Far Watch WATCHER...

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

filename: ssfw004.htm

This page describes FW004, "Far Watch Watcher".

Stop press! While what it says here remains true, you might be better servered by a later generation of all of this.

"Far Watch Watcher" is a utility which increases the benefit you get if you have set up an Arduserver... which can cost as little as $16... or have a FarWatch webserver. Or some other web server which includes two lines that are there for the wants of FarWatchWatcher.

(I'll describe those lines later.)

FW004 isn't typical of the software I offer via the web. It is crude. It isn't flexible. But it does work... in a narrow context... if you are willing to take a bit of trouble setting it up. And it is free!

This page isn't typical of what I usually publish. It is unpolished. It doesn't take you gently by the hand. It doesn't do things "well".

OR, you can use FWW004 with a webserver of your own, as long as it contains exactly the right comment lines. To set up a suitable webserver easily, use an ESP8266... The code you need is downloadable from my essay on using an Si7021 with an ESP8266.

FarWatchWATCHER FW004 automatically harvests the data the server has on offer. It draws a graph of the readings. It may even records them in a spreadsheet- friendly data file. (I'm not sure about that element!)

I do offer a much better page than this, discussing the general FarWatchWatcher concept, and giving links to various related pages.

How you would actually get a FarWatch Watcher up and running...

This essay is a kludged version of an earlier one. The earlier one explained... in more detail... an older datasource/ FarWatchWatcher combination. The older essay may help you figure out things I've explained badly here. (FWW004 is a tweaked version of FWW003.)

I may not, in the time I've been able to give this, been able to explain things adequately, but at least I've got the code online for you. Start by seeing if you can get this FWW004 to read my humidity and temperature sensor (URL is here somewhere). If you get that far, and have some ESP8266 experience (or get it, from my article, cited here too), try setting up your own sensor reading webserver for FWW004 to read? If you succeed, I would be delighted to know that my work wasn't a waste of time. Apologies for not making this easier for you, the way I hope most of my pages make them easy.

Still reading? Great! You have an Arduserver running? (or one of mine is responding.) Time to download and try FW004, FarWatchWatcher...

Click here to download zip file with all you need. THE PROGRAM IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT just now. It WILL read, graph (and, I think, record) temperatures and humidities, though. Don't hesitate to get in touch, should you have questions.

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Set up a folder for FW004. (You can have multiple folders for multiple copies of FW004 and its associated files, if you anticipate monitoring more than one webpage.)

Fetch the .zip file I provide, and unpack from it to the folder you created at least FW004.exe. Run it, and it should create a FW004ini.txt.

You may need to open FW004ini.txt in a text editor. Find the line...

WhereFmtCodeLineIs=

.. and set it to 12.

The line...

CodeForTypeOfDataSource=6

...should stay set to 6. (Some lines don't matter! (e.g. the items in the [Times] section.))

The section...

[OtherParamSettings]
DataTypeCode 0=0
DataTypeCode 1=1
DataTypeCode 2=0
DataTypeCode 3=1

... will have no effect in this version of FWW04.

You can leave the .ini file open in your text editor the whole time... but each time you quit FW004, the ini file is re-saved... with the values then present in the application.

Quit FW004 BEFORE making changes to what you see in the ini file. THEN (re)save the ini file from the text editor. That way, when you next start FW004, what it sees in the ini file will be in step with what is on the screen in the text editor.

Where have we got to?

So... you have, at least in theory, access to a webpage serving up the data in the right format.

You've got FW004.exe in a folder of its own, with a tweaked .ini file. (The program itself will tweak the ini file when you change things in the program's window while it is running, e.g. the URL accessed.)

Now you can run FW004!

Your anti-malware software may need to be told to let the program "do" TCP to and from the Arduserver. It probably SHOULD ask if the activity is sanctioned by you!

Often there's a few seconds... say up to 10... while "things" settle down, but before long, you should start to see lines appearing and disappearing in the panel I've tinted blue in the screenshot to the left.

The "FW004_readings_f1" window gives you a look at the raw data lines, as extracted from the webpage.

And the third window has a graph of the values returned by the first four parameters. (The fifth, if your data source supplies it, isn't ignored for any complicated reason... I just haven't got to doing the necessary programming for that yet!)

On the graph, by the way, as the numbers coming from the server INCREASE, the lines go DOWN. (Again, a bit of programming to be done. Sorry! The program IS free!)

You will see some vertical lines on the graph. The magenta ones are done at midnight... on the machine that FW004 is running on. The gray ones are done at 6am, noon, and 9pm.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"? The link will take you to the Wikipedia entry.

Ad from page's editor: Yes.. I do enjoy compiling these things for you... hope they are helpful. However.. this doesn't pay my bills!!! If you find this stuff useful, (and you run an MS-DOS or Windows PC) please visit my freeware and shareware page, download something, and circulate it for me? At least (please) send an 'I liked the parallel port use page, and I'm from (country/ state)' email? (No... I don't do spam) Links on your page to this page would also be appreciated!

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