Cumulus Support

I'm new to Cumulus and recently (2 days ago) set up my PWS and linked it to WU. At exactly the same time each day, it has frozen up. I have to use the task manager to close it. My station,PC and Cumulus reflect the same time. My location coordinates are correct and my time one is correct. Also, my sunset/sunrise times are way off. I'm still learning the software and it's nuances but can't figure why these 2 problems keep occurring. Any ideas?

Your sunrise/sunset time problem is almost certainly due to incorrect co-ordinates (e.g. specifying East instead of West). By how much are they off? Please show a screen shot of your Cumulus station settings.

What is the time of day when it freezes up? What type of logger do you have (serial, USB, or IP) and how is it connected to your PC? Are you using Virtual VP?

If you zip up the diags folder and attach it, I'll take a look.

Thanks for the quick reply. It seems that time of day doesn't really matter, it was just a coincidence. It seems Im getting some error which partially freezes Cumulus. The time is still running, but all the data has frozen at a certain point in the day. The sunrise/sunset is 4hrs off for sunrise and 5 hours off for sunset. Oh, also, Im using a 6510c logger via serial/USB adaptor. Below is pic and folder.

You haven't entered your location in Cumulus. You have to tell Cumulus what your co-ordinates are, it doesn't read them from the console.

The data updates are stopping because you are allowing your PC to suspend:

7/25/2014 07:53:12.242 : Windows SUSPEND broadcast received
7/25/2014 07:53:20.251 : VP2: LoadCurrentVantageData_V, error = -32701
7/25/2014 07:53:21.686 : VP2: LoadCurrentVantageData_V, error = -32701
7/25/2014 07:53:23.121 : VP2: LoadCurrentVantageData_V, error = -32701
7/25/2014 11:02:06.506 : Windows TIMECHANGE message received
7/25/2014 11:03:00.567 : *** Data input appears to have stopped
7/25/2014 11:04:00.574 : *** Data input appears to have stopped

As the readme.txt file says, you cannot allow your PC to suspend while Cumulus is running.

Ok, thanks. WhT do mean my PC is suspending? Do you mean after a designated time it kind of goes into a sleep or hibernate mode? I thought As long as I leave it on, that any open software would continue to run in the background. I guess I need to go into settings and tell it to never sleep. Thanks a lot for your quick help.

Daffypuck wrote:Ok, thanks. WhT do mean my PC is suspending? Do you mean after a designated time it kind of goes into a sleep or hibernate mode? I thought As long as I leave it on, that any open software would continue to run in the background.

Yes, in the power options, you have it set to turn itself off after a certain period of inactivity. All programs stop when this happens. Some can just just start up again and continue as if nothing ever happened, but Cumulus cannot do this, mainly because of problems with connections to the various types of weather station.

Steve, have you thought about Cumulus actively preventing Windows going to sleep/hibernate mode? Presumably so, but maybe make it an option, default enabled

Daffypuck wrote:Ok, thanks. WhT do mean my PC is suspending? Do you mean after a designated time it kind of goes into a sleep or hibernate mode? I thought As long as I leave it on, that any open software would continue to run in the background. I guess I need to go into settings and tell it to never sleep. Thanks a lot for your quick help.

Also make sure the power saving option on your USB hubs is switched off. The only way to do this is to use Device Manager and then right click on each hub and select Properties. If there is a Power Management tab in the window that opens, click on it and then take the tick out of "Allow the computer to turn of this device to save power" and then click on OK. Do this in turn for every hub.

mcrossley wrote:Steve, have you thought about Cumulus actively preventing Windows going to sleep/hibernate mode? Presumably so, but maybe make it an option, default enabled

I would rather not have Cumulus tinkering with any system settings (e.g. actively turning off any sleep settings), if that's even possible. In theory it's possible to respond to the WM_POWERBROADCAST message with a BROADCAST_QUERY_DENY to prevent the system sleeping, but I think when I investigated this, it apparently doesn't work in all cases. And in any case, it's still in the area of "things I would rather not do".

Thanks for the help. I've got everything squared away and running 24/7. Instead of starting a new thread, I thought Id ask here. I have 3 other stations within a 1.5 radius of me and I notice that my BP runs a little high compared to the other stations in my area. Their readings may be 29.87, 29.91, 29.84 and mine will be something like 30.05. That seems like a bit of an anomaly to me. Should I add the 8' that my station sits at to my elevation settings? Also, my data logs seem to have stopped at midnite a few days ago. Is that something I have to save manually or does it only save a certain amount?

Daffypuck wrote:Should I add the 8' that my station sits at to my elevation settings?

The elevation that you put into the console should be the elevation of the console itself, because that's what calculates the MSLP reading that Cumulus uses. If you want to put in a pressure offset for calibration, you can also do that in the console. It's better to do it in the console rather than Cumulus. If your station is a Vantage Vue, note that it can be configured to display pressure using different calculations. The display setting also affects the value that is given to Cumulus, so you may be using a different setting to those other stations. The Vantage Pro2 always supplies MSLP.

Also, my data logs seem to have stopped at midnite a few days ago. Is that something I have to save manually or does it only save a certain amount?

No, it's all completely automatic. If you zip up the diags folder and attach it, I'll take a look. Is it just the Jul14log.txt file which has stopped updating, or other files such as dayfile.txt also?

No, the dayfiles are saving correctly. Its the ones when I click on 'view', then data log.

If you zip up the diags folder and the July data log, I'll take a look. The July data log just stopped updating altogether? Has it created an August log today and started logging to that?

Theres not an Aug 1 folder yet, but there is data for the month, thus far. My 'data' files under 'view' stop at the 29th of july. Heres the diag folder.

Oh, one other thing, How to I embed my station via a sticker in my posts? When I copy/paste the HTML, it just prints the link and not the image of my stations data. Am I supposed to do it somewhere in my signature? Actually, I haven't tried for this forum, but Ive tried in the WXForum to no avail.

Daffypuck wrote:Theres not an Aug 1 folder yet, but there is data for the month, thus far. My 'data' files under 'view' stop at the 29th of july. Heres the diag folder.

I can't see anything in the diags files that would indicate why it would have stopped logging after 29th July. Could you please zip up the Jul14log.txt file and (if it exists) the Aug14log.txt file, and attach them here.

Oh, one other thing, How to I embed my station via a sticker in my posts? When I copy/paste the HTML, it just prints the link and not the image of my stations data. Am I supposed to do it somewhere in my signature? Actually, I haven't tried for this forum, but Ive tried in the WXForum to no avail.

If you have a 'banner' of some sorts, a link to some PHP or whatever that creates an image, you need to put the link inside [img]...[/img] tags for the image to appear on the forum.