On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:06:11 +0100, Trevor Harley
wrote:

I wonder if anyone here has experience of using Davis WeatherLink on the Mac...

The underlying problem with troubleshooting the Mac version of WL is
that so few people use it (I would guestimate that the Mac version is
literally no more than 1-2% of our total Weatherlink sales) that
there's only a small pool of experience on tap for sorting out
problems. In an ideal world I'd like to buy in and run a Mac (and
really to cover all the bases this might need to run to 2 or 3
different models or OS versions) but it's impossible to justify for
the very few occasions on which someone is experiencing a serious
problem with Mac WL.

That said, I would have thought that v5.0.4 ought to be a good bet at
solving the crashing problem with v5.0.3. I can't unfortunately
explain why you're experiencing problems installing v5.0.4 other than
to wonder if it's not a fully appropriate error message. Sometimes an
error is not trapped accurately in the code and a misleading error
message is displayed. There's no possibility of any permissions
needing to be set during or after the installation of the update is
there? And I presume that you did install 5.0.4 directly over 5.0.3
(ie in exactly the same folder location)?

I'm surprised that you haven't heard back from Davis support - they're
usually pretty good at responding, albeit sometimes with a 2 or 3 day
wait. If you want to copy your Davis email to me I'll see if I can get
any better a response.

Also, you could try asking also on a US-based forum eg Accuweather at:

forums.accuweather.com/index.php?s=fd9cc57fdb6dda3994947e9c783e3b1f&showf orum=4

There tend to be more Mac users in the US and so more chance of a
helpful response.

In general, the Windows WL software still strikes perhaps the best
balance between being robustness and feature-set, though it certainly
doesn't have have the range of features available in eg Weather
Display. Unfortunately the Mac WL coding was contracted out I believe
and the result isn't maybe as comprehensive or robust as the Windows
version. But I'd still be inclined to persevere with 5.0.4 in the
first instance.

As to other Mac packages, well there is Weather Display of course (see
www.weather-display.com) There's a huge number of features, almost
certainly more than any other AWS software, but not everyone gets on
well with the cosmetics, the sheer number of setting options available
and the occasional glitches.

There's also another package called WView (www.wviewweather.com) which
some users prefer.

No doubt Google might suggest further options.

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk

On 2008-08-22 14:42:43 +0100, John Dann said:

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:06:11 +0100, Trevor Harley
wrote:

I wonder if anyone here has experience of using Davis WeatherLink on the Mac...

That said, I would have thought that v5.0.4 ought to be a good bet at
solving the crashing problem with v5.0.3. I can't unfortunately
explain why you're experiencing problems installing v5.0.4 other than
to wonder if it's not a fully appropriate error message. Sometimes an
error is not trapped accurately in the code and a misleading error
message is displayed. There's no possibility of any permissions
needing to be set during or after the installation of the update is
there? And I presume that you did install 5.0.4 directly over 5.0.3
(ie in exactly the same folder location)?


I have made some progress.

First, I uninstalled everything and reinstalled 5.03. I then eventually
discovered that you have to run 5.03 and let it crash before the 5.04
updater will work properly. (This is an incredible design feature.)

So now WL opens my station OK, but I get the spinning blue ball for a
few seconds, and then it won't download any data. If I try to access
the Bulletin Board I get the message:

Communicatio Error: Check station configuratin and serial port connections.

I wondered if this was to do with USB driver, so I downloaded the new
driver from Silicon Labs that you pointed to. (This is v 2.0 rather
than 1.02. Note: unlike the version supplied by Davis, this doesn't
come with an uninstaller, and I haven't yet discovered where the driver
is installed; if anyone knows offhand, could they please let me know?)
But this hasn't made any difference.

Progress, of sorts. I'm running one of the most recent iMacs.

Trevor