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RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Discussion and questions about Cumulus weather station software version 1. This section is the main place to get help with Cumulus 1 software developed by Steve Loft that ceased development in November 2014.
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TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

hello there,
I have a WS-1040KR weather station with pc link that i am trying to use with cumulus 1, the weather station came with the smartweather software (modified version of easyweather).
I have sucessfully set up smartweather and it all works fine, and i have set up cumulus to read the .DAT file from smartweather, however, cumulus seems to only read the .DAT file once and needs to be restarted in order to get it to work again, it also comes up with "data input appears to have stopped - please check your station and connections" with the red error light flashing, despite the fact that the station is connected and data is being transfered between it and smartweather.
before you ask:
no, there is not any interference on the connection.
yes, the station is turned on.
any help would be great
tom
water01
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Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by water01 »

Are you sure that the file conforms to this layout https://cumuluswiki.org/a/EasyWeather_Format , as I thought that the later versions (SmartWeather versions) produced a different format file?
David
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TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

hello there,
i have taken a screenshot of the files that came with the smartweather software, i am currently using the smartweather.dat file at the top, yes i am sure that the file conforms to the layout mentioned.
tom
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TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

also as anextra note, i have tried both the .ddd and .dat files
water01
Posts: 3215
Joined: Sat 13 Aug 2011 9:33 am
Weather Station: Ecowitt HP2551
Operating System: Windows 10 64bit
Location: Burnham-on-Sea
Contact:

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by water01 »

I assume you have followed these setup rules?
Note when reading easyweather.dat (or equivalent formatted input), Cumulus will read the station originated date and time fields, and Cumulus checks that they have changed before using new data from the file.
To get Cumulus to read the file, configure a station type of "Easyweather (using .dat file)", and supply the full path to your file (it can have any name you wish), and the interval at which it is to be read.
Note that Cumulus only reads the last line in the file, and that this method is only suitable for 'live' data, i.e. you cannot close Cumulus down and expect it to catch up again later.
David
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TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

followed all correctly
tom
water01
Posts: 3215
Joined: Sat 13 Aug 2011 9:33 am
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Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by water01 »

I am wondering if in Windows 10 the file is opened by SmartWeather for writing to and when Cumulus 1 opens it, SmartWeather thinks something else has it open and refuses to write to it.

The symptoms you are describing suggest that Cumulus 1 is not seeing a change in the files date and time and therefore thinks data has stopped. I am not sure if anyone has tried this with Windows 10 and got it working as the last input to the Topic on the subject mentioned in the Wiki is 2015, way before Windows 10 came out.

It might be worth looking at the files permissions and see if are set to Full, therefore allowing anyone to write/read to/from it?
David
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sfws
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Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by sfws »

The old Easy Weather format (6.x) effectively created a CSV file that could be read by CSV readers, Notepad and so on. It could also be read, as per previous posts by Cumulus 1 (and possibly MX).
The later Easy Weather format (7.x) used the same fields, but stored them in a database that resembled Microsoft Access and could be read by e.g. Libre Office (BASE component functionality can read a number of formats with ODBC definitions), but not CSV readers. The file name and extension did not change if I recall this correctly, it was several years ago. I know it then changed to 8.x and later 9.x, but I never tried to use EasyWeather again, so I don't know if format changed again, but the new major number suggests it might have.

I have no knowledge of SmartWeather, but from your experience it seems it might use a different file type to the one in the specification, but otherwise I can't anything to Water01 replies.

Like David, I don't recall anyone mentioning this use of Cumulus in recent years, so it is possible that W10 has labelled the file as not safe to read, I had many problems with that aspect when I got a new PC, my new W10 would not read from files created on old W7 PC, you might find that if you take a copy of the file you can make W10 recognise it as a file created on your PC, not one created externally. I might be wrong!
TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

water01 wrote: Thu 02 Apr 2020 3:56 pm I am wondering if in Windows 10 the file is opened by SmartWeather for writing to and when Cumulus 1 opens it, SmartWeather thinks something else has it open and refuses to write to it.

The symptoms you are describing suggest that Cumulus 1 is not seeing a change in the files date and time and therefore thinks data has stopped. I am not sure if anyone has tried this with Windows 10 and got it working as the last input to the Topic on the subject mentioned in the Wiki is 2015, way before Windows 10 came out.

It might be worth looking at the files permissions and see if are set to Full, therefore allowing anyone to write/read to/from it?
i have had both (smartweather and cumulus) running at the same time and it seems that the data connection is more reliable when they are both running.
TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

*bump*
TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

sfws wrote: Thu 02 Apr 2020 4:09 pm The old Easy Weather format (6.x) effectively created a CSV file that could be read by CSV readers, Notepad and so on. It could also be read, as per previous posts by Cumulus 1 (and possibly MX).
The later Easy Weather format (7.x) used the same fields, but stored them in a database that resembled Microsoft Access and could be read by e.g. Libre Office (BASE component functionality can read a number of formats with ODBC definitions), but not CSV readers. The file name and extension did not change if I recall this correctly, it was several years ago. I know it then changed to 8.x and later 9.x, but I never tried to use EasyWeather again, so I don't know if format changed again, but the new major number suggests it might have.

I have no knowledge of SmartWeather, but from your experience it seems it might use a different file type to the one in the specification, but otherwise I can't anything to Water01 replies.

Like David, I don't recall anyone mentioning this use of Cumulus in recent years, so it is possible that W10 has labelled the file as not safe to read, I had many problems with that aspect when I got a new PC, my new W10 would not read from files created on old W7 PC, you might find that if you take a copy of the file you can make W10 recognise it as a file created on your PC, not one created externally. I might be wrong!
i have tried that and it still isnt working
tom
water01
Posts: 3215
Joined: Sat 13 Aug 2011 9:33 am
Weather Station: Ecowitt HP2551
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Location: Burnham-on-Sea
Contact:

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by water01 »

Well I would assume they would both have to be running otherwise the updates that Cumulus is looking for wouldn't be happening, as the sequence of the loop is SmartWeather writes a new line of output and then Cumulus detects the line is new and updates itself with the data and then sits there waiting for SmartWeather to update again.

I just assumed you realised that and had them both running at the same time, but if you stop SmartWeather then that is the same as Data Stopped. It might also be wise to check the SmartWeather setup to see what the timing is on the updates of the .dat file as that I would assume should be a minute or so.
David
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TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

water01 wrote: Thu 02 Apr 2020 8:15 pm Well I would assume they would both have to be running otherwise the updates that Cumulus is looking for wouldn't be happening, as the sequence of the loop is SmartWeather writes a new line of output and then Cumulus detects the line is new and updates itself with the data and then sits there waiting for SmartWeather to update again.

I just assumed you realised that and had them both running at the same time, but if you stop SmartWeather then that is the same as Data Stopped. It might also be wise to check the SmartWeather setup to see what the timing is on the updates of the .dat file as that I would assume should be a minute or so.
the dat file updates are 30 minutes between each other.
tom
water01
Posts: 3215
Joined: Sat 13 Aug 2011 9:33 am
Weather Station: Ecowitt HP2551
Operating System: Windows 10 64bit
Location: Burnham-on-Sea
Contact:

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by water01 »

30 minutes seems a long time? I would assume you wanted to see the main Cumulus screen update as per realtime i.e. 30 seconds.
David
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TomWilliams2000
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed 01 Apr 2020 9:28 pm
Weather Station: WS1040KR
Operating System: windows 10

Re: RE: Cumulus not reading easyweather

Post by TomWilliams2000 »

water01 wrote: Fri 03 Apr 2020 11:28 am 30 minutes seems a long time? I would assume you wanted to see the main Cumulus screen update as per realtime i.e. 30 seconds.
do you want meto send a copy of the smartweather and its ascociated files to see whats happening, this whole thing is a first for me so i do not know much about what i am doing.
tom
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