Davis Webtag question

[RayProudfoot]

Hi Steve,

Looking through the list of webtags on Wiki I notice there is one for the Davis transmitter battery condition - <#txbattery>.

As well as the main ISS unit I also have a anemometer transmitter. Is it possible for you to supply a webtag for that too please?

[steve]

I'd expect the anemometer transmitter to appear as one of the TX status entries, corresponding to whatever ID you've given it. The web tag is just a copy of the string at the bottom of the Cumulus main screen.

[RayProudfoot]

I'd expect the anemometer transmitter to appear as one of the TX status entries, corresponding to whatever ID you've given it. The web tag is just a copy of the string at the bottom of the Cumulus main screen.

Hmmm, I have eight statuses and they all say OK. But I only use two of them. Can the ones I don't use be set to blank or N/A?

[steve]

Hmmm, I have eight statuses and they all say OK. But I only use two of them. Can the ones I don't use be set to blank or N/A?

You'll have to ask Davis, that string is just what the Davis DLL supplies. I don't really want to have to start working out what transmitters you have and parsing the string to extract the required bits. It's really just another one of those facilities I 'threw in' because it was easy.

[RayProudfoot]

Fair comment. Thanks Steve. I also run VPLive which has an option to check battery statuses so I'll just keep an eye on that.

[steve]

I also run VPLive which has an option to check battery statuses so I'll just keep an eye on that.

The 'direct' serial interface probably has a lower-level access to the tx statuses, so software using that can display them individually. I don't know why the DLL can't display 'na' or similar for the ones that aren't there, though.

[RayProudfoot]

Actually I tell porkies. VPLive has two statuses - Transmitter and Repeater. So I still have no way of knowing which one of the batteries may be low.

I think I will post in the Davis forum on WXForum where someone might know the answer. Given the sophistication of the system it seems silly not to be able to show each transmitter battery independently.

[steve]

The 'LOOP' packet has a single byte for tx status but the spec doesn't say anything about the format. It's presumably one bit per transmitter, and the DLL creates the string using that information. There's a separate command to determine which transmitters are being received, so combining the two it's possible to give an individual good/bad for each tx battery that's present.

[RayProudfoot]

The first part of that seems logical. One byte for each transmitter's status. But I don't understand why an OK byte would be sent for a connection that doesn't exist.

I suppose the only way to see what would happen on my 2 transmitter setup is to remove one of the batteries. Maybe when it warms up I might try it. Thanks for the info Steve.