[OZAPRS] linux/Davis WX Station

[Andrew Errington]

> -----Original Message-----
> Hi All,
>
> I am running Ubuntu Linux, my question is :-
>
> Has anyone got or managed to connect a Davis weather station to Linux.
> If so what software programme are you using and was there any
> difficulties in setting it up.

Hi again,

I didn't notice that you said you were new to Linux, so I apologise for
dumping such a large amount of information on you.

Firstly, is your weather station the Davis Vantage Pro?  If so, I'll
summarise the key points on that web page I gave you.  If not, please
email us the specific model of weather station.

Anyway, it seems that the Davis Vantage Pro needs an extra module to
enable serial communications.  You need to buy this and plug it in.  Now
you can connect the console to the PC serial port (on the web page the guy
doesn't have a serial port, so he uses an ethernet to serial adapter).  I
suggest that you use the Windows software that comes with the weather
station module to verify that it's all working, but you could skip this
step.

If you don't have a serial port then you need a USB to serial adapter. 
Almost any one you can find will work with Linux.

Finally, you need to get data from the serial port and either dump it to a
file for doing something later, or show it on screen or through a funky
live weather widget (or send it to your APRS software for transmission).

In Linux the first serial port on the PC is usually /dev/ttyS0, so you
should look there for data coming in from the weather station.  If you are
using a USB to serial adapter it's /dev/ttyUSB0.  You can view the
incoming data with minicom, but I suggest something more friendly like
gtkterm.

If anything is not clear, please email back.

73,

Andrew