Except, in my case, for one area of pursuit. APRS and my weather station. I had become a Davis Instruments fan since I got my first weather station<\/a> in 2005. As mentioned before, UI-View handled the APRS portion and Davis had its own Windows-based software for handling the weather data the console produced. Back in 2011, the standard for linux-based APRS was Xastir. Xastir is a solid application and I had success using it to handle both internet and RF APRS traffic. But Xastir would not play well with the Davis Vantage Pro2<\/a>. There was internet talk of a work around using a MySQL database. I had no luck. I kept my system on Windows, using UI-View for weather and APRS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About two years ago, my Vantage Pro2, which I had since I was over in Iraq in 2007, finally died. The sensor package was mounted off my chimney when we first moved in to our current house over a decade ago. A great location for the weather station as it it high and clear of obstructions. Our roof, however, is steeply pitched and not something easy for me to traverse. I had gotten a TV antenna installation guy to install it – he did a great job. I think I had him back a few years later to swap out the battery. At one point, the board on the unit when bad and I replaced it. Then two years ago, one of our dogs shows up with an anemometer cup in her mouth. Perhaps a good sized chunk of hail had it the cup? Outside temperature data stopped working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than attempt to fix\/repair the existing unit, it was time to replace. Over a decade is a long time to be exposed to the elements. I purchased a new Vantage Pro2 but then had a hard time finding someone to install. The local tv antenna guy took one look at my roof and said nope. A month ago we were getting our chimney inspected and cleaned and the gentleman was showing me pictures of the crown of the chimney. He’d just climbed up there. I asked if, for a reasonable fee, he’d be willing to swap out the weather station (and the VHF\/UHF antenna). We struck a deal and now the weather station was operational again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But could I still achieve my goal of a linux-based APRS\/weather station? Enter weewx<\/a>. This is an application that is like the Swiss army knife of weather station apps. I am not sure of what it does not do. The key aspect is that weewx produces a file (wxnow.txt<\/a>) every minute using the same format used by APRS for weather data. Even better, the good folks at xastir created a script (wxnowsrv.pl<\/a>) that copies the wxnow.txt information and pulls it into xastir. This was the solution!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it works! Both weewx and xastir are happily working together on their own minimalist linux box, pulling in weather data from the Vantage Pro2 console via a serial connection while xastir is using a serial connection to transmit the weather data via my TM-D710A TNC functionality into the APRS system via RF<\/a>. Weewx also creates a simple weather webpage<\/a> which you can see here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I kept a careful list of all the steps I completed in installing both weewx, MySQL<\/a>, and xastir that I will post here soon – in case I need to reinstall. As of now the system seems to be stable and working nicely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have endeavored to have my hamshack be 100% linux for a number of years. Licensed in 2001, my ham career really got going when I returned to the States in 2005. Upgrading to General and getting on HF, I integrated a computer into my operations. Ham Radio Deluxe was one of the most popular … Continue reading “Linux in the hamshack”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338],"tags":[30,148,238,248,259,377,269],"class_list":["post-4747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-radio","tag-aprs","tag-linux","tag-tm-d710a","tag-vantage-pro2","tag-weather","tag-weewx","tag-xastir"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9vUOZ-1ez","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4747"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4757,"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747\/revisions\/4757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.n0zb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/davis_vantagepro2_X50A.jpg\")