Lightsoft Weather Center2.1.0

Name: Lightsoft Weather Center
Price: 79.00 $
Rating: 4.8125 (1 reviews)

29 June 2011

Weather graphing, monitoring, and analysis.

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Overview

Lightsoft Weather Center (LWC) is weather station software for the Davis Vantage, Vue, Envoy & Monitor, La Crosse WS-2300 series, Oregon Scientific WMR 928/968 and WeatherHawk weather stations.

As data is gathered and stored in its database LWC allows you to view weather statistics such as the lowest temperature, or the highest wind speed over any time period stored in the database. In addition LWC contains a journal for weather notes and can generate Web pages containing current conditions, graphs, statistics and a web-cam image. LWC can upload these Web pages to your server for display via a Web browser anywhere in the world.

LWC also monitors the weather and can run a set of pre-defined and user programmed alerts that can trigger emails, send SMS messages to your mobile phone and/or run scripts should an alert trigger.

Lightsoft Weather Center offers the following main features:

Integration with Davis Vantage, Monitor and Wizard stations along with the La Crosse WS 23xx range of weather stations.
Can upload to Wunderground Personal Weather Station pages
CWOP upload - user programmable server list, ports and upload time (with random variation).
Custom Web page processing - takes your Web pages, replaces weather tags with current data, graphs, dials, web-cam imagery and FTP to your Web server
Custom CGI driver - can drive a CGI on your Web server with current weather data in close to real time. Simple example php scripts included.
A local network client can display weather station gauges on any machine on your local network.
Can record data for two other locations via data obtained from: weather.com, wunderground, NOAA or METAR.
Continuous and unlimited recording, monitoring and analysis of weather data for up to three locations.
Provides graphs of temperature, dew point, wind chill, wind speed, wind direction, precipitation, cloud base, internal temperature, internal humidity and barometric pressure.
Can graph and display conditions for any date in the database; dates can be entered using natural language; for example 'last wednesday'. Graph scales range from 1 to 56 days.
Continuous statistics calculation and display.
Continuous database timeline maintenance; if LWC misses samples, data is interpolated between last know good sample and the latest.
Database query facility; for example querying the total rainfaill over a given date range.
A journal, linked to the database for recording your own weather notes.
Web page generation and upload to Web server of current conditions, graphs, Web cam image, statistics and journal.
Export of data from any date range within the database.
Additional sources of weather data for comparison purposes or keeping an eye on other locations include weather.com, The Weather Underground, The Weather Underground Personal Weather Pages, METAR and NOAA. Backup sources can be specified.
Three pre-programmed alerts; ice, rain and clear sky.
Unlimited number of user programmed alerts.
LWC can send email, SMS message (via modem) and run scripts when an alert is triggered.
In-built test system for custom alerts.
Independent units for each of the six main data types.
The current weather can be spoken.
Daily data email; sends tab-delimited data email for any or all locations.
LWC can collect, display and animate satellite imagery.
Weather records can be notified via email.
Can record and upload webcam images and time-lapse movies via QuickTime compatible camera.

What's new in Lightsoft Weather Center

Version 2.1.0: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.

11 Reviews of Lightsoft Weather Center

As the operator of the official National Weather Service reporting station for Bass Lake Ca. in the Sierra Nevada mountains, I needed the most reliable weather station software I could find to handle the data from my Davis Vantage Pro 2 hardware. Something that could run unattended for weeks and months at a time. That had the capability to not only handle the typical uploading of my station's weather data to the NWS and other weather data sites, it needed to be able to post automated weather alerts to my station web site in real-time as well as handling a host of other duties. LWC answered that call in spades! Not only does LWC provide more specialized features than any other weather software currently available for Mac or PC, the fact that it is a native OS X application means that it can take full advantage of the Macintosh computer platform, which has proven itself to be the most stable and reliable computer platform around for unattended operation. With the release of LWC version 2, Lightsoft has taken the best features from the original LWC product and built upon that solid foundation, creating a product that does more yet requires much less attention from the station operator. This is precisely what a station like mine needs to be able to maintain uninterrupted 24/7 operation with no lost data and full automation capabilities to run everything reliably for months at a stretch, with no freezes. hangs or other annoying behaviors. There are few software products that can justify the purchase of the computer platform to run it, but LWC 2 is just such a product. Owners of popular weather station hardware that have been struggling with the low reliability of Windows based systems should seriiously consider replacing their PC based system with a Mac Mini or Macbook running LWC 2. The difference in features, performance and reliability will blow your mind! In conclusion, I can't recommend LWC 2 highly enough. I wouldn't trust my weather data to anything else. Station Operator of MADIS Station D2149 Bass Lake Ca. http://basslake-weather.com

(2)

Jozgta

12 May 2012

Version: 2.1.0

Please note the LWC developer has created a brand new application for Mac users called WeatherCat. Version 1.0. Check it out on http://trixology.com/weathercat/

(0)

This LWC2 release is rock solid and amazingly full of features. I have had it running on my server since the day of its release, 31 July, and it has required no attention from me since that date. There is no better weather station interface software available, bar none. Great job Stu! Ron Reil

(1)

Lightsoft Weather Center (LWC) is the BMW of Weather Station Software. After finding Davis Instrument's WeatherLink for Mac utterly unsatisfactory, I investigated all the Mac Weather Station software offerings about a year ago. Even then, LWC was head and shoulders over its competition. Version-2 incorporates a complete redesign of the architecture to vastly improve performance and reliability. It also has some "gotta-have" enhancements that leaves even its PC competition in its wake. Even the development version of LWC-2 was stable for weeks at a time and was very forgiving of Weather Station connectivity issues I was having for a while. LWC has very robust and reliable Internet upload capabilities. It not only does the "required" upload to Weather Underground and CWOP, but it provides you with detailed information about how the processes are going. There is even a supplied AppleScript that will provide Growl announcements should your Internet services have a problem. Where LWC really shines over the competition is in its graphing capabilities. You can create very complex graphs using multiple sources of weather data. These can be used for something as complex as graphing parameters related to the onset of precipitation or as basic as when to open and close your windows by comparing indoor and outdoor temperature. Folks who have custom weather websites can display these custom graphs on their website to provide unique information to their website viewers that simply isn't possible using other software. LWC is built for Mac only using Apple's Cocoa development environment. So it has no baggage for Windows portability and no legacy code that reduces efficiency. It also takes advantage OS-X capability of multi-threaded applications. That means LWC will really scream on the fastest Macs with multiple cores and/or processors, and because of OS-X's superior resource management, it won't hog older machines unnecessarily. LWC runs fine on older Mac so that you to "recycle" an old Mac as a dedicated Weather Station manager. However, it also is a "good citizen" with other Macintosh applications. So you can run LWC on your Mac workstation and have it seamlessly take care of your Weather Station even if you run CPU hogs like graphics applications. That way you can keep an eye on the weather no matter how you use your computer for on a daily basis. LWC has been a commercial product for several years and an enthusiastic community of loyal users has sprung up around it. If you have a question about LWC or weather matters in general, someone on the LWC forum is bound to have at least a helpful pointer to get you unstuck. That's really, really important since weather stations are complex and cantankerous beasts and technical support is hard to find and rarely all that helpful. The LWC forum is by itself a reason to use LWC, but its very existence is testimony to how good LWC really is. Like the Mac itself, it takes an outstanding product to make people passionate about it. LWC is truly such a product. If you have Mac, don't settle for anything less!

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A mon sens, le meilleur et le plus complet logiciel de gestion de station météo sur Mac. Il permet de récupérer les données de sa station, de les gérer et les stocker, mais aussi de les publier sur Internet, soit sur son site personnel (avec graphiques et jauges), soit sur Wunderground ou le CWOP. Enfin, son plus grand avantage est d'être soutenu par un développeur hyper-réactif et une solide communauté d'utilisateurs.

A great product. Works flawlessly with my La Crosse WS-2355 weather station and is very configurable to suit individual requirements. I love its ability to monitor two extra stations via the internet (Wundergound etc.) thereby giving you the ability to get the "bigger picture" of weather in your area. The AppleScripts that come with the product are ideal for setting up alarms and Growl notifications of weather events, these are in addition to the alarms that are already configurable within the programme. Great job

This is the best software on the market for both Macs and PCs. There is a significant amount of features built in and now has the ability for custom graphics. The authors are responsive to your needs and usually answer your question posted on their forums. I have LWC2 installed and it simply works....it works all the times.

All I can say is, thank you! It's great to have a Mac option for my Davis Vantage Pro. Can't argue about the price.

Works as advertised! I'm using it with a WS-2316 I picked up from Costco for my Wife as a Christmas gift. All I had to do was head to the FTDI website to download the OSX virtual serial port usb interface driver. (http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm) Once I installed this driver, rebooted, and fired up LWC, readings were retrieved immediately from the WS-2316. One enhancement request: Export data as XML so users can incorporate data into their own Web pages. While it works VERY well, the Web page generator included with this product creates circa 1997 HTML.

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Lightsoft Weather Center2.1.0

Overview

What's new in Lightsoft Weather Center

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11 Reviews of Lightsoft Weather Center

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