make it hard to know the difficulty level. What is the output of the WeatherLink S/W? Maybe I could help you write something if the format is parse-able. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Rupp, Thank you for asking for more details and the possible help. I'll try to attach a read-me file and some data files. I don't understand them but perhaps they'll be clear for you.

[jmonaco]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JohnM:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rupp:
John,
Not knowing the format of the WeatherLink S/W make it hard to know the difficulty level. What is the output of the WeatherLink S/W? Maybe I could help you write something if the format is parse-able. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Rupp, Thank you for asking for more details and the possible help. I'll try to attach a read-me file and some data files. I don't understand them but perhaps they'll be clear for you. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Readme file

[jmonaco]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JohnM:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rupp:
John,
Not knowing the format of the WeatherLink S/W make it hard to know the difficulty level. What is the output of the WeatherLink S/W? Maybe I could help you write something if the format is parse-able. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Rupp, Thank you for asking for more details and the possible help. I'll try to attach a read-me file and some data files. I don't understand them but perhaps they'll be clear for you. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Data file

[Rick Tinker]

The author of the plug-in I am using is way over-committed on other things to work on it.

I will see, however, if he is interested in giving up the source code for somebody else to play with it.

[jmonaco]

Rick, Thank you very much. Regards,John

[General Patton]

The weatherlink API can easily be used in a script to populate a group of virtual devices. The real time information is easily pulled this way.

Accessing the data archived in the stations memory (at the specified 1 min, 5 min, 10 min intervals etc.) is a little trickier. It dumps this into a text file which you then have to parse out (If I recall correctly it is fixed width fields).

I think I have something I wrote a ways back that will demonstrate how to get the real-time stuff. I will see if I can find it.

Currently, I dump all the data into a SQL-Server database and then populate some virtual devices directly from the database.

[jmonaco]

General Patton,

Thank you very much for your reply. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,
John

[General Patton]

John-

I checked some of the old code I had. I had actually used Visual Basic, not vbscript to attach to the weather station. I don't think you can declare the weatherlink.dll functions from within vbscript. I am also using a weather monitor II, not the Vantage Pro and it looks like the API's are different. For what its worth, I have attached a piece of my VB code as an example (won't do you much good unless you have VB)

I would run the executable every few minutes to update the devices.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. My 13th month old daughter takes up a lot of my "play" time.