Displaying Weather Statistics

[Bill Legge]

I've nearly completed by weather station and want to show some of the data on my PC.

Has anyone got a Visual Basic (or anything else) program to run on a PC that can accept data via the COM port and show:

1. Wind direction and speed - ideally by some sort of historical radial plot.

2. Graphs of other readings: humidity, temperature, pressure and so on.

Previously I've used the StampPlotPro from SelmaWare but can't get a radial plot out of it.

Regards Bill Legge

[Elnino]

I doubt you will find many apps to do that.

I have used RRDTool for graphing. RRDtool is sort of a database in itself. I made myself an anemometer based on a 16f628A which spits out data and logs to an RRD for display on my web server. Mine runs on linux/php, not Windows but you're welcome to it though.... I can't see reason you could not port the setup to windows - I belive there is an RRDTool for win32 and PHP is definately doable. Where you might get stuck is on the serial coms class i use.

VB is very easy to work with serial ports and VBExpress is free if you have to use windows.

[Bill Legge]

Thanks Elnino,

I will have a loot at RRDTool - I've hot heard of it before.

I have learning VB on my 'to do' list. I get a bit confused with:

1. VB6
2. VB2006
3. Visual Baisic.Net
4. VB Express and so on...

Not sure what to focus on?

Regards Bill Legge

[mackrackit]

To add more confusion look at some of the alternatives to VB.

Dave Houston likes Pure Basic. Being that Dave uses it I will say it must be good.

I find myself using Python and Liberty Basic.

And in the long run will you want cross platform comparability ?

Pure Basic and Python are.

Just thoughts.

[dhouston]

While Purebasic has extensive graphics capabilities (it's a favorite of game programmers) it is not as easy to create this type of graphics as it is with VB. PB requires more low-level work.

The advantage of Purebasic is that it is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, OSX) and compiles to small, efficient, standalone executables.

[falingtrea]

One thing you could do is upload the weather data to a website like weatherunderground.com. Then you can let them display the data. ;) And manage the webcode.

[EarlyBird2]

Hi Bill,

I am using VB Express to read data streams from COM1. The data is from a datalogger (Aqualog). I have a windows application that displays live data and enables settings to be changed on the fly. It also uses MS Access for a database. The data can then be displayed using Excel. All this is very easy to do.

And if you have MS Office it is all free when you use VB Express. I also downloaded SQL Express for free.

Wind direction sounds interesting and I will have a look into this.

Steve

[Bill Legge]

EB2 - Thanks for your comments. I have had a look at VB.NET - it seemed a huge pile of code and used quite a different approach to creating the code:

1. Design the forms/windows - then automatically, create the code.
2. Glue the bits together with additional code - it's this bit that didn't seem simple/easy to me?

I recently purchasaed 'Visual Basic for Electronics Engineering Application' by Vincent Himpe - it's not the book for a beginner and I need some gentler introduction to VB to get me going.

I've had a look at Liberty Basic and like the feel of it - a more traditional approach to creating code. More work at 'low level' - but that what I've been doing for a few years with PBP.

The Liberty Basic site asks if I want the '32' or '64' bit version? I just want to run it on by PC using windows - which version do I need?

Regards Bill legge

[mackrackit]

I've had a look at Liberty Basic and like the feel of it - a more traditional approach to creating code. More work at 'low level' - but that what I've been doing for a few years with PBP.

The Liberty Basic site asks if I want the '32' or '64' bit version? I just want to run it on by PC using windows - which version do I need?

I will guess you have a 32 bit system. I say that because if you had WIN64 you would know it :)

[EarlyBird2]

Hi Bill

VB has a few concepts that are hard to understand, objects, methods, collections and properties to name a few. But what you want to do is realy easy in VB 2008 Express. I have time on my hands so if you want to try the VB route let me know.

Steve

[wil@picbasic]

Hi Steve,

I'm interested too. I strugled some weeks with MSCOMM in Excel (VB6) and it will not work with VISTA or Win 7. I got the error 8020, can not read device......
Writing data is ok.

Wil

[EarlyBird2]

Hi Wil

Can you give me more details please like VB code for example.

Steve

[Bill Legge]

EarlyBird2/steve

Sorry to take so long to reply to your kind offer of some support if I use VB Express. I'm still not sure which way to go and don't want to waste time by switching languages - it seems to take me about a year before using a new language gets reasonably productive.

Is VB Express the same as VB 2008 Express?

And can it create professional looking screens on the PC?

As an aside - many years ago, when I was about 7 years old, my mother took me to Sc*nthorpe for a swim in the Easter Holidays - and I thought she liked me! I'm still trying to warm up.

Regards Bill Legge in sunny and warn Australia