Cumulus Support

I recently bought a weather station from Maplin which I believe is the Fine Offset WH1081. It's all working fine and I've successfully connected it to Cumulus and have uploaded data to my website etc, producing some great results thanks to Cumulus. I have a couple of questions:

When I load Cumulus, it downloads the historic data from the weather station. While Cumulus is running, it takes and logs its own readings from the station every 5 minutes. Is there any way to set it so that it simply downloads and stores the data that the weather station is recording, without having Cumulus taking its own recordings? I believe there's a way to do it with Easyweather running but I was wondering if there was a way to do it without Easyweather.

I've set it so it reads from the station using the same interval that the station records, but this produces slightly out-of-synch logs as the station seems to be recording at 02, 07, 12 etc mins past the hour, whereas Cumulus records at 00, 05, 10 mins past, etc.

The other question I have which someone may know the answer to (this is partly related to my previous question, although it's more related to the programming of the station) is how do I ensure the station starts recording at a 'round' minute? I've been able to tell other loggers when to start logging (e.g. at 05 mins past), whereas my Fine Offset one seems to make its own decision! I've tried clicking "save" on the settings screen at a 'round' minute but that doesn't seem to have an effect. I can't work out when it decides to start logging.

Thanks
David

davidw1987 wrote:When I load Cumulus, it downloads the historic data from the weather station. While Cumulus is running, it takes and logs its own readings from the station every 5 minutes. Is there any way to set it so that it simply downloads and stores the data that the weather station is recording, without having Cumulus taking its own recordings? I believe there's a way to do it with Easyweather running but I was wondering if there was a way to do it without Easyweather.

No, sorry, Cumulus doesn't work that way, and it's unlikely that it ever will, and still provide the extra facilities that it does, compared to Easyweather.

Regarding the interval, the main problem is that the station doesn't timestamp the data, so Cumulus has to calculate the timestamps as best as it can. Even if you managed to get it to start logging on the hour, it may not stay in sync with the clock, and the calculated timestamps may not exactly correspond anyway.

Hi,

AFAIK the first log occurs just after inserting the batteries (with the USB cable disconnected). The problem is that the clock probably won't be set, but you may be able to do that quite quickly after practice.

To prevent Cumulus adding "its own" data to the log file, you could close it down as soon as the download is complete. Then, if you then want to run Cumulus continuously, you can overwrite any subsequent logs with the "backup" data file.

But I doubt if you'll manage to maintain "on the hour" timestamps continually, or if there's any point in doing so, since you can easily "massage" the time in any log files using a spreadsheet / text editor.

Cheers, Alan.

Thanks to you both for the info.

For reference, I've discovered the station starts logging exactly 5 minutes from when you clear the memory on the station. Similarly, to ensure Cumulus timestamps the data (and adds additional data) using 'round' times, I've found that starting Cumulus at a 'round' time (e.g. 11:35) does the trick. This seems to cause a duplicate reading when Cumulus starts, but better that than missing a reading.

As Steve said, I'd heard that the station doesn't timestamp the data but if you scroll back in the history using the station, it seems the data has already been time-stamped. I'm guessing these may be stamped in relation to the station's current clock reading though.

Another question which I don't feel necessary to start a new thread for: I really like the summaries produced by the web interface (e.g. under the 'yesterday' link). Is there any way to automatically save these summaries? I know a summary of a certain period can be pulled up in the software but the web-based ones seem more detailed.

Thanks

davidw1987 wrote:Another question which I don't feel necessary to start a new thread for: I really like the summaries produced by the web interface (e.g. under the 'yesterday' link). Is there any way to automatically save these summaries? I know a summary of a certain period can be pulled up in the software but the web-based ones seem more detailed.

The 'yesterday's highs and lows' display in Cumulus has almost all of the same items as the web page (it has all ones which are highs and lows, so 3 or 4 of the web page ones aren't represented). There's no way to automatically save them using Cumulus alone, you would have to devise some other way of doing it using a scheduled task or similar. The only summaries which Cumulus can save automatically are the NOAA-style reports.