Advanced AWS and data handling topics (Legacy)

This page is now considered outdated as the information has not been updated in sometime and is no longer relevant to the current Davis systems. This page has been left as a reference page in our ‘Legacy’ section.

Please note: This specific ‘Advanced Topics’ area of our website is still in the process of extensive updating of an older version. A number of topics here may therefore not be available for the time being and links not working.

In addition to the three main areas of this website (Products; Advice; and Support), there is also a fourth topic area that we’re including here because it is poorly covered by other websites. This will deal with topics associated with more advanced configurations of PC-linked weather stations and, in contrast to the rest of this site, will assume some limited familiarity with the technical background to weather station data, to PC hardware and software use and, where relevant, to webpage design. Hopefully the content will still be accessible even to non-expert users, but there is significantly less in the way of basic explanation.

This ‘advanced’ content will focus largely, but not exclusively, on ideas for working with logged weather data in ways that go beyond those features provided by the standard software such as Weatherlink, for example, topics especially related to custom data links and data handling (ie creating custom programs). We’ll aim to provide both general background in different approaches to data handling and also specific technical detail to help programmers interface to the weather data. This will initially be a relatively limited area (because other parts of the website have been the priority for development), but should in time grow to be a valuable resource of background and technical detail.

Advanced topics are currently organised within the following framework. Please see the detailed sections below for more information and links.

• Longer distance data links between weather station and PC;
• General aspects of weather software use in the local PC environment;
• Programming topics;
• Publishing weather data to web pages;

NB Only a few of the pages in this Advanced Topics section will be visible from the main dropdown menu to avoid overloading the general visitor with too much detail. You will need to use the direct links below to reach some of the pages.

The distance between data logger and PC is officially limited to 5m (16′) for the USB logger and 12m (40′) for the serial logger, although this latter maximum can usually be increased somewhat without problems. However there are many methods to carry the data further, both locally and over long distances if necessary. These options are discussed on the longer distance data links page.

• The role of the data logger;
• Data views available with weather station software;

• How PC weather databases work;
• Data exchange between programs;
• Image file size;

• Program configuration for running a weather website;
• Web server interactions;
• Options for including weather data in web pages;
• Custom web page software configurations;