Weather

Research Weather Station Software

Since the Weather Display software wasn’t going to work out, I started a wider search for weather station software.  I found a great link on Weather Underground which listed a number of weather station software.

The most promising candidates were Virtual Weather Station, Cumulus, Weather View 32 and WeatherLink.  Ambient Weather was the website I found and purchased the Vantage Vue from.  They sold their own weather station software called Virtual Weather Station that had three versions.  Cumulus was free software.  Weather View 32 looked promising.  WeatherLink was made by Davis Instruments and required to download data from a Vantage Vue.

I had already looked at Virtual Weather Station and I had assumed I was going that route until I figured out there were other products on the market.  I also had to purchase WeatherLink to get the data logger adapter.  Cumulus was a nice price and Weather View 32 was an option so I downloaded both to test.  Cumulus looked like it had all the the features I wanted and the price was right.  However, it too seemed like it was being developed by one person like Weather Display and I worried about future updates.  Weather View 32 was fine but a large installation.  I figured WeatherLink could work but I didn’t want to purchase the IP version for uploading automatically.  Virtual Weather Station had a $50 base version, a $70 Pro version and a $100 Internet version.  The demos of all three except for WeatherLink were available for I tried them out.

Here is my plan:

  • I am going to purchase the WeatherLink USB first.  This will give me required data logger.  If I purchase from Ambient Weather, I can bundle the base version of Virtual Weather Station for $20.  I will try out that configuration even though the necessary web pages and FTP options aren’t available.  I will also get a chance to see how the WeatherLink software itself works since I wasn’t able to test it.
  • I will next test Cumulus with the weather station and see how it works and if I want to commit to this software.
  • I might upgrade to the Internet Edition of Virtual Weather Station if needed to finish this project.