The (new) WeatherLink Console - SKU 6313

[EI4HQ]

Hi all,

Having finally replaced my Davis Vantage Pro2 ISS that gave up the ghost about 18 months ago after too many years of brutal punishment meted out by the North Atlantic ocean (I'm in a wonderfully exposed spot), I'm back monitoring with a fully functional VP2 setup including the (old) 6152 console and trusty data logger.

At one stage I had x3 6152 consoles on the go (two of them donations from organisations locally who found my weather data useful) but I'm now down to one as the others died in the end (if anyone's interested, screen failures in both cases). Thing is, I kinda got used to having multiple consoles around the house and I'd like to get back there.

In looking through the Davis (and dealer websites), I notice that they're pushing the new Weatherlink console (SKU 6313) hard and Davis' own home website is no longer offering the old console at all (cursory look), though a number of resellers here in Europe still have it available. As far as I can figure, the only functional difference with the new console (leaving aside all the fancies of new screens etc.), is uplink to Weatherlink.com (not interested) and the inability to extract the local data from the console for local onward use/storage as can be done with the datalogger interfaced to the 6152 console - this I'm most interested in.

I've not been a Weatherlink.com user, ever. I'm a diehard Cumulus user since forever (v1 and now but preparing to migrate to MX). I'd like to stay that way. Being a growing skeptic of IT reliability and working on the basis that at some point "the cloud" is going to end up on its backside in a major way (the recent Cloudstrike outage was an early warning), I want the best of both Worlds and have both multiple consoles again and the ability to continue into the future to be able to offload data locally from the console to other local data storage/processing. My last remaining 6152 won't go forever, nor will the datalogger interfaced to it.

So, am I (a) buying up a couple of the remaining trusty 6152 consoles (and a spare datalogger as well ) from a reseller to future proof myself, or is there a World where I buy the new console and get my cake too i.e. data offload from the new console to local storage/processing, without dragging Weatherlink.com/cloud into it?

As I understand matters, what's being worked on just now by Cumulus(MX/v1) author is an effort to download local data that's been uploaded to Weatherlink.com into CumulusMX?

Answers on a postcard...

Thanks.

[freddie]

at some point "the cloud" is going to end up on its backside in a major way (the recent Cloudstrike outage was an early warning)

I don't have an answer for you, but I would like to point out that the recent Crowdstrike outage was nothing to do with the cloud. It was a fault in locally installed software (a driver, in fact) that caused the issue.

[mcrossley]

You have it correct, there is no mechanism to get data out of the 6313 console locally, nor as far as I can tell do Davis have any plans to add this functionality. For people that only have a 6313, Cumulus MX can only function by pulling the data from weatherlink.com. The update rate of that data depends on your subscription level.
No subscription = 15 minutes
Pro = 5 minutes
Pro+ = 1 minute

For fully local data you are stuck with the old consoles, or a 6316 Envoy.

The WeatherLink Live 6100 does offer local data (2.5 second updates for wind and rain, 1 minute for the rest), but no historic data, CMX again has to go to weatherlink.com for historic catch-up data.

I run a WLL 6100, and CMX runs 24x7 so it is very rare it needs to go to the cloud to get historic data.

[PaulMy]

Hi,
As Mark says

The WeatherLink Live 6100 does offer local data (2.5 second updates for wind and rain, 1 minute for the rest), but no historic data, CMX again has to go to weatherlink.com for historic catch-up data.

And the WLL and weatherlink.com has much more storage compared to the local console/logger - I recently downloaded going back to May at 5-minute interval.

As I understand matters, what's being worked on just now by Cumulus(MX/v1) author is an effort to download local data that's been uploaded to Weatherlink.com into CumulusMX?

As Mark indicated CumulusMX can access the 6313 data from Weatherlink.com, and also data from Weatherlink.com that is being updated by WeatherlinkPC.

Enjoy,
Paul

[EI4HQ]

...the recent Crowdstrike outage was nothing to do with the cloud. It was a fault in locally installed software (a driver, in fact) that caused the issue.

Hi.

Thanks for the observation. You are of course correct on technical cause, my (poorly put) point was about downstream consequences; Cloudstrike wasn't a cloud failure. It was however an IT failure the downstream consequences of which points to what will happen (and probably on an even larger scale) when there's a widespread cloud outage.

At the core of my concern is our over-dependence on a diminishing number of cloud service providers (who themselves are dependent on a diminishing number of sub-service providers). This concern is outlined here for example; https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... polization.

Folk will say that the whole point of the cloud and how it's structured is such that failure consequences a-la CrowdStrike "can't" happen. Watch this space. They can and unfortunately they probably will. In the event of such a failure, I'd like to continue to have local backup and so continued access to the data I care about (and I also own - that's a whole other can of worms with the new Davis data model; "You can have unhindered access to all your data but only by paying us for it...").

Thanks again for the observation. We're going off-topic for this forum so I'll let it lie with the above attempt at clarification.

[EI4HQ]

Mark, Paul,

Thanks very much - the WLL 6100 with CMX running all the time wasn't a middle road I'd thought about. As I run Cumulus 24x7 as well, that approach would allow me to hedge my bets...