On Saturday afternoon (September 28th) I installed the new Davis Instruments Vantage Pro2 (VP2) weather station with the IP-based WeatherLink IP data logger. I installed the Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS – Davis-speak for the combined rainfall and temperate sensor with the transmitter) and the anemometer (which is separate from the ISS and linked by cable) on the same rooftop pole the old Oregon Scientific WMR200 is still mounted. I left the WMN200 in place because I wanted to see the delta – there are difference between the VP2 and the WMN200 in all areas – I’m not sure about the rainfall: we haven’t had any rain since the installation, of course.
The change-over in the Cumulus weather station software was seamless. Of course I thought it would be – I have a VMware Workstation image of the weather station to do the initial testing. And given that that OS is a virtual machine running on VMware ESXi 5.1 I cloned the virtual machine – nice to have a good solid backup – and then changed the station type and communications mode to VP2 and IP. Actually, I initially forgot to change the communications mode to IP and was confused for a few minutes.
(ESXi is free as in free beer and if you are doing any development or simply want to consolidate your compute instances this is the way to go. You should have certified hardware but I have colleagues who what done it on non-certified hardware – network cards can be difficult but there are cheap cards that are supported.)
Everything is up-and-running just fine. Cumulus (Sandaysoft) recommends going to the beta 1.9.4 but I don’t see any problems yet. I don’t like running beat software on production systems. If there is a problem I guess that it is backup-and-upgrade.
About Mike Pelley
Let’s see… A little about me…
I’ve been around information technology since 1983 with computers such as DEC Rainbows (weird machine – the standard DOS couldn’t format its own floppy disks – remember them? – and I had to format them on a friend’s IBM PC) to Radio Shack TRS-80 to Apple ][e and Apple //c in the beginning.
I have programmed in 8-bit assembly language on 6502, FORTRAN and COBOL on IBM System/370 (and I still hate JCL), VAX BASIC and COBOL (and a weird and massive WordPerfect 4.0 macro) on DEC VMS (Alpha), C/C++ on Digital Unix (ALPHA), and C/C++, Perl (it may be powerful but I still hate it), PHP on Linux (Red Hat, Centos, Ubuntu, etc.).
I have work with databases such as Digital RDB (later to become Oracle RDB), Oracle DBMS, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL on VAX, Alpha, Sun and Intel.
Check out my professional profile and connect with me on LinkedIn. See http://lnkd.in/nhTRZe
I still think that Digital created some of the best ideas in the world: VAX clustering, DSSI disks (forerunner to SCSI) and the Alpha processor (first commercial 64-bit processor – Red Hat screamed on an Alpha!). DEC just could not seem to be able to give air conditioners away to someone lost in the Sahara Desert!
VMware is one of the best ways to get the most out of an x64 server. And I have tried Oracle VM, Virtual Box and Microsoft Virtual Server.
Outside of that I am a huge military history buff starting in the early 20th century. I love Ford Mustangs (my ’87 Mustang GT was awesome) and if I had the money I would have a Porsche 928S4. If I had a lot of money I would have a Porsche 911 Turbo.
I also play too much AmrA 3 Exile mod. Over 5,000+ hours...
I have a wonderful son, Cameron. I have a long suffering (Do you really need all that computer junk?) wife, Paula. I live in Paradise, Newfoundland and Labrador.
