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Latest Cumulus MX V3 release 3.28.5 (build 3282) - 23 February 2024

Cumulus MX V4 beta test release 4.0.0 (build 4017) - 17 March 2024

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FAQ/Known issues - PLEASE READ

Topics about the Beta trials up to Build 3043, the last build by Cumulus's founder Steve Loft. It was by this time way out of Beta but Steve wanted to keep it that way until he made a decision on his and Cumulus's future.

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FAQ/Known issues - PLEASE READ

Post by steve »

FAQ
  • If you use non-English settings, comma decimals etc, you will experience problems on Linux/OS X with Mono version 3.2.8 (e.g. on Raspberry Pi). But see the item further down about incompatible Mono versions
  • If you want to use your Cumulus 1 data with MX, and you use decimal commas, you will need to edit the .ini files to change the decimal commas into periods/full stops. The other data files will be OK.
  • If you are trying to use your Cumulus.ini file from Cumulus 1, you will need to make sure it doesn't contain any non-ASCII characters
  • Cumulus MX doesn't change the fact that you can't run two programs at the same time with the same station, whatever those programs are, unless you have something in the middle handling the multiple connections (e.g. Virtual VP for Davis stations)
  • If a settings screen shows red contents (red text and red boxes), invalid data is present which must be corrected before the form can be sent. One or more items on the page will have an error message.
  • Cumulus MX doesn't create any image files
  • Cumulus MX on Windows requires .NET 4.5 and hence will not run on the obsolete Windows XP
  • The realtime interval on the internet settings screen is in milliseconds
  • There is currently no 'diary' and hence also no snow recording
  • The requirement to run as root/administrator may possibly be removed at some point
  • When you install a new version of Cumulus MX (i.e when upgrading from one version to another), be sure to copy all of the files from the release zip file into your MX installation, and force a refresh of the interface pages in your browser. You can optionally just copy the files that I name as having changed in the announcement, but the risk is that I might have missed a changed file from the list. No settings or data are overwritten by the update.
  • Some setting changes don't take effect until you restart Cumulus MX
  • Note that the change to date/time formats in webtags also applies to NOAA report file formats., if you carry over your old settings
  • The 'extra files' editor updates automatically when a field is changed. You can press 'enter' in a text field to get it to update, or move to another field
  • The remote filename for an 'extra file' must include the path (if required) as well as the file name, just as in Cumulus 1. It does not use the 'directory' setting automatically
  • If you are using your 'old' Cumulus.ini file, make sure your 'ftp site' section is [FTP site] with 'site' in lower case
  • Davis stations sometime supply 'error' values such as 255 for wind speed. Cumulus ignores these and may log some of them to the diags file, if you have debug logging turned on
  • Serial device names on Linux are not COM0 etc as in Windows. You need to specify something like /dev/ttyUSB0 - do a dmesg at a command line prompt and look for the actual device name from your adapter. If dmesg says your cp210x converter (as on Davis stations) is attached to ttyUSB0, for example, you need to put /dev/ttyUSB0 for the serial port name in MX. You can set the serial port name in the MX user interface, but if for some reason you want to do it by editing Cumulus.ini, note that the item in MX is called ComportName (which is a string, for the full device name, e.g. COM1 or /dev/ttyUSB0) rather than 'Port' which is just an integer. If you have not run MX yet, this item will not exist, so you will need to add it (in the [Station] section).
  • If you are having problems after upgrading to Windows 10, see this post - https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14148
  • Mono 4.2 is known to not work with Cumulus MX with USB stations, for reasons currently unknown. Some other versions of Mono may have the same issue. 4.6.x and 4.8.x appear to have the same issue, for example, and also later versions of Mono. The main issue is an incompatibility with the USB library which MX uses. The best version to use is 3.2.8, which is the default version in many Linux distributions. - this issue should be fixed in b3044. If you have to use commas for decimal separators, 3.2.8 is not suitable, but 4.0.x is probably the best version for you. Some instructions for installing a suitable version of Mono have been posted in this thread - https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 5&p=113229
  • Cumulus MX will not run on Windows IOT
  • The Dashboard, Now, and Gauges pages all get their data using web sockets (on the same port as HTTP). If they are not displaying data for you, you have some issue somewhere on your system preventing that from working - a firewall issue, or perhaps a browser issue. If you can't get web sockets working on your system, you could switch to using Ajax for the data. See the announcement for build 3032 for instructions.
  • If you want to use a twitter.txt file and include any characters not in the 7-bit ASCII set (e.g. degree symbols or accented characters) you need to save the file as UTF-8 (without 'BOM')
  • As with Cumulus 1, if you have extra web files configured, only tick 'process' for those files which have web tags in them, i.e. they need processing.
  • An "error [object Object]" in your browser when you try to change settings is usually caused by using a version of Mono which does not support comma decimals, but can also be caused by an invalid setting
  • Twitter have changed their authentication method, and Cumulus is now unable to perform the initial step of obtained the authentication tokens. The fix requires significant change to the code and I have no forecast for this

Known Issues
  • There are issues with 'decimal commas' - particularly in the user interface, but also in the 'engine'
  • At some browser widths, the menu wraps and obscures some of the content
  • Realtime ftp may not recover from network/server issues - fixed in 3048
  • TCP/IP data stops when using Virtual VP (and possibly other Davis TCP/IP connections?) - fixed in 3017 3018
  • Davis UV is 10x too high from logger data (error in Davis protocol spec) - fixed in 3019
  • FTP uploads can go to wrong directory if there are connection issues - fixed in 3021
  • Davis UV graph is in integers if you use decimal commas - fixed in 3022
  • Doesn't check for out of range Lux figures (Fine Offset) - fixed in 3022
  • Davis data stops being read
  • End of day reset code gets the date of day just ending wrong for 0900 rollovers
  • Should calculate rain rate for Instromet stations - fixed in 3042
  • RainLast24Hour in dashboard data is always zero - fixed in 3042
  • The one second read timeout introduced in 3041 for Davis stations is not long enough for Weatherduino - needs to be configurable - fixed in 3042
  • Doesn't use configured FTP port - fixed in 3042
  • Sunshine hours not updated when using Davis archive data - fixed in 3042
  • Web tag date format strings cannot contain the ">" character - fixed in 3047
  • Monthly records are initialised to the date CumulusMX is first run until they are set for real - fixed in 3047
  • The diary feature is recording the entry against the previous day for some users - fixed in 3047
  • Web tag <#YearLowDailyTempRangeD> is broken in b3047
  • Monthly Records editor does not save the date/time - fixed in 3061
  • Station wind chill broken for WLL stations, use the "Cumulus calculates wind chill" option for now
Steve
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