This is the situation: I have a weather station which can connect to a computer via a serial connection. The computer can than be used to put the weather information on the Net.
Now I want to knock out the computer and replace it by an arduino and ethernet shield.
Does anybody here know how to read out the serial information from the weather station on the arduino? I know it's device specific; but i want to know how the make the connection first. The next hurdle is to get the data out of the station
If this device plugs into a true serial port on the PC rather than USB, it's RS232 which means you'll have to convert the signals to a voltage the Arduino can handle - usually accomplished with a MAX232.
Before that though, you need to establish the protocol. If you're lucky, the weather station just spews data out on the wire for the PC to read, if not, it will need something sent from the PC to induce it to send data. Try using a terminal program on the PC and set it up to use the port the weather station is on. Is it sending anything?
I don't have the device here; but tomorrow I have it near
There is a program, not distributed by its vendor named LWC (http://macweather.net/) which establishes a connection with the unit. Although the unit has an USB plug; you must have installed a USBtoUART driver.
I'm using a mac; do you know a good app to read the serial port? Just use screen in conjunction with an applescript to open it.
