On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 at 02:27:32, prodata wrote in
uk.sci.weather :

On Feb 12, 9:36*am, Paul Hyett wrote:
At least most manufacturers have finally realised that USB exists.

Although I think that it's generally accepted that for real-time data
feeds in real world situations serial (or possibly Ethernet) is still
slightly more robust than USB. (Or serial to the PC location and then
a serial-to-USB adapter at the PC.)

I tried one of those, but it crashed my PC.

USB is always going to be more
prone to noise and RFI than serial. Also USB leads need to be as
direct and as short as possible for robust operation whereas serial is
much more flexible.)

Of course if you just want to download logged
data once a day/week/whatever then USB is fine.

That's how I do it.

Whenever I peruse mid-range weather stations though, they seem to have
ridiculously low internal data storage.

That's not true of the Davis loggers, for example (especially not of
the new Envoy8X with 32x the memory of the standard Weatherlink
loggers and which can log a year's worth of data at 15min intervals
and - I haven't checked this but by extrapolation - 8 years' worth at
a 2hr interval). If anyone hasn't come across the Envoy8x so far,
there's a preliminary description on our website at:

http://www.weatherstations.co.uk/envoy8x.htm

But that page refers to Vantage Pro's - which I definitely wouldn't
describe as *mid-price-range*!

What's the point of having the
capability for storing at say, 1 minute intervals, if you only have
enough capacity for 24 hours at that resolution?

Just in passing, I'm never quite sure why anyone would want to use a 1-
minute interval (unless I guess you're keen to capture those rare
frontal passages where the detailed pressure profile is of interest).

True, but if that capability is built-in, ISTM it would be only common
sense to have memory capacity that could handle it.
--
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham (change 'invalid83261' to 'blueyonder' to email me)