But please remember that my speculation is nothing more than that - an informed guess if you will. It's a slight frustration for us as UK dealers that while we have excellent contacts with Davis sales and support services in Hayward (California), the way that Davis is structured means that the design engineers and programmers seem to live in a more walled-off part of the company and we rarely get the chance to interact with them. So we're pretty clued up on virtually 100% of the information that is publicly available from Davis, but digging further below the surface of that can be much more of a challenge.RayProudfoot wrote:Thanks John. I'm no expert on these things so happy to accept your explanation.
Re the VP2 design: The other thing to remember is that the design does continually evolve. So while the VP2 may look about the same as the original model, virtually all of the detailed sensor design has changed over the past several years. For instance, we're now starting to see the latest models coming through fitted with the new SHT31 sensor element, which promises still greater intrinsic accuracy.I did wonder back in 2009 that as soon as I bought the VP2 a VP3 would soon become available. It didn't of course and 7 years later there is still no new version. Might be down to expense in research plus the fact that the VP2 does a pretty good job albeit with a few irritations.
I think you're right in that the VP2 ISS does a respectable job anyway, so less urgent need of a VP3. There are only so many ways you can measure wind data, temp/hum, rainfall etc and it's not very obvious how you would improve the standard sensor set while keeping the same price point. It would be nice to see eg an ultrasonic anemometer in the VP2 range and maybe that will happen one day, but I suspect that price will be a challenge.
But as we've said before in these speculations, it's the VP2 console that could usefully benefit from a more radical update, but of course that could well come in a form that remains compatible with the existing VP2 ISS. But that said, there's no rumours on the dealer grapevine of any such introduction and we typically hear hints about such things at least a year in advance of actual availability, though occasionally there are surprises.
What is reasonably clear is that in the past 2-3 years Davis have been putting their VP2-related development effort into two aspects. One is improving sensor design, as above with the latest T/H and the revised anemometer.
The other is in enhanced data handling with the Connect remote data link and the continued expansion of the weatherlink.com cloud service. I know this is less relevant to users in this Cumulus forum, but both Connect and wl.com are strong growth points for Davis with Connect+wl.com offering a package for remote data collection that is relatively unchallenged by other manufacturers at similar price points and of great interest to eg farmers. And the wl.com network is continuing to grow, with some 23,000 active uploaders currently and a software update apparently waiting in the wings.