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Server side graphics

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Server side graphics

Post by The PIT »

It would be nice if CumulusMX could have the image already generated rather than having the using installing php to run scripts and mess around with schedulers to get them to update. Much easier for newbies who can then get a website up and running quickly. They can then learn to mess around with php at their leisure.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by water01 »

The problem is that CumulusMX design philosophy is very different to Cumulus 1 and the graphs are produced using json files. These therefore have to be interpreted at the server end in order to produce the graphs for the gauges, which I assume is what you mean.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by The PIT »

No I'm talking about user friendliness.
So do you want Cumulusmx just to become a program for geeks or do you want it to be easily accessible for someone to stick a few files graphs on a website in a few minutes.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by freddie »

Design philosophy these days is for the client to do the work so that the data is displayed in the way that best suits the client. This is true of many many web-based services. Facebook, Netflix, iPlayer all work this way, as does the met office web site. Gone are the days when display artefacts were generated server side and passed to the client.

Having said that, maybe the way forward is for the standard web site to be adapted to generate client side graphs wherever required (I'm assuming at this point that your post is referring to the graphs shown when you hover over a gauge). Do-able, but only when developers have the time.

The change was nothing to do with making the program for geeks, and everything to do with following good design philosophy of getting clients to do their own work to display the data in the best way for that particular client.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by HansR »

@The Pit: as @freddie says, the display layer comes easily in different form and developments so far are in that direction. If I may point you to CumulusUtils, which has a solution to your graphics issue. It will require some change of thinking and a very different setup because of its design. However, you might give it a try.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by The PIT »

Hi Freddie

Good design philosophy should also include user friendliness which cumulus 1 and 2 had in abundance. One of the reasons I came over from weather display was that the interface was a mess with near duplicate options hidden away indifferent sections.

Back to cumulus. The pop up windows for example you have to jump through a few hoops to get them to work. Used to be a two second job. I didn't expect to have to go into gauges.ss to alter the filenames for the images. I would have kept the filenames the same.

Getting jpgraph working was fun in itself. The best bit was having to download the required fonts from soundforge even though the the instructions only indicated that I needed three and it passed the font test script.

Anyway it's up and running.

However a little nod towards user friendliness doesn't stop people who write php scripts while asleep from doing their tweeks for fun.

As Steve Jobs said. You start with the user customer experience and work backwards to the technology.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by ConligWX »

The PIT wrote: Fri 25 Sep 2020 7:43 pm
As Steve Jobs said. You start with the user customer experience and work backwards to the technology.
Steve Jobs made the customer pay (up front) for the experience. you pay nothing for Cumulus :lol:
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by prodata »

I'd certainly add a vote here for simplicity.

A lot of people buy weather stations who are not expert computer users - they may well use their phones for texts etc, PCs or tablets for web-browsing, email etc but beyond familiarity with these basic tools, their computer skills may be relatively limited. Certainly not tarring everyone with the same brush here, but there are a lot of users like retirees and those wanting weather stations for business, eg small-scale farmers, horticulturalists and many others who may struggle with programs that are not necessarily 100% intuitive to set up. But these users still very much want the benefits of being able to display and report on current and past weather.

Right now, when asked for advice on data handling there's very much a temptation to point customers towards eg weatherlink.com simply because that's a robust solution that we can support fairly easily. I'd love to be able to recommend eg CMX running on a Pi more often because that's an excellent, low power and cost-effective solution. But I know that perhaps 80% of customers might struggle setting up this solution from scratch, so it would be asking for trouble.

That's not particularly to criticise CMX, though anything that could be done to make it more accessible would be good. (I note that I can't quickly find ANY tutorial videos on YouTube, well not apart from a 25sec one in French - maybe I didn't look hard enough?). But overall, it's more the whole package of CMX and the platform it runs on, which comes down to 3 things:

1. Getting used to running the Pi OS when all you're used to is a phone or Windows PC or Mac;
2. Understanding how to install and configure CMX (especially the .Net aspects)
3. Familiarisation with CMX itself

One thing that would make life easier for new CMX/Pi users (beyond some video instructions) would be a downloadable image that users could burn on to their own SD card. Burning an image with a tool like Etcher is relatively straightforward and it would make the Pi approach much more of a turnkey solution. But I know that no-one is likely to have the time to create/maintain/support that.

All that said, it's almost certainly easier to set up a new CMX installation than for weewx.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by freddie »

I would argue that to run CMX out of the box on a platform that you are used to is pretty straightforward. Extending its functionality (i.e. with server-side hover graphs) is maybe not so.

The idea of an image is a good one, but can soon get to be a bigger task to support and cater for everyone's needs - not everyone runs CMX on a Pi, so that leaves you open to requests for docker containers, LXC containers, VMWare virtual machines, KVM virtual machines, Debian (apt) installers, RedHat/Centos (yum) installers, etc. etc.

So the zip file is a relatively straightforward compromise, IMHO. We may have been spoilt by Cumulus 1 (and 2) installation executables, but we didn't have the multiplatform capabilities that we have now.

As regards new users unfamiliar with other operating systems, isn't that the point of this forum? Ask a question on here and you get speedy answers, use the search facility on here and there is a wealth of information that can be used (although I accept that some of the queries can return advice that is out of date). Also, there is the Wiki which contains useful guides and tips.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by prodata »

To be clear, this isn't intended as criticism of CMX in the slightest but just exploring ways in which CMX could be made more accessible to more users. And sorry this may well be OT in respect of serverside graphics, but let me just complete my more general comment:
freddie wrote: Sat 26 Sep 2020 3:15 pm I would argue that to run CMX out of the box on a platform that you are used to is pretty straightforward.

But isn't that part of the problem? For most users, the familiar platform will be a Windows PC (or, for a few, a Mac). We're probably all agreed that a weather computer works best if it's a dedicated computer. But most Windows PCs are (relative to a Pi) usually obtrusively large, use significant power, beset with the problems of automatic Windows updates and relatively costly if you need to buy new. But a Pi counters all these problems - it's pretty small, unobtrusive, cheap, low power consumption, relatively simple to run headless.

In many ways CMX+Pi is an ideal combination, but the set-up process really gets in the way for anyone unfamiliar with Pi's. I don't know whether you run a Pi or not, but if not then it's an interesting experience to set up for the non-expert. Hopefully things might improve if and when it's possible to update CMX to use .Net Core and hopefully also if Core becomes a standard part of the Pi OS (if I've got the terminology right) but AIUI that's all still for some time in the future.

As regards new users unfamiliar with other operating systems, isn't that the point of this forum?
I do fear that you're perhaps overestimating the willingness of (some) new users to engage with foreign concepts like Internet forums :(
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by beteljuice »

Mr Prodata wrote:I'd certainly add a vote here for simplicity.

A lot of people buy weather stations who are not expert computer users - they may well use their phones for texts etc, PCs or tablets for web-browsing, email etc but beyond familiarity with these basic tools, their computer skills may be relatively limited. Certainly not tarring everyone with the same brush here, but there are a lot of users like retirees and those wanting weather stations for business, eg small-scale farmers, horticulturalists and many others who may struggle with programs that are not necessarily 100% intuitive to set up. But these users still very much want the benefits of being able to display and report on current and past weather.
:clap: :clap: :clap:

Times and expectations have changed, and so has the expertise required to tailor sites to users / customer demands.
Myself being guilty of producing bolt-ons / variants doesn't make life any easier.

If someone could produce video tutorials for many of the aspects of installing / uploading / customizing that would be great asset to the community, and perhaps take the mystique out of many of the filenames / logfiles we throw about :?
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by ConligWX »

prodata wrote: Sat 26 Sep 2020 3:51 pm I do fear that you're perhaps overestimating the willingness of (some) new users to engage with foreign concepts like Internet forums :(
no, just reading in general.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by HansR »

I agree with most what has been said above about a better user experience, but I agree it is difficult given the current status. However, when @freddie says:
freddie wrote: Sat 26 Sep 2020 3:15 pm The idea of an image is a good one, but can soon get to be a bigger task to support and cater for everyone's needs - not everyone runs CMX on a Pi, so that leaves you open to requests for docker containers, LXC containers, VMWare virtual machines, KVM virtual machines, Debian (apt) installers, RedHat/Centos (yum) installers, etc. etc.
I disagree. Simply because we could choose e.g. to support the RPi, standard, and supply an installation (either an image or an installation procedure) for it and then package it with its standard website and possibly some other display layers which can replace the standard website. That would already give normal, non-technical interested, users a headstart.

Then we could create a forum containing different threads with different installations which have been successfully tried already
freddie wrote: Sat 26 Sep 2020 3:15 pmdocker containers, LXC containers, VMWare virtual machines, KVM virtual machines, Debian (apt) installers, RedHat/Centos (yum) installers, etc. etc.
That forum would not contain comments, just recipies, improved by its owner when errors occur. Then beside that, there would be support forums for the different possibilities of installations. (note that this would also imply archiving of the old threads out of the main view so that it would be difficult to get confusion.

Point of the above is, that there is no requirement to support everything. Just make a standard install for Windows, RPi and possibly the mac. For all other possibilities, you just supply the core software and the user is on its own (a bit like it is now).What's wrong with that?

NB: the same idea about a better user experience with a more simple install and just some knowledge about the basic structure required was the basis for creating the CumulusUtils thing. It would be 'easy' to package that with CMX to make it a one go installation, possibly with a choice between the standard website and one or two other display layers. And yes, I keep saying there is a difference between the core weather station/sensor engine and any display engine. CMX drives the sensors and provides the interface for data, but should not have the responsibility to actually display those data. I regard the graphs and gauges of the current management interface just as a means of a quick look to check everything is working. Really doing something with data should be out of the acquisition layer. The focus of the management interface should be with the setup and configuration.

And in my opinion, complete nitwits and unwilling to learn users do not qualify as Cumulus user. There is no need to support that.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by sfws »

The posts in this topic are a confusing mixture of
- those suggesting MX is badly designed and hard to use
- those confusing basic features of MX and optional extras that can be added
- those forgetting this topic is about a suggestion for an extra feature to be added to MX.

This post will try to make it easy for all readers to sort out facts from that confusion.


TRUE FACTS:
1. The server side graphics are a third party option to add pop up graphs to the gauges web page that is not part of the standard Cumulus MX package. (this is what the topic is about)
3. The original post is making a suggestion that MX has pop-up graphs added to the gauges web page. (A perfectly valid suggestion, although that does not imply it should be accepted).

RELEVANT, BUT PERHAPS PRESENTED BADLY:
4. Design philosophy these days is for the client to do the work so that the data is displayed in the way that best suits the client. (Freddie should have presented that as a comment about why the request to change MX might be rejected, instead of suggesting a change to make clients generate graphs had already been made in MX).
5. The pop up windows for example you have to jump through a few hoops to get them to work. Used to be a two second job. I didn't expect to have to go into gauges.ss to alter the filenames for the images (This is muddling because this is not talking about the gauges page provided in MX, nor talking about the gauges page provided in Cumulus 1; The Pit is talking about the stand alone steel series gauges package promoted by Mark Crossley).
6. The problem is that CumulusMX design philosophy is very different to Cumulus 1 and the graphs are produced using json files. (True in respect of Trends web page, but water01overlooks that MX implementation of steel series gauges has default of no pop up graphs, and so gauges web page does not care whether json files are used).

IRRELEVANT IN ABOVE CONTEXT:
7. That Cumulus MX needs you to use PHP Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP). (This is totally false).
8. Discussion about whether MX is for Geeks. (Irrelevant, because the topic is about a feature not yet in MX).
9. Discussion about whether MX is easy to install. (Irrelevant, because the topic is about installing a feature not in MX).
10. Exploring ways in which CMX could be made more accessible to more users. (Irrelevant, because the topic is about installing a feature not in MX).

FALSE:
11. Suggesting Steve Loft moved away from the Cumulus 1 (Windows installation package) and Cumulus 2 (Zip multi-platform package) solutions into deliberately making MX hard to install. (MX is different, but not hard to install. I would go further and say an unzip of MX is easier than running an installation package for Cumulus 1).
12. Suggesting MX is harder to install on a Raspberry Pi than on Windows. (download, unzip, configuring settings, and running, are all very similar on all platforms).
Last edited by sfws on Tue 29 Sep 2020 1:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Server side graphics

Post by PaulMy »

It would be nice if CumulusMX could have the image already generated rather than having the using installing php to run scripts and mess around with schedulers to get them to update. Much easier for newbies who can then get a website up and running quickly. They can then learn to mess around with php at their leisure.
The basic CumulusMX and Standard template website is one of the easiest things to do! Adding wants is another thing!
And in my opinion, complete nitwits and unwilling to learn users do not qualify as Cumulus user. There is no need to support that.
There have been times I've likely qualified as a nitwit... but am willing to learn, or at least follow instructions. However some learning isn't easy for some of us. I can install a basic CumulusMX on a pc in less than 5 minutes, but my attempt at using a RPi stalled (now stopped) after a few weeks. More important other things to do...

I know several other in a similar way; wanting to learn... just not able to understand or do some of the things they would like to do or have.
On more than one occasion I have been able to help a new user get their basic site up and running. They can then do as much or as little as they want.

I just accept the things I can have and do, and do appreciate all the forum members who share their work and help others, like me! :clap:

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