Manage Connections

Overview

A Connection bridges the gap between your physical weather stations and ADL. It contains the technical configuration that a plugin needs to communicate with and retrieve data from a specific data source.

How connections, plugins, and networks work together:

  1. Network: Represents a group of stations (e.g., “Davis Vantage Stations” or “Manual Observations”)

  2. Connection: Provides the technical details to access station data (FTP server, database credentials, API endpoints)

  3. Plugin: Uses the connection to actually fetch data and translate it into ADL’s format

  4. Stations: Individual weather stations within the network that share the same connection

Example workflow:

  • You have 10 Davis Vantage Pro2 stations that upload data to an FTP server

  • You create one Network: “Davis Stations”

  • You create one Connection with FTP server details (host, port, credentials)

  • You associate this connection with the Davis plugin

  • The plugin uses this connection to fetch data for all 10 stations

A Connection contains the configuration required for a plugin to communicate and get data from a specific source.

Depending on the plugin, the connection can include information like the host URL or IP, port etc for communication protocols like FTP,HTTP, Database connections etc

Add Network Connection

Connection Types

Connection Form

Note

A network connection must be associated with a plugin, that implements the actual data fetching. You can select the plugin to associate with the network connection by selecting from the Plugin dropdown. This will be a list of plugins that have been installed.