Thanks to Walter Poxon and colleagues who provided these instructions
for meteo versions before 0.8.0. Some things have changed
in 0.8.0, most notably the replacement of the meteograph
program by meteodraw. (Update 0.9.0: while the requirements
have not changed, some of the details for running have, see below.)
The Davis Vantage Pro unit spits out wind direction in 1/100ths of a degree azimuth! ;)
Jeff writes: The other day when I was twiddling with the rain collector it proudly announced, "It's raining cats and dogs!!"
Meteo installs fairly easily if you have the right pre-requisite packages installed on your system.
Here's a list of what I had to install (in roughly the order I needed to
install them) in order for meteo to install/build properly:
drwxr-xr-x wdp user 1536 Feb 17 17:25 mysql-3.23.54a
drwxr-xr-x wdp user 5120 Feb 17 15:04 perl-5.8.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 24729600 Apr 1 12:27 httpd-2.0.44.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 17141760 Jan 21 14:09 libxml2-2.5.1.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 2160640 Jan 21 14:25 gd-2.0.11.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 962560 Feb 17 06:56 DBI-1.32.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 409600 Feb 17 15:20 DBD-mysql-2.1025.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 768000 Feb 23 21:59 libwww-perl-5.69.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 286720 Feb 23 22:05 HTML-Parser-3.27.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 368640 Feb 23 22:09 URI-1.23.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 2048000 Mar 30 20:47 pm.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 wdp user 24104960 Mar 30 21:10 php.tar
Install mysql, perl, and the latest apache first.
These are all independent of one another, but will be tied together by the
subsequent pieces. All the version numbers above should be treated as
minimums.
If something newer is out there, I'd use it. Note that there are also
some version constraints between some of the packages above, e.g.
some libxslt version usually requires a minimum libxml2 version.
PHP in particular requires minimum versions >= those above of all the above
pieces.
Then install the DBI, DBD, libwww-perl, the pm/php stuff, and everything else.
Note that the perl stuff is needed only for the weatherunderground portion.
It goes without saying to do a "make test" on each of these pieces
(if available) to make sure all the individual pieces work.
The last piece (which will use all of them) is meteo. Meteo will build properly
with just the above installed. It will not run or look right, however, unless
you follow the docs in the db directory of the meteo distribution
on setting up additional users (first as unix users and then again separately
in the database user admin stuff) for the two functions of meteo. Meteo uses
a separate
unix user
+ database user for data collection (read+write perms to the database tables)
and the graphing stuff (read-only perms) to the database.
You need to set up the users and tables in your mysql database.
Make sure the mysql daemon is running, then check out the README in the db
directory.
You'll need to first set up two unix accounts (named mtp and meteo - see
below). Do these first, then create the necessary database users and tables
in mysql
according to the README in the db directory.
If you want to see a working example, log in to www.poxon.net
Files you'll want to snarf:
/usr/local/etc/meteo.xml (the main config file for the whole thing)
Meteo can run as any user, so you may choose to run it as root, or as some other user already defined on your system. It is, however, good system administration practice to use a dedicated user. The mtp user used for reading data from the station and writing it to the database needs access to the station (a serial interface like /dev/ttyS0, give this device to mtp, or via TCP to a device server), and needs insert and upate rights in the database.
Another user meteo can be set up who will generate the images, this user only needs read access to the database (select).
*/2 * * * * /usr/home/mtp/davis_collect_dataHere's what the davis_collect_data script looks like:
#!/bin/sh
ps -ax | grep -v grep | grep meteopoll > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -eq 1 ] ; then
/usr/local/bin/meteopoll -f /usr/local/etc/meteo.xml \
-d -F -sOakwood > /dev/null 2>&1 &
else
# echo "meteopoll already running"
fi
(Update 0.8.0: add the option -b msgqueue, or meteopoll will
use the default destination for database updates, which is standard output.
Also it is best to run meteopoll without -d -F in production, since the
debug flag causes lots of debug messages to be generated, which takes
quite some time. Also -F stops meteopoll from forking, which also
disables meteopoll's ability to recover from a crash of the connection.)
WWW=/usr/local/apache/www.poxon.net/htdocs/weather
WEATHER_GRAPH="/usr/local/bin/meteograph -f /usr/local/etc/meteo.xml -s
Oakwood"
*/2 * * * * /usr/home/meteo/davis_average_data
# every 5 mins, graph daily graphs for weather
*/5 * * * * $WEATHER_GRAPH -c $WWW 300
# at 5 mins after the hour, do weekly graphs
5 * * * * $WEATHER_GRAPH -c $WWW -a 1800
# at 15 mins after the hour, do monthly graphs
15 * * * * $WEATHER_GRAPH -c $WWW -a 7200
# at 25 mins after the hour, do yearly graphs
25 * * * * $WEATHER_GRAPH -c $WWW -a 86400
Note the -a options to the graph program, it ensures that the precomputed
averages in the meteoaverage table are used, which is essential
for performance. While during the first few weeks you can easily live
without the -a option, after about half a year you will start to wonder
why your database server behaves so sluggish. (Update 0.8.0: the -a flag
is no longer necessary, meteograph is no longer capable of reading from
the stationdata table, it always uses the averages table. This also means
that you must run meteoavg.)
see wunderground directory.