Cumulus Support

Just wondered if anyone could tell me what's involved in changing the station type?

I've had a guts full of the Fine Offset doing silly things (wind now stuck at NNW, data spikes etc) so decided to buy a new station.

Do I just change the station type in Cumulus once I have set it all up and plugged it in and change the various parameters to suit then restart Cumulus for the ini file to be updated and the settings to store? i.e. will the existing records / data get added to and or amended with the new station? - Can't see why not but just wanted to check before I do something stupid.

Yes, just change the station type. You may need to restart Cumulus, or it may just connect to the station and start reading data, and append it to what's there already. You may find that today's rain total goes a bit haywire, so you may have some cleaning up to do.

Nice one, thanks Steve. Hoped that would be the case. I'll get the new one set up and working before I switch them over - aware the new one doesn't have a data logger, but as I don't switch off the weather station PC anyway it's no big deal.

Another quick question which I can't find an answer to in the Wiki.

Is there a webtag for battery status that I can use on my Status page like you can with the Davis consoles?

There aren't any web tags for the WMR battery status indicators, they just get displayed on the main screen. But there could be web tags for them at some point.

OK thanks. Will look out for it in the future.


Thanks again Steve for all the support you give.

It's in and working. Only incident I've had is that it currently thinks it's raining at 999mm / hr (Spectacular to see i'm sure!) with a new highest rainfall rate of over 1000mm / hr.

From reading other posts - am I to leave this alone, let it do it's midnight thing tonight then correct the records tomorrow?

That's rather strange, because the rain rate comes directly from the console, so the station switch should have no effect on it. Perhaps it's an error value - what does the console show for rain rate?

Hmmm. Odd. The console says 0.0mm

I just rebooted the server, unplugged and reconnected the console, fired up Cumulus and almost immediately it displays 999mm/hr.

Anyone come across this before?

I think I know the answer now Steve.

I found an earlier post from you that says the Oregon has a 2 hour reset period for rain rate. That being the case the console is likely showing my testing of the rain gauge when I set it up!

I'll leave it alone for a couple of hours and see what happens.

westonweather wrote:Hmmm. Odd. The console says 0.0mm

Do you mean 0.0mm/hr?

Apparently 9999 mm/hr is an 'overflow' value, and I've converted that to 999 mm/hr, but I can't remember what the overflow value is supposed to mean, nor what my thinking was in converting it to 999.

westonweather wrote:I found an earlier post from you that says the Oregon has a 2 hour reset period for rain rate. That being the case the console is likely showing my testing of the rain gauge when I set it up!

Ah yes, that would be it; if you caused the bucket to tip rapidly, it would be sending its overflow rate, and Cumulus is reducing that to 999. I'm still not sure why I did that, but it could be that there are parts of Cumulus which don't like a rate of over 999 mm/hr.

If I ever saw a reading that high I'd be heading for the hills, not worrying about an overflow error

I'll report back later if it clears itself, just so that if anyone else comes across this the answer is documented.

Apparently 999 mm/hr is the stated maximum rain rate for the WMR88, so I've taken the 9999 overflow value and replaced it with the maximum, as the actual value is unknown.

I can't imagine ever recording close to those sorts of numbers.

What I should see then is after a while longer the rain rate will start to reduce before settling at zero (if no rain falls in the next 2 hours?)

Typically I got soaked installing this lot - and now the Sun is shining

As I typed that reply the rain rate has returned to zero, which is about 2 hours after I tested the gauge, so that was the answer.
Patience is a virtue...