Newer radioroom computer upgrade
For 6+ years now our primary data logging computer system, called “radioroom” has been running various software to log data coming from
SID1, SID2, FMMeteor, and the Weather Station.
When SID2 started up in the summer of 2012, FMMeteor broke, and has been out of service ever since.
The computer itself was a desktop system running an Intel Atom CPU with 1GB RAM. It was a little on the underpowered side. It could only run Windows NT2000 as it did not have hardware drivers for Windows XP, Vista or 7.
So finally it was replaced when a handmedown system came along. The new system is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+ @ 2.2GHz with 2gb RAM. Much better. Still 5 or 6 years old but a little higher on the food chain.
It’s got Windows 7 (64 bit) and was set up with all updates and was ready to go. Software was reinstalled when possible.
SID1 used to run spectracyber. We installed Spectracyber II v3.2
SID2 used to run Radioshack Meterview 1.0 There was nothing newer so it went back in.
The Oregon weather station used FreeWx-wi, and that did not run well under Windows7, so we took the opportunity to retire the 6 year old Oregon weather station and setup the new Davis Vantage Vue station with Weatherlink v6 software. The Oregon system has 3 outdoor sensors that all require annual maintenance and battery changes that never seemed to stop. The Davis is one all-in-one unit that looks a little bit better designed with maintenance being easier.
All of the three programs are up and running but not data logging in an automated fashion. The custom script programming needs to be tweaked a bit to make everything work as before.
The weather station software weatherlink, needed an addon to allow it to send data to the Weather Underground, a website where we have been sending weather data for over a decade. That went well and is actually operational now.
SID1 has a newer version of software that does not quite look the same and we are working on how to reconfigure it.
SID2 is up and running and the scripts might actually work tonight.
FMMeteor will be set up later this week. We need to identify an FM frequency far a transmitter over the horizon that we normally do not hear. When a meteor passes between us and them, it will ionize the air and allow the signal to bounce off the ionized trail and allow us to hear it. That’s what Radio Skypipe will be listening for.