Hosted hardware

Hosted hardware

A Vantage on a serial port, a Fine Offset console on USB, or any other WeeWX driver, running beside the stations that upload. One WeeWX, one database, one set of reports.

WeeWX runs one driver, so a Vantage and an Ecowitt gateway normally mean two WeeWX instances. This driver can host the other driver instead. It is loaded exactly as WeeWX loads it, from its own section, and its readings join the ones that arrive over the network. Set one up in the web interface, or in weewx.conf; both are below.

The options are in Configuration. How it is put together is in Architecture.

Adding one in the web interface

Setting up a wired station is the same flow as setting up any other, on the Setup tab. The list there is every kind of station, in three groups by what you have to do:

• You point it at this machine — Ecowitt, Ambient and Weather Underground consoles. You type an address into the app that configures the console.
• This machine reads it — every WeeWX driver installed here, the ones WeeWX ships and any you added yourself.
• It turns up on its own — a Tempest, which broadcasts, and Acurite and LaCrosse gateways, whose firmware holds the server name so only a DNS entry can move it.

Pick a driver from the middle group and its own settings appear, with the defaults its author wrote: the same ones weectl station reconfigure would offer.

Fill them in and press Try it and set it up. The driver is opened before anything is saved, so a serial port that is not there is a message on the page rather than an entry you have to take out again. On success it starts at once. There is no restart.

What you set up there is kept in ultimate-push-web.conf, beside the console list, not in weewx.conf. WeeWX is running from that file, it is often not writable, and it is your file with your comments in it. The tab shows the block to paste into weewx.conf if you would rather keep it there, which is also what weectl device needs in order to find the station.

Afterwards it is a station like any other and is managed on the Stations tab, beside the consoles that upload. Save and reopen there closes the driver and opens it again with the new settings, which is what it takes for a serial port to become a different serial port. If it will not open, nothing changes and the one that was running still is.

Adding a wired station in weewx.conf

Configure the driver as if it were the only one, in its own top-level section. That part does not change, and weectl device keeps working on it.

Then name its section under [[hardware]]:

[Station]
    station_type = UltimatePush

[UltimatePush]
    driver = user.ultimatepush.driver
    port = 8000

    [[hardware]]
        station_types = Vantage

        [[[Vantage]]]
            role = main

[Vantage]
    type = serial
    port = /dev/ttyUSB0
    driver = weewx.drivers.vantage

At startup the log names what is being read:

INFO user.ultimatepush.hardware: Hosting 1 driver(s): Vantage. The archive station is Vantage.

Anything WeeWX can load works here, whether it ships with WeeWX or came from elsewhere. A driver is named by its section, and the section says which module to import.

Which station fills the plain columns

The same question as for two consoles, with the same answer: one station is the main one, everybody else is an extra sensor on a channel. See Stations.

Suppose the Vantage is the wired station and an Ecowitt gateway uploads. The Vantage has the better anemometer, so it is the main station and the gateway is an extra:

    [[hardware]]
        station_types = Vantage
        [[[Vantage]]]
            role = main

The gateway is then set up in the web interface as an extra station, and its temperature and humidity go to a channel of its own.

The other way round, with the gateway as the main station:

    [[hardware]]
        station_types = Vantage
        [[[Vantage]]]
            role = extra
            channel = 4
            name = The Vantage

The Vantage's outTemp and outHumidity then go to extraTemp4 and extraHumid4, and its pressure and wind are dropped rather than written over the gateway's. An extra station must be given a channel: picking one here would move readings to a different column the next time the driver started.

Archive records from a station that has a logger

A Vantage, a Fine Offset console and a WS23xx keep their own archive records. Set record_generation = hardware and those records are used, instead of being worked out from the readings as they arrive:

[StdArchive]
    record_generation = hardware

The archive station is the first entry in station_types. Its logger supplies the record, and everything the other stations sent during that period is added to it: the lightning count, the soil probes, the extra channels. Nothing is overwritten, so the Vantage's own columns come from its logger and the rest come from whoever sent them.

Two things follow from that, and both are worth knowing before you turn it on.

After an outage there is a gap in everything but the archive station. When WeeWX comes back it asks the archive station for what it logged while it was down. Nothing else has anything to hand over, because nothing was listening. So those records carry the Vantage's columns and not the gateway's.

The archive interval becomes the archive station's. archive_interval in [StdArchive] is ignored, and the console's own setting is used. The log says which one it took.

If the archive station has no logger, nothing changes: WeeWX falls back to working the record out from the readings, which is what it does today.

Setting the clock

StdTimeSynch reads and sets the archive station's clock, if it has one. Nothing else is touched. See the WeeWX documentation for the service itself.

When a wired station stops answering

A driver that fails is closed and built again, waiting ten seconds the first time and doubling to five minutes. The log says what happened and when the next attempt is:

ERROR user.ultimatepush.hardware: The Vantage driver failed (1 so far): could not open
port /dev/ttyUSB0. Trying again in 10 seconds.

Nothing else stops. The stations that upload keep being recorded, and the web interface stays up.

The exception is the archive station at startup. If it cannot be opened at all, the driver does not start, because the alternative is an archive quietly filled from software while the console's logger holds the real records.

What this does not do

Only the archive station is asked for history, and only its clock is read. A second console with a logger contributes its live readings and not its records.

A driver named under [[hardware]] in weewx.conf is that file's. The interface shows it, its role and what it fills, and declines to change any of it. One owner per setting: two files with an answer each would mean one is quietly ignored, and which one would depend on the order they happened to be read in.