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wviewweather.com - home of wview

Davis Vantage Pro/Pro2 Console Controller
Vaisala WXT-510 Controller
La Crosse WS-2300/2305/2310/2315 Controller
Oregon Scientific WMR918/968 Controller
Weather Station Simulator
Weather Web Site Generator
Weather Alarm Processor/Data Feed Engine
Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) Client
Weather Underground Client

Fast Generation • Non-GUI, Headless, Lightweight • Multi-Lingual • US or Metric Units • Extended Sensor Support • SQLite3 Archive Format • MySQL/PostgreSQL Export • RSS Weather Feeds • Runs on the Linksys NSLU2 • Embeddable • 24x7x365 Reliability

What Is It?
wview is a collection of linux/unix daemons which interface with a supported weather station to retrieve archive records (if generated by the station) and current conditions. The stations currently supported are:

• Davis Vantage Pro/Pro2
• Vaisala WXT510
• La Crosse WS-2300/2308/2310/2315
• Oregon Scientific WMR918/968
• Station Simulator

If the station does not generate archive records internally, wview will auto-generate archive records based on the sensor readings collected for that interval. The archive records are stored in an SQLite3 database. At a configurable interval, wview will utilize the archive history and current conditions to generate weather images (buckets, dials and graphs) and HTML web pages based on user-configurable HTML templates.

Features:

• 24x7x365 reliability.
• Fast image and HTML/XML file generation.
• Non-GUI, headless, lightweight (size and resources).
• Embeddable - can be deployed on low-power embedded systems such as the Linksys NSLU2.
• Multi-Lingual - HTML/XML templates, labels and text.
• US (Imperial) or Metric Units - can be easily configured for metric or US units of measure.
• SQLite Archive Storage - archive data is stored in an SQLite3 relational database.
• Remote Upload - web pages and images can be transferred to a remote web server via an ftp or secure ssh process included with wview.
• Alarms - the wview alarm daemon wvalarmd can be enabled to deliver current conditions to TCP socket clients as a near real-time data feed engine. wvalarmd can also be configured to function as a weather data alarm generator to user specified scripts or binaries.
• CWOP - can be configured to submit data to CWOP.
• Wunderground - can be configured to submit data to Wunderground.
• WeatherForYou - can be configured to submit data to WeatherForYou.
• Awekas - can be configured to submit data to Awekas.
• RSS Feeds - processes XML template files and includes a default weather data RSS feed template.

What Do I Need?

Weather Station - one of the following:

• Vantage Pro or Vantage Pro2 Weather Station with Console
  
  • WeatherLink for Vantage Pro or Pro2, Windows, Serial or USB - the windows software is not required, but this is the only way to obtain the serial or USB data logger
• Vaisala WXT-510
• La Crosse WS-2300/2308/2310/2315
• Station Simulator (included for demos and testing)
  

PC or Embedded Device to Host wview - this can be any platform running linux/*BSD/unix/MacOSX with an available serial or USB port and a network interface

linux/*BSD/unix/MacOSX Operating System

Standard Installations of: libz, libpng, gawk, libgd2-noxpm-dev, libsqlite3-dev, libreadline5-dev, radlib

wview

libcurl (in the curl package) if you plan to submit data to the Weather Underground and/or WeatherForYou

MySQL (libmysqlclient.a) or PostgreSQL (libpq.a) client development library if you want to store archive data in a database

How do I install it?
Download the most recent tarball (wview-x.y.z.tar.gz) then extract it wherever you like by executing "tar zxvf wview-x.y.z.tar.gz". In the top-level of the distribution, consult the files wview-Quick-Start.html (or wview-Quick-Start-MacOSX.html if you have a Mac) and wview-User-Manual.html for detailed building and operational instructions.

 

 

wview Processes
wviewd - the station interface daemon. Communicates via serial/ethernet/USB interface to obtain current conditions and archive records.
htmlgend - the HTML and image generation daemon. Communicates with wviewd and reads archive records generated by wviewd to create the weather images and HTML pages.
wvpmond - the optional process monitor daemon.
wvalarmd - the alarm processing daemon. Communicates with wviewd to receive current weather data values. Listens on port 11011 for data feed socket connections, sends current weather data to socket clients, and processes user-defined alarms.
wvcwopd - the CWOP client daemon. Transmits CWOP data to an APRS server based on the configuration found in wvcwop.conf.
wvhttpd - the HTTP submission daemon. Transmits data to wunderground/weatherforyou servers based on the configuration found in wvhttp.conf.
wviewftpd - the FTP transfer daemon. Transfers image and HTML files to a remote server based on the configuration found in wviewftp.conf.
wviewsshd - the rsync/ssh transfer daemon. Transfers image and HTML files to a remote server based on the configuration found in wviewssh.conf.

wview has been successfully deployed on many OS and hardware platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OSX (Darwin), i386, ARM and PowerPC (Mac). PC, NSLU2, WD Worldbook, Webpals, Mac and now sheevaPlug are some of the HW platforms that have hosted wview. Check out the Weather Site Directory for some example implementations of wview.

HTML Generation
wview generates images and HTML files 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more quickly than Weatherlink. wview only generates the images necessary for a given time frame. Yearly historical graphs are only updated once per day immediately after midnight. 28-day historical graphs are only updated once per hour immediately after the top of each hour. 24-hour historical graphs are updated following each new archive record:

Feb 12 23:55:04 dmzweb wviewd[7454]: <172542427> : storing record for 02/12/2005 23:55
Feb 12 23:55:04 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172542428> : Adding 5 minute sample...
Feb 12 23:55:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172548071> : Generated: 104 ms: 20 images, 6 htmls
Feb 12 23:56:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172608028> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 12 23:57:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172668028> : Generated: 59 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 12 23:58:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172728029> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 12 23:59:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172788030> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:00:05 dmzweb wviewd[7454]: <172843062> : storing record for 02/13/2005 00:00
Feb 13 00:00:05 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172843062> : Adding 5 minute sample...
Feb 13 00:00:05 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172843063> : Adding hour sample...
Feb 13 00:00:05 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172843063> : Adding day sample...
Feb 13 00:00:05 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172843086> : NOAA Generate: creating monthly NOAA reports up to 20050212
Feb 13 00:00:05 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172843087> : NOAA Generate: creating yearly NOAA reports up to 20050212
Feb 13 00:00:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172848258> : Generated: 267 ms: 38 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:01:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172908032> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:02:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <172968033> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:03:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173028034> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:04:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173088035> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:05:04 dmzweb wviewd[7454]: <173142427> : storing record for 02/13/2005 00:05
Feb 13 00:05:04 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173142427> : Adding 5 minute sample...
Feb 13 00:05:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173148080> : Generated: 104 ms: 20 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:06:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173208026> : Generated: 59 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:07:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173268027> : Generated: 59 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:08:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173328028> : Generated: 59 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls
Feb 13 00:09:10 dmzweb htmlgend[7458]: <173388030> : Generated: 60 ms: 12 images, 6 htmls

Note these times were achieved on an AMD Athlon 1400.

Image Quality
Not only does wview generate images in a fraction of the time of Weatherlink, but the images are of a much higher quality and require far less disk space to store. wview also supports multiple-plot data charts for better comprehension:

wview Chart (1.8K size)


Weatherlink Chart (12K size)

Embedded Friendly
wview is easily embedded onto low horsepower, storage-constrained platforms:

• autoconf and automake are used to configure the build environment
• image generation is very fast and efficient
• image files take up much less storage space
• the distribution contains example cross compilation scripts
• wview is quite robust and stable

News

6/14/2009: 5.5.1 released - Changed UV to float in LOOP structure so decimal precision is not lost; Add more paranoid sanity checks for NULL archive data; Remove references to "NOAA" for NOAA-style reports in HTML templates; Updated the User Manual; Added more sanity checks for data converters.

5/14/2009: 5.5.0 released - Modified WMR9XX station init so it will exit more gracefully. Removed the wviewsqld process. Exports to external database servers will now be done through the $distro/dbexports scripts. Improved NOAA initialization process so when there are no records, it doesn't try so hard. Integrated WMR9XX changes to support configurable outside channel. Added more boundary tests for image generation so when the user tries to generate non-existent sensors, htmlgend will not crash. Changed wind direction graphs from line graphs to scatter graphs. Fixed errant UV conversions in the generator. Changed wind direction processing so NULL values are not graphed. Modified wind direction archive record creation for non-archive generating stations so it is consistent with VP record creation. Fixed some bucket issues from prior dual units contributions. Updated the wview management site (wviewmgmt) to support network configuration on Debian-based distributions. Added automatic upgrade support for wviewPlug systems. Enhanced the install-env make target further including setup for Debian-based network config.

4/18/2009: 5.4.0 released - Added new SQLite3-MySQL export scripts. Added $distro/dbexport directory to contain the script sources. Version 5.4.x will be the last release containing the wviewsqld daemon as it is now deprecated in favor of the wview-mysql-export script. Added wview-mysql-create script to allow easy setup of the user, database and tables on the MySQL server in preparation for export. Archive, HILOW and NOAA tables are exported to the same MySQL database. Updated User Manual section on MySQL exports. Added missing documentation of the default wviewmgmt password in the User Manual. Added marker file support for the archive, hilow and noaa databases so the synchronization externally via scripts is facilitated. Removed sample databases for config and archive and changed the "install-env" make target so it generates them. This avoids platform issues of sqlite3 databases. Modified wvpmond so it reads the wview-binary marker file to know which binary name to use for wviewd. wviewd binary names are now appended with the station type. Added new SQLite3-PostgreSQL export script. Added wview-pgsql-create script to allow easy setup of the database and tables on the PostgreSQL server in preparation for export. Archive, HILOW and NOAA tables are exported to the same PostgreSQL database. Updated User Manual section on PostgreSQL exports. Added vpconfig contributions from Deborah Pickett so the ISS channels can be configured. Also adds support for setting rain collector size and wind direction calibration.

3/25/2009: 5.3.0 released - Created new wviewmgmt site for distribution. Better site navigation, database updates by page, a new system status page and password protection for site pages are a few of the enhancements; Added support for a new configure environment variable, HTTP_DOC_ROOT. When defined prior to invocation of the configure script, the install-env target will install wviewmgmt to the http document root specified; Updated the install-env target for wview build so the $prefix/var/wview/archive directory is NOT replaced, but rather updated. This means your existing archive database should be preserved and will not require a manual copy from the save directory after the installation.

3/12/2009: 5.2.0 released - Changed station build procedure so all station binaries are built with unique names such as wviewd_vpro, wviewd_wxt510, etc. Modified the wviewmgmt and wviewconfig configuration utilities to populate the file $prefix/etc/wview/wview-binary with the appropriate wviewd binary name; changed all start scripts to use the contents of this file when starting. Moved the ConfigForms directory out of $distro/examples to $distro/wviewmgmt and added automake logic so it is aware of the install prefix and opens the wview-conf.sdb file directly (no soft link required). Added the ability (with sudo membership for the http user) to start and stop wview from the Management web interface. Moved NOAA data from the ASCII file noaa.dat to an SQLite3 database, wview-noaa.sdb. Modified NOAA generation to use the new API. See the User Manual for a schema description. Added email alert notifications. Added configuration support in wviewmgmt and added new config parameters to the example wview-conf.sdb database. See the UPGRADE file for instructions. Sendmail and sendEmail packages are required. Added All Time html tags and sensor support. Added new tags to the almanac template examples.

3/1/2009: 5.1.0 released - Added new HTML/Javascript/PHP forms for wview configuration. They are found at $distro/examples/ConfigForms. The entry point is /ConfigForms/wview-form.php. See the User Manual section on Configuration for details. Added new database to store HILOW data, wview-hilow.sdb. Hourly highs and lows are stored along with timestamps for the events, an accumulator and the number of samples included (average = accumulator/samples). Note that the initial creation of this database will occur the first time wview runs and will take some time according to how far back your archive records go. See the new User Manual section on HILOW Database for details. Fixed bug in computed data utility for archive records which was still using the old WLK 0-15 wind direction scheme for a validation check. Fixed a 1 second delay in file generation introduced when the pre/post generation zombie bug was fixed. Added more checks to the station time sync routine so time syncs are never done at the top of the hour.

2/5/2009: 5.0.0 released - Replaced use of multiple text files for wview configuration with one SQLite3 database. There are multiple ways to configure wview now including some new graphical choices. See the User Manual section on configuration for full details. Replaced the use of the "WLK" database files with the use of one SQLite3 database. Added conversion utilities wlk2sqlite and sqlite2wlk to allow the import of old WLK records into the SQLite3 archive database. Added the dbsqlite.[ch] utility in common to provide the archive database access. Much, much more - see the ChangeLog file for details.

7/3/2008: 4.0.1 released - Fixed nuisance bug in FTP status logging - did not effect performance; Fixed "Rain Units are mm" message appearing during boot when imperial units are selected.