Cumulus Support

phipps wrote: I do have a couple questions, what's the reasoning behind doing a reboot every night?

I am running CumulusMX on a Pi without problems and I never reboot.

phipps wrote:Also, what's the "safest" way to shut down CumulusMX and the Pi if I need to make changes or move it, etc?

Use this script: https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=13767

Thanks for finding an error in my instructions. The "For some reason" was that I had got a long hyphen (En-dash) instead of a short one in the code section saying Now fixed.

Daily reboot is not particularly needed. It's just generally a good idea on any computer running anything continuously, a good habit. It just ensures that any over-filling buffers get flushed, etc. And if something had gone wrong with Cumulus MX or any other running program (I run other things too on the same Pi), everything gets neatly restarted, so that problems get a chance to fix themselves eg if you are away on holiday.

To stop a Pi running Cumulus MX, you can just logon using SSH (eg, PuTTY) and type and once all the lights stop flashing the Pi has stopped and you can disconnect the power.

If you don't want Cumulus MX to start when you plug the power in again, comment out the relevant line in sudo crontab -e before halting, and put it back in again when you do want it to restart.

Greetings,
I have a spare Raspberry Pi Model B+ V1.2 sitting in the cupboard doing nothing and as I already have MX running on an oldish micro PC I was wondering if this Pi is suitable for the MX installation as per your guide ???

Just as a matter of interest, do you know if anyone has tried using the 'BT's Global Sager Weathercaster PHP Scripts For Cumulus' with any success as I'm running into a brick wall with it ... https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9901'

Thanks

hi yh that will fun fine on the the pi 2 (3 be better ) but pi 2 be ok you just have to set up mono

https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=13587

Cheers
Just one quick question ... when I have MX installed on the Pi, is there a way to change the port settings that CumulusMX will use ??
I ask this as I've already got it running on a stand alone mini pc using ports 8998 and 8002 ... I think.

I know it's theoretically possible to forward these ports to other pc's as well but my TP-Link router won't facilitate forwarding the same port numberto 2 different IPs.

So, is it possible to change the port numbers in MX and if so, how do I do this ??

Many thanks

ExperiMentor wrote: Daily reboot is not particularly needed. It's just generally a good idea on any computer running anything continuously, a good habit. It just ensures that any over-filling buffers get flushed, etc. And if something had gone wrong with Cumulus MX or any other running program (I run other things too on the same Pi), everything gets neatly restarted, so that problems get a chance to fix themselves eg if you are away on holiday.

I agree, an occasional reboot is a good thing. What command in crontab would I use to do a reboot once a week, say Sunday morning? Can you set up a reboot every other day? Does that require a seperate line in crontab for each reboot?

Thanks,

Gary

Just to prove it, mine crashed the other day. I happened to notice nothing was being uploaded to the internet. The Pi was still running when I logged in and a simple 'sudo reboot' fixed everything. If I hadn't been there, it would have been sorted overnight.

The following crontab line will run on even numbered days (not quite the same thing as every other day, but near enough?) at 04 47. The */2 does the trick. I presume you could use */3 for every 3rd day.

57 4 */2 * * sudo reboot

There are various online crontab tools to do the hard work for you. For example, https://crontab-generator.org/

Thanks for your instructions! I was able to get CumulusMX running on my raspberry pi 3b without any issues. I do have a problem though connecting to my weatherstation. I have a Davis Vantage Vue which is connected through a usb data logger.
I see that by default it selects COM0 when I select Davis Vantage Vue as station type. When I connect my weatherstation via usb I see /dev/ttyUSB0 appearing. Are there any drivers I need to install? Which serial portname should I configure in CumulusMX ?

Serial device names on Linux are not COM0 etc as in Windows. You need to specify something like /dev/ttyUSB0 - do a dmesg at a command line prompt and look for the actual device name from your adapter. If dmesg says your cp210x converter (as on Davis stations) is attached to ttyUSB0, for example, you need to put /dev/ttyUSB0 for the serial port name in MX. You can set the serial port name in the MX user interface, but if for some reason you want to do it by editing Cumulus.ini, note that the item in MX is called ComportName (which is a string, for the full device name, e.g. COM1 or /dev/ttyUSB0) rather than 'Port' which is just an integer. If you have not run MX yet, this item will not exist, so you will need to add it (in the [Station] section).

From the Cumulus MX wiki https://cumuluswiki.wxforum.net/a/Cumulus_MX_FAQ

water01 wrote: ↑Sat 01 Dec 2018 9:36 pm

Serial device names on Linux are not COM0 etc as in Windows. You need to specify something like /dev/ttyUSB0 - do a dmesg at a command line prompt and look for the actual device name from your adapter. If dmesg says your cp210x converter (as on Davis stations) is attached to ttyUSB0, for example, you need to put /dev/ttyUSB0 for the serial port name in MX. You can set the serial port name in the MX user interface, but if for some reason you want to do it by editing Cumulus.ini, note that the item in MX is called ComportName (which is a string, for the full device name, e.g. COM1 or /dev/ttyUSB0) rather than 'Port' which is just an integer. If you have not run MX yet, this item will not exist, so you will need to add it (in the [Station] section).

From the Cumulus MX wiki https://cumuluswiki.wxforum.net/a/Cumulus_MX_FAQ

Thanks a lot! I can now connect to my weather station.

Just noting that if you use the latest build (3044) you do not need to do anything with mono versions. Just install the latest as per the instructions.

I have just installed to a new Pi 3 A+ using Stretch Lite, with an Oregon Scientific WMR200 and all worked a treat!

Now to import data from my old Raspberry 1 (which deserves a quiet life out to grass now -it has done me well!) and tweak some of the web pages.

After reading this thread I will grab myself a Pi 3 and give this a go. Saves me having to run a full desktop overnight just to capture. Thanks for the post and all the info. Once I get it up & running (or stuck ) I will report back.

Thanks to this thread I've got mine working I'm using an old Maplin kit on a brand new Pi 3+ and my COM port is /dev/hidraw0 though - found this through dmesg:

[ 129.360674] usb 1-1.2: new low-speed USB device number 5 using dwc_otg
[ 129.526448] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=1941, idProduct=8021
[ 129.526463] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
[ 129.559936] hid-generic 0003:1941:8021.0001: hiddev96,hidraw0: USB HID v1.00 Device [HID 1941:8021] on usb-3f980000.usb-1.2/input0

Interesting description on lsusb:

pi@CumulusMX:~/CumulusMX $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1941:8021 Dream Link WH1080 Weather Station / USB Missile Launcher
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0424:7800 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:2514 Standard Microsystems Corp. USB 2.0 Hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:2514 Standard Microsystems Corp. USB 2.0 Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Not quite got the web upload working right though yet (trends and graphs aren't working and it never created the graphconfig.json file - I had to do that myself).

EDIT - forgot to update this last night - I just copied over the 'webfiles' directory structure to the web server and it's fine now.

Cheers,
Steve

Just a quick post to say thanks to all who posted in this thread .. i just got cumulusmx running on my xmas present rpi3b in less than an hour, only wrinkle being that my vantage vue plugged in as /dev/ttyUSB1 instead of 0. Hopefully it will stay there.

I can start mx with cron, as recommended, but i wonder if there is anything slicker .. my other rpi app is Domoticz (home automation) which seems to run itself as the rpi equivalent of a service .. no tty window needed.

Great set of step by step instructions. Nearly working, just wondering where I have gone wrong. I have the N96GY Maplin Fine Offset USB Station and connected it up to the Pi 3b+. I'm using an Ethernet cable to my router. Port forwarding to 8998 working. (192.168.1.48:8998) in browser I get the Cumulus MX dashboard just there is no data, each parameter is ---- blank.

I have gone back through the above instructions and searched the web, its got to be something to do with the pi getting the information from the station. I've entered and saved all the settings on the Cumulus MX in the browser. If I pull the USB out and put it straight into my PC with the standard cumulus software it works fine so I know the station is able to communicate via the USB.

Any help would be great.

This is my second attempt to get this station connected up, the original way I tried was with pywws, I'm new to raspberry pi and don't know anything really about coding. If I have step by step instructions of the code and process I'm fine. I managed to get the weather station and pi communicating with the pywws method, but with no GUI I was lost on what to do with it next.

Ideally I'd love to hook my station up to weather underground and maybe even a website.
Cheers.