Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Where can I find the WeatherCat manual?
A: The manual can be found from the ‘Help’ menu within WeatherCat or on-line here. If you are new to WeatherCat we strongly suggest you go through the ‘Getting Started’ section of the manual.

Q: WMR 928/968 – comms counts increasing fast and data bouncing up and down?
A: Quit WeatherCat, unplug your serial to USB converter, count to 5, plug it back in and run WeatherCat.

Q: I’ve just moved to a new computer and used migration assistant to move everything across from my old computer. Now I am getting no data from my station/various things aren’t right in WeatherCat. How can I fix this?
A: Migration Assisitant may not move everything required for WeatherCat to run on the new computer (drivers for example). A page on the wiki at https://wiki.trixology.com/index.php?title=Moving_a_WeatherCat_installation_from_one_computer_to_another details everything that needs to be moved from the old computer to the new one. Follow through this page to correctly transfer everything needed.

Q: WS23xx – rain is incorrect on historical download.
A. Historical rain counter is out of sync. with real-time rain counter in console. Quit WeatherCat. Unplug console from computer and mains power, take batteries out, count to 10, batteries back in, power up and connect to computer. Reset console by holding down Wind and Pressure buttons until console beeps (indicating it has reset). Set-up the console, especially the date & time then run WeatherCat. From the Tools Menu select ‘Station Hardware Options’ and set the data logger interval to your preferred interval.

Q: Vantage – I wish to try WeatherCat and I’ve installed the latest USB drivers for the Vantage but WeatherCat is not seeing my station
A. If you’ve used your Vantage with WeatherLink on a PC it may have switched your data logger to USB mode; WeatherCat needs it to be in serial mode before it will be able to see it. You should be able to switch the mode back to serial in WeatherLink for Windows.

Q: Sometimes the daily rain reported in WeatherCat is much higher than that reported on my console – I’m running a Davis Vantage
A. A rain discrepancy normally happens as the result of inconsistent rain data coming in from the console. Check the raw rain being recorded (in the data viewer within WeatherCat) – it should be slowly incrementing as it rains and showing no increase whilst it isn’t raining. If it’s dropping to 0 it will cause a problem as WeatherCat calculates rain over a period by adding up the differences between individual samples. (This can happen as a result of poor communications – check for comms errors or sensor errors being reported by WeatherCat, or if the data has come from the data logger, corrupt records – in this case try clearing the logger)

To fix it, you can either edit up the fallen values, either in the editor (restart WeatherCat after all values are edited) or if there are many to be done, directly in the data file with a text editor such as TextWrangler (see the WeatherCat manual section ‘WeatherCat And Data’) .

Alternatively you can use the daily rain editor (from the Tools menu) to edit the rain for the day which will correct your stats.

Q: Is it OK to put my computer to sleep whilst running WeatherCat?
A: We do not recommend putting your computer to sleep if running WeatherCat. Instead we suggest either quitting WeatherCat before putting the computer to sleep, or shutting the computer down entirely. Alternatively, set the Energy Saver to sleep the display but never sleep the computer. Note that since version 3, WeatherCat will ask the system not to sleep while it is running.

Q: When I launch WeatherCat it just bounces in the dock until I force quit it – how do I fix this?
A: Your station is not responding. When WeatherCat launches it attempts to automatically connect to your station – it will keep trying until either your station responds or you force quit it (it does not assume a human is present).
You can fix this situation by launching WeatherCat into ‘Safe Mode’ (by holding down the ‘ctrl’ key whilst launching WeatherCat) and then selecting ‘Configure Station Comms…’ from the Tools menu. This will cause WeatherCat to forget the current connection details and when next launched will display the ‘Station Configuration’ window from where the connection to your station can be set/tested.

Q: I sometimes get a message from WeatherCat saying communications have failed to the station and/or the USB driver has failed – is there anything I can do about this?
A: Communication failures are typically caused by electrical or radio frequency noise interfering with and/or crashing the USB to serial driver supplied by either the station manufacturer or the manufacturer of your USB to serial converter. These drivers live in the kernel space so if you do get this message it is wise to re-boot your computer.

The Davis USB data-logger is particularly prone to the problem and the driver crashes in such a way that WeatherCat is not able to restart the driver – the only recourse is to reboot.

Some general advice is to make sure you don’t have any sources of RF or electromagnetic interference near the console, its power supply or computer (TV’s, fluorescent lights, electrical switches, thermostats, RF transmitters etc) and to add some ferrite rings or clamps to the USB cable at both ends and the power supply cable as near as possible to the plug that plugs into the console.

Another possible cause of communications failure is worn out batteries in the console. Replacing the batteries with new ones may cure the problem.

Q: Wunderground says it’s running, but the counts aren’t incrementing and my Wunderground page shows no live data.
A: It’s most likely WeatherCat is uploading historical data. You can check if this is the case by switching on the ‘Log Historical Uploads’ tick box in the Wunderground preferences and then checking WeatherCat’s log window. You can cancel the historical upload by disabling historical uploads, waiting a few minutes until real time operation resumes then re-enabling the feature to cover periods when WeatherCat isn’t running in the future.

Q: Where does WeatherCat store its log files.
A: WeatherCat 3 log files are stored at ~/Library/Logs/WeatherCat
Previous versions logged to the systems console log. 7 days of log entries are stored in 7 rotating files.

Q: My current conditions are wrong.
A: The current conditions are calculated by the Current Conditions Calculator found in the Tools menu. Open the current conditions calculator and hit the ‘Defaults’ button to reset the rule list to factory defaults. This will give you a basic set of rules which will return a result. You can then tweak these rules to suit your particular micro-climate.

Q: Apple has just released a major update to the operating system. Is WeatherCat OK to run on the new OS?
A: In general we would advise avoiding the update until at least the first few bug fix releases are out. Secondly, if you are using a USB to serial driver (for example SiliconLabs), check with the manufacturer that the driver works correctly with the new OS and whether you need to update it (otherwise WeatherCat won’t be able to communicate with your station).