Lexingtonwx anemometer guide A detailed repair guide to the Davis 6410 anemometer as used in the VP1 and VP2 stations. Note that this guide has not been updated to cover the version of 6410 anemometer manufactured since 2013, which uses a solid-state magnetic switch in place of the original reed switch and is of a different detailed construction; but the broad principles of operation should still apply. See also a couple of other anemometer-related links at the foot of the Anemometer Hardware topic.
Davis logger API Full details of the programming interface for the legacy Davis Weatherlink loggers (and applicable to all legacy Vue, VP1 and VP2 stations) is available in a document called the ‘Serial Tech Ref’ or Communications Reference, which is downloadable from the link shown. Note that the interface has many available commands and is binary in nature (ie weather data as simple text strings is not available from most of the loggers). But once the binary format of the data output is understood, communications can be set up from newly coded programs using only a very few of the available commands. Note that this API is only relevant to legacy console units (6312, 6351, 6316 etc) since only legacy consoles can be fitted with the legacy logger types. The newer 6313 console does not currently expose a comparable local API.
Davis’s own documentation for other VP2 API’s (eg for weatherlink.com and also the Weatherlink Live local API More details can be found at weatherlink.github.io. For weatherlink.com this covers the v2 API initially released in 2019. This is described in a little more detail in the v2 API topic in this knowledgebase. There was also an older set of v1 API products that are not described on the Github page and are probably deprecated nowadays. But we retain a summary here in the WL com v1 API topic.
Davis Message Protocol ‘Hacking’ Various (largely successful) attempts have been made by interested amateurs to reverse engineer the communications protocol used to transfer message packets between ISS and console. (ie as distinct from the API between logger and computer, which is fully and publicly disclosed in the preceding topic; whereas Davis have never publicly commented on the ISS/console protocol at all.) Several users have collaborated to build up the overall picture and the link given will provide a way into this topic for anyone who is curious.
Most of this hacking effort has centred on receiving raw data from a wireless ISS with reception using an inexpensive SDR radio of some type. But it is reported that cabled ISS units also use an almost identical message format, but communicating across a RS422/485 serial connection at 4800 baud 8/N/1 but with the packets lacking the 2-byte checksum used with the wireless ISS units. Further details on the cabled ISS messages can be found in this post on WXForum.
Let us know of any other resources that could be added here (but they need to be authoritative and useful please and not unsupported snippets or eg poor-quality unboxing-type Youtube videos).
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