Cumulus Support

I have read most of the posts here over the past months (just quickly scanned as these were posted) but to be honest most has been over my head. I now have the RPi put in a case and ready to give it a go. I've downloaded these https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ and not sure which to use. I know this is likely mentioned in previous posts here but there has been so much info I am not sure which would be most applicable for me. I presume that once I have downloaded the OS, unzipped, then can put on micro card and place that in the RPi. I intend to use the WiFiLogger Meteo-Pi logger (Davis Vue console) CumulusMX. So could I ask which OS to use, and am I on the right track? Thank you in advance!

Enjoy,

Paul, it really depends on what you are going to be comfortable with. Do you want a full desktop environment, or will you be happy with just a command line?

CMX only *requires* a command line install, and that is what I use, especially on the Meteo-pi where processing power is very limited. It also cuts down number of required updates on the future dramatically. This is the "Lite" download.

Setting up a "headless" install that requires no keyboard or mouse on your pi is very easy now. You just need to create a file on the SD card from your Windows PC to define the WiFi network and it will connect the first time you boot it (or you can use a wired connection of course). Another file edit enables SSH which gives you your remote access to the command line.

I'm on my phone at the mo, I'm sure others can come in with proper links, but Google creating a headless install for Raspbian.

We could probably do with a wiki page on setting up a rPi for CMX. Any volunteers?

Mcrossley, thanks it worked perfectly.

Regds
Max

How feasible would it be to create a downloadable and zipped Raspbian image with Mono/CMX pre-installed? Pi users could then just download the zip and use eg Etcher to set up a new SD card - a relatively quick and easy way to get up and running with CMX on a Pi.

Really just asking in principle - not necessarily expecting anyone to do it.

PaulMy wrote: ↑Mon 14 Oct 2019 9:20 pm I know this is likely mentioned in previous posts here but there has been so much info I am not sure which would be most applicable for me.

The long first post in this thread contains everything you need, neatly laid out in order. There are a lot of steps to go through, but not difficult.

The subsequent posts are comments/discussion/problems people encountered/errors that have been fixed etc etc. But I have kept the initial post up-to-date as changes and corrections emerged - so that's why you shouldn't need to read the rest.

Best wishes and good luck!

prodata wrote: ↑Sun 27 Oct 2019 11:55 am How feasible would it be to create a downloadable and zipped Raspbian image with Mono/CMX pre-installed? Pi users could then just download the zip and use eg Etcher to set up a new SD card - a relatively quick and easy way to get up and running with CMX on a Pi.

Really just asking in principle - not necessarily expecting anyone to do it.

Here's your answer John - or at least the start of it.

Xroads wrote: ↑Mon 14 Oct 2019 8:21 am Hello to all.
I have succesfully used the Raspberry image from www.fracassi.net, with great thanks to Fracassi Andrea. The only tiny problem is that the forecasts is in Italian language, ie " Quasi bello, possibilli rovesci a breve".
Anyone know how to change this to English?
Max

This is a reference to someone who has indeed built a Raspberry Pi image including Cumulus MX - and Max reports successful use.
I tried using something similar previously but it did not work successfully for me.
It is likely for example that the image required would be different for different versions of Raspberry Pi - it used to be that the same SD card would work in them all, but now it seems that mono installs itself differently depending on the the model it is in (wasn't it you John who told me this earlier - I have since verified that you are correct and SD can no longer just be moved eg from Pi 3 to Pi Zero)

OK, thanks. Yes, it was me who reported trouble moving a card from Pi 3 to Pi 0 while setting up a CMX installation, but wasn't sure that maybe I just wasn't following the instructions carefully enough! But reassuring as a sanity check that it wasn't just me!

OK, so different images might be needed for eg Pi 3 and Pi 0, as a minimum, with Pi 4 maybe an unknown quantity as yet. And with some final configuration as to locale etc still being necessary. But food for thought for those new to using Pi's and the instructions then could just be (in outline):

1. Download the relevant image;
2. Use Etcher
3. Do any necessary final configuration

Oh and sorry - I hadn't looked back at the previous page of posts before asking my question - that would have provided the answer!

With respect to the filename issue which has caused some problems and discussion recently, I can tell, that for my configuration the problem has disappeared with the recently implemented workaround in Cumulus 3.1.0-b3053. I updated everything and am fully up to date now: see my signature.
Thanks Mark!!

A quick post to say thanks for all of the info contained in this original (and updated) post as well as the many contributions in the discussion that followed. There has been some recent discussion on compatibilities with the various versions of the software used, so here is my experience. I did a clean install yesterday with a Raspberry Pi 4 model B and Meteo-Pi data logger, US/English/UTF-8, Raspian Buster (upgraded 11/10/19), Mono v6.4.0.198 and CumulusMX v3.1.2 build 3055. No problems at all! Everything just works, including moving my CumulusMX data from my other system that began in April of 2017.

Thanks for the great instructions. Helped me get setup quickly. Everything went smoothy. I have a Davis Pro 2 with a Davis Envoy data logger. I have historical data back 5 years using 1.9.4 and wanted to bring that over to the Pi and use MX. Read everything about Locales and first set to en-GB - Rebuilt SD card after having issues trying to change to different locale (end user issue) Did en-US ended up with MM/DD/YYYY then did it once more with my real locale en-CA. Now I end up with YYYY-MM-DD. I need DD/MM/YYYY in order to read archive data from the data logger and transfer my old data from the 1.9.4 install. If not startup fails when it tries to read my old today.ini because of date format. Mono does not seem to cause me any issues (at least not what is described elsewhere here) and the txt files are formatted corectly ie Nov19log.txt which is the same format as 1.9.4. Just the dates in the files and datalogger. Hoping someone has a solution before I spend 2 days looking for an answer that works(day and half already gone). Is there an option to start CumulusMX to use a different date format? I tried the -lang option as well. Mono V 6.4.0.198 - raspbian buster desktop latest - Pi Zero

I'm glad my instructions helped (or maybe ... led you to different problems)

Locales are a foreign topic to me (sorry - bad pun!) as I'm in en-GB and everything just works.

First, remember that locales are not just about 'short date format' - they also control for example the decimal and thousands separators (dot or comma), currency symbol, paper size etc so don't forget that ! Type 'locale' at the Pi prompt to see a list of what gets set.

Second, establish what locale has been used for your historical data in Cumulus 1.9.4. Then will need to try replicate that in CumulusMX.
You have said you are looking for DD/MM/YYYY. But that is strictly incorrect as dd and yyyy should not be capitalised. MM is capitalised to distinguish from minutes (mm). So I think you are looking for dd/MM/yyyy, which means use 2-digit date / 2-digit month / 4-digit year with / as separator. If your old data contains single-digit day and month (1st March comes out as 1/3/2019 rather than 01/03/2019) then you are looking for d/M/yyyy instead of dd/MM/yyyy. The standard US format (which is inherited by many in Canada) uses single-digits with dot-separator ie d.M.yyyy rather than dd.MM.yyyy. For a full list of possible date and time code elements, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet ... at-strings

I also saw a note that the en-CA (English Canadian) specification was changed in recent years: "Windows 7 has en-CA short date format configured by default as dd/MM/yyyy, but it changes to yyyy-MM-dd in Windows 8/10. This can cause all kinds of problems in web application pools that handle international languages that are not congruent" though it may be the '.net' version rather than the Windows version. Help! Maybe your data is in the previous en-CA format dd/MM/yyyy, but requesting en-CA on RPi gives & expects yyyy-MM-dd ??? That seems to match with your comment.

If your old data has dd/MM/yyyy and has dot as the decimal separator, can you just leave the RPi in en-GB? Or am I being simplistic?

My today.ini displays date in the format for my locale, followed by the standard ISO format (not based on locale): and a short extract of May16log.txt shows my date and time formats, use of comma as decimal separator and no thousands separator.
If your look like this, locale en-GB may be for you.
Otherwise maybe post yours and someone may be able to match it?

Hello everybody,

I have prepared an image for raspberry with the latest version of Buster.

http://www.fracassi.net/meteopassione/cumulus_mx.htm

http://www.fracassi.net/raspy/2019-09-2 ... st3055.rar

Good work.

Andrea

Many thanks for this, excellent instructions, took me an hour to install and configure, even as a novice Raspberry Pi user.

see the results here:-

www.littlemartins.com/weather/

thanks

Jon

Glad you found them helpful.
Hope you have some confidence to try some other RPi projects

Hey all,

I'm a super noob who's super happy to have found this forum and tutorial however I've gotten to a point that I can no longer log into the pi via Putty.
Everything went well until after the "Install Cumulus on the Raspberry Pi" section. When I try to log in after installing i get "Network error: connection timed out".

I think I messed up installing FIlezilla as I got a virus popup from Defender, to which I removed the "virus". I'm guessing I may have deleted a false positive and a critical file which messed something up...

Any assistance at this point would be thoroughly appreciated.