Weather station

The hardware and software used for this website in addition to Meteotemplate are as follows:

Davis Vantage Vue

Davis WeatherLink® Serial-Port Data Logger

TP Link Portable 3G/4G Wireless N Router

Meteobridge (wx data upload software)

Weather Station:

The weather station used by this website is a Davis Vantage Vue. Initially I had problems. The first one was taken back to the retailer as it did not work at all. Of course this meant many hours of reading the manual and asking 'have I got this right, is it my fault it is not working'. It eventually proved to be a faulty circuit board so it wasn't me! The replacement only worked for a short while, a couple of months if I remember correctly but this time had to go back to a third party repair facility in Portsmouth. That meant quite a few weeks of downtime. The result however has been the current repaired unit has been working OK since around 2014 so not so bad. The only issue you get with it is the rather expensive battery dies on a probably annual basis. The error message always gives me the tremors as it is the same as when the original died so am always glad to get a new battery in, however in probable true Davis fashion the error message continues until midnight when the console resets itself, so you are never sure the battery has fixed the problem until the following day. But all in all I think for the money it is probably the best out there.

Serial Port Data Logger:

To connect the Davis console (the indoor bit) to the TP Link Router you need the Davis WeatherLink® Serial-Port Data Logger. Unfortunately on a lot of weather stations the 'output' hardware is built in. Unfortunately not the Vantage Vue, its an extra cost.

TP Link Portable 3G/4G Wireless N Router

This router is used to receive the data from the Vantage Due Console and then onward transmit to the website. Although it is a router it is 'flashed' (loaded) with the Meteobridge Software which entirely replaces it's router software. Meteobridge as well as supplying software to do this also sell preconfigured hardware.

Meteobridge (wx data upload software)

This is software which does the receiving and then onward transmission of the weather data received from the Vantage Vue. Very good piece of software which does not take much configuring although if you go down the route of 'flashing' the software it can be a bit nerve wracking but it did work first time. I think my only problem was actually finding it's IP address after the update but that was easier enough by check the internet router