Quick Start

Quick Start

Purpose: To get Weather Display up and running with your weather Station equipment in the shortest possible time.

This section will not address all your questions; only those required to get a basic setup so that you can see the weather information collected by your weather station. More complex issues will be covered in other parts of this document.

Minimum System Requirements:

   * Windows 95 operating system
   * 486 Type CPU
   * 16mb Ram
   * Allow 6mb hard drive space for initial files, then about 10mb per month after that for data storage.
   * 800x600 screen resolution is best, with at least 256 colours (more the better).
   * A compatible weather station and serial cable with a free com port.

Downloading the file from the internet

Go to http://www.weather-display.com/download/wdisplay32.exe. Then click on save file, and choose a location where you are going to download the file to, and remember that location. Once the download is complete, then you can run the installer program, wdisplay32.exe. Before you run the installer though, exit your current version of Weather Display first. Make sure you install the new download into the same location as your existing version (the installer remembers this, each time you do a new install). No data is over-written, so there is no need to save files or data. When the installer has finished, click on finish to have Weather Display run for you.

Language selection

Once the program has finished loading, the first thing you want to do is choose the language to use. Go to the Setup menu and select "Language", English is the default.

Weather Station Type selection

Click here, this information is on a separate page Comm.... Port Settings

Obviously, you have to connect your weather station to the PC that WD is running on. Somewhere on the rear of your PC there is one or more serial port connectors. Connect an appropriate cable between the serial connector of your choice and note its name; usually COM1 or COM2.

You then have to tell WD which of the COM ports you have chosen. Go to the Setup menu and select "Comm.. Port Settings". Then click the radio button for the appropriate port and click OK. The dark band at the top of the display, will now reflect the port you selected.

At the bottom of the display, just to the left of center, and below the time, there are two small square boxes: Data received, and data quality. When you started the program they were probably red. If you have correctly selected your weather station and Comm.. port, these two boxes should be green. The upper (data received) box will blink each time data is received from the weather station. The lower (data quality) box should remain green. If they do not, recheck your com port and station selections.

Com Port Tips

Com 2 is usually a 25 pin male pug , so you may need a 9 pin to 25 pin adaptor. Reset to use com 1. Make sure if a modem is on com 4, it uses a different IRQ setting.

Display Settings

Go to the Setup menu and select "Display Units Options/Reset Times/Altitude". Under "Program Settings" select the units you prefer for the various displays. You may select the "Internet options" as well at this time if you like. Also select your preference for log files - this will probably be the same as "Program Settings". If you know the altitude of your site, enter it under "Other Settings". Leave the defaults as they are for any other settings at this time. Click OK.

Units

Selecting USA will also change the date from d/m/y to m/d/y. The units will be kept the next time the program loads.

If you have problems with the default colours, you will have to make some changes here. Go to the Setup menu and select "General and Colour/Misc./Tide setup". Then select "Set Program Colours". Click the button corresponding to the portion of the display you wish to change. You will be presented with the standard Windows colour selector. Make your choice and click OK twice to return to the main display.

If you wish to have WD start in the center of the screen, go to the Setup menu and select "General and Colour/Misc./Tide setup". Select "Start in center of screen ... ", and then select "Yes".

Rain Setup - data drawn from several sources

Weather Display stores its own rainfall totals separate from the weather station. So you need to set this up for the first time use. Click on setup, Offsets and rainfall to do this. Then select the amount for today's rain, yesterday's rain, monthly rain and yearly rainfall.

Note: for US units, the equivalent amount in inches is displayed. Click on Yes to set these amounts. If you are just increasing the amount, then that amount is added on straight away. Close the window down with the X in the top right hand corner when you have this set.

Humidity Setup

Click here for the procedure.

Barometer Setup

Click here for the procedure.

For the barometer, weather display uses the raw pressure value from the weather station. So you need to set a pressure offset. This number is in hpa. There is a conversion for US units (i.e inches) as well – for your reference. Note the offset is absolute; e.g. if you want to adjust it, and you want the pressure to increase by 1 hpa, then the offset needs to be 1 hpa higher.

You need to set the offset until the pressure shown in weather display is what the Mean Sea Level Pressure is for your location at that point in time. You can get this information from a nearby Airport or the local newspaper (you may need to fine tune over a period of time); i.e your pressure reading needs to be similar to your nearest official weather station at the same time of day; ideally done in light winds/fine weather when there is a large high pressure in your area.