Cumulus Support

I'm having trouble selecting which devices I should buy to automatically feed data from my Davis Pro2 personal weather station into a time series database so that I may visualise it using data visualisation software. I've read a lot about putting a tool called weewx on a Raspberry Pi, but I'm not sure what device to get or what connections I'll need to go with it. I'm not an expert on Raspberry Pi devices, but I can follow instructions.

A raspberry pi, Meteo-Pi ("a connecting device that allow you to connect your favourite Davis® weather station to Raspberry Pi mini computer"), Davis USB logger, meteobridge, Belfryboy Clone USB logger, CumulusMX, weewx, or wifilogger2 are some examples of devices I've read about.

First step... To access the data on your VP2 you need a physical interface, that is generically referred to as a "logger". This is a circuit board that plugs into the bottom of the VP2 console.

A logger can be either original (dumb) or "smart".

Dumb loggers are the Davis USB, the Belfry Boy USB (A copy of the Davis). They require you run a program somewhere to read the data off the console and process it for you. Examples of these programs are CumulusMX and WeeWx. These programs can run on Windows, Linux, MacOS and Raspberry Pi's.

Smart loggers like the WifiLogger incorporate a small computer internally, and can send data to other places without the need for an external program. But WiFiLogger does not offer the fully flexibility of the external programs like CumulusMX and WeeWx. The WiFiLogger can still be used (at the same time) as a "dumb" logger, and CumulusMX can read the data from the console through it.

Meteo-Pi is a bit of a hybrid, in that in corporates the circuit board that plugs into your VP2 console like dumb logger, but directly connects this to a Rasberry Pi, eliminating the normal connection over USB or network.

Programs like Cumulus MX or WeeWx provide both logging of your data externally, and the ability to manipulate it and then send over FTP, HTTP, MQTT, Email, MySQL etc. This is typically used to drive web sites, or other applications. Cumulus MX also has a local API whereby other applications can pull the data they require directly from the program over the network.

I hope that helps.

For what it is worth I have been using a Davis VP2 station connected via a Meteo-Pi link to a Raspberry Pi successfully for the last couple of years. The data is recorded on the RPi with CumulusMX and then externally through a CumulusUtils based website.

I should say that the whole process was a big learning curve for me as I started with little experience of basic coding, however the guys on the Forum are very supportive and over the years have continued to develop the software to make it accessible to many flavours of hardware.

If you persevere with the challenges you can end up with a very stable set of data being viewed through either the CumulusMX admin site or a local private website on your RPi or a publicly hosted website for all to view.

AndyKF650 wrote: ↑Mon 10 Jan 2022 12:24 pm For what it is worth I have been using a Davis VP2 station connected via a Meteo-Pi link to a Raspberry Pi successfully for the last couple of years. The data is recorded on the RPi with CumulusMX and then externally through a CumulusUtils based website.

I should say that the whole process was a big learning curve for me as I started with little experience of basic coding, however the guys on the Forum are very supportive and over the years have continued to develop the software to make it accessible to many flavours of hardware.

If you persevere with the challenges you can end up with a very stable set of data being viewed through either the CumulusMX admin site or a local private website on your RPi or a publicly hosted website for all to view.

I had a similar situation. I too used a Davis VP2 station connected via Meteo-Pi to a Raspberry Pi and processed the data using CumulusMX. The entire system worked reliably, but it took me a while to understand all the nuances of setup and programming.

When I started, I also had little programming experience, but thanks to the support of the forum participants and their advice, I was able to overcome all the difficulties. It really was a big learning process, but the results were worth it.

I now have a stable system that allows me to track and view data through both the CumulusMX admin panel, a local site on the Raspberry Pi, or a public site.