Doing it bloggy style

[DeepSpin]

Hi.

I'm just setting up my weather station and have an idea to try and write a web page that will give the details from my TP1080 via Cumulus in a 'conversational' style. I'm also thinking I may try and upload the page each day in to either a Wordpress or Joomla web site so that people can look back over previous entries.

In my mind it would read like:

Today the sun was up at <sunrise> and the wind was mainly from the <wind direction>. The average temperature was <av temp> and it peaked at <peak temp time> to <peak temp>. There was <day rainfall> and it looks like tomorrow will be <forcast>.

The moon should be up for <moon hours> and it will rise at <moon rise> and set at <moon set>.

- and so on. You get the idea.

I wonder has anyone done this already? I imagine this part will be quite simple and be a matter of re writing the existing pages but saving to a blog page each day may be more tricky unless there is a way to send an email in this format as i can figure posting to a blog by email.

If anyone can point me at information on uploading information on a daily basis to a blog like this so that the information gets saved as a new entry for each day I would be delighted?

This may well be in addition to presenting 'live' data on a page.

Apologies in advance if this is here and I have missed it. I have looked but I am new here. If anyone would like to collaborate on this I have web design and Wordpress/Joomla skills but I am anew to Cumulus.

Many thanks.

All the best Dave

[steve]

Sounds good! It's similar to the Twitter posts that Cumulus can do. Cumulus uses the Twitter API for posting, which makes it quite easy, and Wordpress has a similar API which could be used - http://codex.wordpress.org/XML-RPC_Support

You could get Cumulus to produce the article by creating a template using the web tags, and getting Cumulus to process it by specifying it on the 'files' tab of the internet settings. Then the trickier bit - you'd have to devise a method of automatically doing the Wordpress update using its XML-RPC interface. Of course, it would be easier if Cumulus did it for you as it does for Twitter, but I imagine there are a number of utilities already out there which will automate the process of posting to WP given an input file.

[Super-T]

Why not convert your text to words? When people open your web page they get the verbal.

[DeepSpin]

Hi

thanks for the interest.

@super t, not sure I understand what you mean.

@steve, my first thought was to use the twitter posting option and then collect the tweets as a daily blog post summary. I know that is all easy enough but I imagine I can't post any more that the 140 ch limit to via that method.

Is there a send daily email with data option from Cumulus? There are easy ways to post to wordpress by email.

I'll report back as progress (if any) happens.

Dave

[beteljuice]

...
Is there a send daily email with data option from Cumulus? There are easy ways to post to wordpress by email.

This is going to sound more awkward than it really is !

First of all you can use Cumulus to process any file and name it locally as well as to web

So - create your template file using <#webtags> eg. dailyT.txt
In Cumulus / Configuration / Internet / Files
> Local file names - browse to that file and enter it, in Remote Files Names, put the local address AND name eg:. E:/daily.txt - make sure that 'process' is ticked, but 'ftp' IS NOT !

Congratulations, you now have a file that will be updated at whatever Auto Update interval has been set (If you are not uploading to web, turn auto update off, and when you want it 'force' processing, by File / Web Update)

Assuming you are using Outlook as a mail client, just use 'Insert text from file' (hint: if you don't give it a .txt extension you can still start typing the name to find it)

... and Bobs your cross-dressing auntie

[DeepSpin]

Hi and thanks for that.

Your instructions, if I follow them correctly, would seem to result in a text file that would be ready to send in an email but not a way to actually automate this process.

I do see a way to do this using yet another piece of software (http://www.wheresjames.com/) web cam publishing software (WJWP) but this would seem to be yet another link in the chain that could go wrong.

The chain would be TP1080 station > Wireless reciever > USB cable > Win XP running Cumulus & WJWP > Email msg > WordPress blog (and FTP from Cumulus to the live (updated every 10 minutes) web page which, hopefully, would have a live feed from the IP camera too!).

WJWP would also enable me to embed a captured image from my web cam in the email message (and so the blog entry) so that may indeed be the way to go.

So I would, hopefully, end up with one page with a live feed from the camera and also a blog with an entry for each day with a captured image and a snapshot of that days data.

Any more help or suggestions happily received.

All the best Dave

(how do you know my Uncle Bob? We try and keep him off the internet).

[steve]

Cumulus doesn't have any email facilities, unfortunately, but it's a useful feature that it's missing, so it will have, one day - but not until version 2.