Initial Location Entry

[stevendt]

Apologies if I have missed being able to do this, but . . . .

Initial station setup requires Lat & Long in DMS. The default setup for Vantage Stations is decimal degrees. It would be helpful if the location could be entered in decimal as an option

regards
Dave

[PaulMy]

The Cumulus.ini files have both ways but not sure how each is used.

Enjoy,
Paul

[ExperiMentor]

If you can’t convert it yourself, there are plenty websites such as https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/dms-decimal

[mcrossley]

The Cumulus.ini files have both ways but not sure how each is use

The entries Latitude/Longitude are the decimal values of position. These are used by Cumulus for its calculations.

The entries LatTxt/LonTxt are text representations of the position, they are derived from the values above when they are entered from the config screen. They are only used for web page display.

[stevendt]

"If you can’t convert it yourself, there are plenty websites . . . "

I could, and did, convert the coordinates myself.

It was a suggestion for Development as I think it reasonable that Cumulus accepts Lat & Long in the same format as the user enters at the Weatherstation

regards
Dave

[sfws]

More than two months on, reading this topic, it does seem strange to me that if you know your lat and long in decimal terms you have to convert it to degrees, minutes and seconds, just for Cumulus to convert it back to decimals internally. I suspect everyone setting up Cumulus (or if they have a weather station of a type that asks for it, setting up their station) has to look up their location anyway, so can look it up in any format required.

As for displaying it in degrees, minutes and seconds, well that could still be achieved if it was entered in decimals.

I think this is one example of MX copying the way Cumulus 1 did things without thinking whether that is still easiest way to input.

If someone has nothing better to do, they could count the number of posts in this forum related to someone struggling to enter their lat and long correctly. Next, count the sub-set of those that struggle because it is DMS format....

That leaves me with one question.

It would be helpful if the location could be entered in decimal as an option

Does it have to be an option? That sounds more complicated to code.
Or should the only way in future to enter lat and long be as decimals?
Or should we leave it unchanged?

I am not voting for any particular solution, nor indeed trying to influence any timescale for acceptance/rejection, I am just reigniting this topic to see if others have views, now I have expanded on the topic.

[stevendt]

Does it have to be an option? That sounds more complicated to code.
Or should the only way in future to enter lat and long be as decimals?
Or should we leave it unchanged?

Well, in my view, it should be changed, but if making it an option is overly complex, then changing to make it consistent with the weather station entry is logical

regards
Dave

[mcrossley]

The problem entering it as a decimal is you may need to enter a lot of decimal places to get it accurate to one arc second - 17 decimal places are required to represent some values accurately!