Community Support
Hello, Pierre. Happy New Year to you! And thank you for a marvelous plug-in.
We had been running smoothly here in the U.S. on Weather.Station with our Davis Vantage Pro2 for some months until the Wunderground API was turned off. We have since moved as of version 3.7.1 to Weatherlink 6.0.5Â for the back end and are using stickertags produced by Weatherlink based on the recommend standard format as documented by the French Weather Network.
While have automated the process for producing and uploading the stickertag file via SFTP to our WordPress site on WPEngine, Weather.Station displays erroneous data for several variables, including temperature (currently showing 107.1 F while actual temperature is 41.5 F) and rain. You can see the current published page here and we are using this stickertags source file hosted on our WordPress site. The HTX template we use locally is posted here for your convenience.
We think the issues here may be related to how Weatherlink formats dates and times as the stickertag file is generated. Unfortunately, Davis does inherit the date and time formats settings from the Windows 10 host computer, where we are using MM/dd/yyyy format for dates and 24-hour HH:mm format for time. From our equipment here in the U.S., Davis generates dates using a 2-digit year instead of 4, and formats times in AM/PM format with a leading space, and an "a" or "p " suffix. See the stickertag file below:
4:14p,01/01/19,41.8,41.6,38.6,85,37.6,30.285,Steady,5.0,NNE,0.00,, 7:28a, 5:42p,---,---,°F|mph|in|in
There also seems to be other issues with Weatherlink, as the French Weather Network inserts a newline character in their HTX template between the sunrise and sunset times. The "---" placeholders Davis inserts in our case for the apparent lack of  <!--windAvg10--> and <!--windHigh10--> data variable may also present a problem.
We can get Weather.Station to properly display our data if we manually edit the stickertag file dates, times, and other data into this format shown below, though of course that is not a workable solution:
15:40,01/01/2019,42.4,42.2,39.3,84,37.9,30.274,Falling Slowly,5.0,NNE,0.3,,07:28,17:42,,,F|mph|in|in
So, can you recommend a resolution?Â
Best regards,
Thomas Kolnowski
Digitized House Media, LLC (Austin, Texas)
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Hello Thomas.
Thanks for your kind words... and happy new year to you too ????Â
Thank you for this detailed issue report ????Â
Regarding your issue, well, I can see 4 problems:
- In theory, your file must be an UTF file. It's not the case for your file.
- In theory, your file must not contains new lines or tabs. It's not the case for your file.
- In theory, you guessed it, time must be in 24h format. It's not the case for your file.
- In theory, your date must be dd/mm/yyyy formated. It's not the case for your file.
Other points you brought to my attention are not really a problem. Weather Station will understand "Gust = 0 mph" if it is "---".
I have successfully developed a patch for points 1, 2 and 3. But, I can make a fix for the fourth point only if the sequence starts with dd/mm. If it's not the case (it will be visible in less than 6 hours now) my fix will not be operational. If so, do you have some option in weather link backend to force the order dd/mm?
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PS: if the sequence (dd/mm) is ok, I can release the fix before Friday night...
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Thank you so much, Pierre, for the prompt response and the proposed fix.Â
In answer to your Point 4: Yes, it does appear we can format the date from Weatherlink in dd/mm/yy format, but cannot format it in dd/mm/yyyy unfortunately. So, it looks like you will be able to get our issues fully resolved with your patches. Very good news.
It is unfortunate that Weatherlink offers so little flexibility in outputting its data, particularly with 24h time format and getting 4-digit year.
Best regards (and I do hope you get some well-deserved rest!),
Thomas
It is unfortunate that Weatherlink offers so little flexibility in outputting its data, particularly with 24h time format and getting 4-digit year.
Haha, it's a big habit at Davis ????Â
So, good news: I have collected your file the last 12 hours on my dev site and all is ok. The patch allows to rightly handle your file format. I will release it in less than 48 hours (some other bug fixes and improvements to include). After updates, I will check back with you if all is ok.
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Thank you again, Pierre - we will be looking forward to the plug-in revision. This will be appreciated by many Davis station owners looking for a better way to share their station data.
On the date format issue, Windows 10 users will need to create a custom date format to dd/mm/yyyy, as that is not standard when the U.S. region is selected. Once that is done, Weatherlink will begin reporting its dates in dd/mm/yy format that you can read with the new patch.
Best regards,
Thomas
Hello Thomas!
Weather Station 3.7.2 is released. Could you please verify, after update, that all is ok now?
Thanks.
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Thank you for the rapid turnaround, Pierre. Following the update to 3.7.2, it appears that the temperature readings are correct now, but the rain metric is not coming through properly (I believe you are parsing total daily rain). Today, we have had very heavy rains and the daily total is currently 2.02 in - Weather.Station is showing 0.08 in.
4:54p,02/01/19,36.7,36.7,36.1,96,35.7,30.155,Falling Slowly,2.0,NE,2.02,, 7:28a, 5:43p,---,---,°F|mph|in|in
Regards,
Thomas
Â
Ha! You're absolutely right. Conversion is wrongly done for non-metric systems while reading stickertags files. Will be fixed in 3.7.3 (released before 1/9).
In the meantime, if you see some other glitches, just tell me and I will add a fix...
Thanks.
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Hello!
By the way, I have released 3.7.3 version. It fixes your issue with rain...
Could you confirm it's OK now?
Thanks.
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Good day, Pierre. Yes, the rain issue has been rectified. Thank you! We will move forward with building out our weather content.
One question on Tool Tips. We have them enabled on all of the widgets on our initial weather page, but they are not active. I am thinking there may be some code in our theme preventing them from displaying.
Best regards,
Thomas
Oops. I just noticed the Tool Tips appear on hover over, not clicking. So they are visible on standard browsers, but not on mobile touchscreens (such as iPhone or iPad).
Thank you again.
Thomas
\o/
Good news! Very glad Weather Station is fully operational with stickertags on your site... If you're happy with it, don't hesitate to follow my signature 😉
Have a nice day!
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...