Cumulusutils

[HansR]

Testsites for behavioural testing of the pwsFWI Fire Weather Index, are still very welcome! Especially in fire risk areas.
(risk areas e.g. are semi-arid regions like NSW Australia or the coasts around the Mediterranean, but today even the polar circle is a risk!)

Cumulusutils is a utility which supplies (more or less) simple HTML formatted functions for websites, which are otherwise more difficult to get. All modules can be seen operational on my site with (Utils) indicated in the menu.
Read the ReadMe (in the distribution) for information on how to use. For now it has the following functionalities to offer:

1. A Fire Weather Index specially designed for personal weather stations (see scientific background and other blogs).
2. A top 10 list of relevant weather record for your station
3. System info display
4. Graphing the data
5. A map of Cumulus installations (only those who participate)
6. Yet Another Dayfile Reader (Yadr)
7. Records
8. NOAA reports display
9. Day Records

CumulusUtils runs standalone when needed, in the same environment and under the account of cumulus itself. It runs on all OSs Cumulus runs on, but it does not interact directly with the Cumulus program it only uses the data (a copy of) when needed. It cooperates with either version 1.9.4 or older and MX. There is an internal FTP facility to upload most output to wherever you like on your site. For debugging purposes, cumulusutils generates a cumulusutils.log file. In [the unlikely] case of trouble, please send it. The list of installations for the pwsFWI is kept here. Your site will be added if you apply or you can make use of the Maps module.

NOTE: the Maps module makes use of an XML file residing on the domain meteo-wagenborgen.nl. Anybody who runs the Maps module on a higher frequency than 4 hours will be banned from that domain and will not be able to use the Maps module. Irregular running on higher frequency for testing purposes is permitted. Thank you for your co-operation.

NOTE: It appears that CumulusUtils does not run on lower versions of Mono. When upgrading, some parts of Cumulus won't run because of a design issue with the locale. I did design a solution, but there is also being worked on a version 4 of Cumulus. As that has been given priority some patience is needed. Watch out for messages by @mcrossley on this issue.

NOTE: Version 2.4.1 is the same as 2.4.0 but I added the graph Clash Of Averages belonging to this discussion (anything higher than 2.4.1 will do ). No guarantee this graph will be there in all future versions. The AverageClash parameter in the ini-file is default false. Set it to true if you wish to see the graph!

The following things changed:
version 2.4.6 (25/3/2020)

• Added the command CheckOnly, to only check the dayfile.txt for errors. Any detected error can be found in the logfile. The default for the iniparameter IgnoreDataErrors has been changed to TRUE. ToDo-list: add range checks on dayfile values.
• Added ini parameter GeneratejQueryInclude in the section General. Current default value is true.
• The ini-section [Data] has been moved to [General] (see the README) (you can remove the [Data] section manually).
• Maps: Added try/catch error handling for an irregular occurrence of a fault while looping through the XML data structure. At a failure in the XML file, CumulusUtils aborts so other modules in the same command won't be executed. You may rerun without the Mapson command to accomplish other modules. If you run Maps and it fails, please report in a PM and send the logfile with the report.
• WIP: the above points concerning the ini-file are related to the construction of a new website which will become part of CumulusUtils but also as a module. CumulusUtils will always exist as a module generator for other websites, but in the end a standard website will become part of it. Some minor changes may occur in the near future in preparation, but before the website will be available. A preview of the website can be seen.

[PaulMy]

Thanks for sharing Hans.
I have unzipped and placed in my C:\added_programs\CumulusMXDist3052-20190913\CumulusMX folder
and using CMD entered .\added_programs\CumulusMXDist3052-20190913\CumulusMX\cumulusutils.exe -day
get a "Windows cannot find " message

Have also tried as C:\added_programs\CumulusMXDist3052-20190913\CumulusMX\cumulusutils.exe -day and get the same Windows message.

My DOS knowledge is very limited so perhaps I am missing something.

Enjoy,
Paul

[HansR]

Hi Paul,

Thnx for trying. Apart from the fact that there are some problems with portability to rPi (so next releases will come soon when I solved that problem), it should run correctly on windows.

So open a CMD window, do a cd to the directory you are running from and simply enter "cumulusutils.exe -day". What is the result of this? The output shoudl be the three files I mention (in the edit) of the first message.
I presume you can run CMX from that directory without a problem?

As mentioned above, I do have other problems with the executable in the outside world, so apparently doing the build has more preconditions than I expected.
Working on that. If you can't get it running, please stand by.

Best,

[PaulMy]

Hi Hans,
after looking at the entered path a dozen time, I still missed one level

My weather computer is Windows 8
After the correction using the path .\added_programs\..... there was a flash of a DOS screen and then immediately disappeared.
Then using the path C:\added_programs\..... my computer started to shut down and close all programs - I panicked!

Could it be that I already have CumulusMX running in a DOS screen?

If I try it again after you've made your updates, I'll do it without any other program running

Enjoy,
Paul

[HansR]

Hi Paul,

Sorry this caused so much trouble.

I now see you run 1.9.4 on your windows 8 machine. That probably means the infrastructure required for CMX is not present. If that machine is not connected to the internet, it is very likely the .NET infrastructure is not up to date.

From your experience with the crash when starting up my .NET executable, I advice against trying it a second time. From another message here on the board I understand you are going to try a Raspberry PI. Great idea . Let's wait for that to be up and running. There is already a new release, it can only get better

Best,

[HansR]

I made a blog about the creation of cumulusutils.

[Phil23]

Hi Paul,

I've run Hans's utils on both my Win 10 & Win8 Laptops with no issues,

On the Win10 I simply had a copy of my old Cumulus 194 install in C:\Cumulus.

On the Win8 Laptop, which is my live Cumulus install it runs fine as well.

Only variation I can think of is that your path is under C:\added_programs\.......

From what I found I could get it to run by just having a C:\Cumulus(MX) folder with data beneath & it would run on other machines.
Will confirm that tomorrow.

Cheers.

[HansR]

Solved some issues and created version 0.5.3.

[HansR]

Added system info in version 0.6.0

Unfortunately this is for Linux/Unix only. If anybody knows how to extract this information with windows commands and/or MacOS or any other target system, please let me know and I will add that system (if it can be detected by C#).

[PaulMy]

Hi, and thanks.
I tried the latest version yesterday using the full path and I got a quick flash of I presume a program starting and then immediately disappear. Where and what is it I should be seeing?
This is on the Windows8 and all my other weather programs were also running, including CumulusMX.

Enjoy,
Paul

[HansR]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for having the courage trying again after the crash

In the first message of this thread I have a description of what cumulusutils does and what the output is. I think that should be OK for now, the message will be modified as I progress and a readme will be written but that takes some time. New versions will also be published in the first message.

Basically what you get are txt-files with HTML tables in it with the data out of Cumulus, to be included in your own website(s). The top10, my pwsFWI Fire Weather index (which you can see in operation on Phil's site and on my site) and a SystemInfo (only for Unix/Linux). The programs has no console output - only if it crashes, hope not - but debug output is written to a file named cumulusutils.log in the same directory as the executable.

The functionality it has now (version 0.6) will remain stable for a while. I will add , correct and modify some things, but the most important addition on the short term will be an ini-file to facilitate easy configuration, specifically the colouring of HTML items in the table.

Just play with it, include the tables on your website and hopefully you get the hang of it. Hope you enjoy it.
Let me know how you get on. Any ideas for functionality will be considered

[edit:] And btw, good to hear it runs nicely beside Cumulus 1.9.4 on an old Windows !

Best,

[pernaczy]

Hi,
Finally I've got it running too. You can see results here: http://www.pogoda-niesiolowice.kaszuby. ... isknew.php
It runs under Cumulus 1 v1.9.4 (build 1099) and Windows 7.
Regars,
Piotr

[HansR]

Great piotr, thanks! That means it runs virtually on every existing Cumulus machine!

[PaulMy]

Hi Hans and thanks for the details.

And btw, good to hear it runs nicely beside Cumulus 1.9.4 on an old Windows

I run both Cumulus1 and CumulusMX and have been so far only trying cumulusutils with CumulusMX.

Basically what you get are txt-files with HTML tables in it with the data out of Cumulus, to be included in your own website(s)

That is how I took it from your original posting, but I must still have something not quite right as I cannot see any txt files in \CumulusMX just the flash of a program start and then disappears.

When I have time I'll experiment further, and also on Cumulus1.

Enjoy,
Paul

[HansR]

I cannot see any txt files in \CumulusMX just the flash of a program start and then disappears.

The program is lightning fast but search for *.txt files, they must be in the directory you are running from (and don't forget the commandline parameters (either -day or -ftp)

Best,