Alarms in Dashboard (localhost:8998) - nothing showing when Davis console lost contact with remote sensors

[martinu]

Should the alarms at the bottom of the Dashboard page of the localhost:8998 site be working? I'm running a slightly older version Cumulus MX 3.6.10 b3086. Should alarms be working for that - highest/lowest temp etc, Data stopped, Sensor contact? I'm not sure I've ever seen anything on the Alarms panel, ever since I changed from Cumulus 1 on Windows (when it worked) to Cumulus MX on Raspberry Pi, but I've never worried about it.

When I moved my Davis Vantage Pro2 console temporarily to alter the data logger interval, it seemed to lose contact with the ISS and the separate wind speed+transmitter. Cumulus was still receiving data from the console, but the outside data on the console was not changing because sensor contact had been lost. I'm surprised there wasn't an alarm light to alert me to this - only the unnaturally steady lines on the graphs.

If it was definitely broken on b3086 and is fixed now, I'll update to the current version.

[mcrossley]

Sensor contact lost is a Fine Offset only thing - strangely the Davis console does not report the state of the sensor connections.

[mcrossley]

Though, it should be detected indirectly with the Data Stopped alarm which checks for the same data values being reported for a period.

[martinu]

Though, it should be detected indirectly with the Data Stopped alarm which checks for the same data values being reported for a period.

Leaving aside the specific case of the stopped data, I'm not convinced that any of the alarms are working. If the temperature is > highest record or < lowest record, or wind gust/speed > highest record, shouldn't the relevant light be illumunated until it is reset at midnight? What are the conditions for "temp rising/falling" - presumably there's a +/- x degC/hour threshold. Next time I know a record has been broken, I'll check the alarms on the dashboard page.

Is there an easy way to trigger one of the alarm lights (without messing up a record value) to test that it's working?

Do the "temperature > highest record" etc alarms use the alltime record or the annual record?

Is there anything in this area that's been fixed since my version of 3.6.10/b3086? I suppose I ought to update to the latest version to get all the other bug fixes, which means blending your changes and mine into the web templates and the dashboard pages: always a tedious job

[mcrossley]

Have you actually set values for and enabled (Settings|Alarms) the Alarms? Are they currently green?

They are not reset at midnight, they will set and clear with the condition unless you enable latching and specify a latch period for them to stay active for.

[mcrossley]

And I'd recommend you upgrade, there have been various fixes/updates to the alarms.

[martinu]

Have you actually set values for and enabled (Settings|Alarms) the Alarms? Are they currently green?

They are not reset at midnight, they will set and clear with the condition unless you enable latching and specify a latch period for them to stay active for.

Ah!!!!!!!!!!!!! A slight case of RTFM

I thought it would be something obvious like that. I've now set a few alarms and the relevant lights are currently green. I'm sure the temperature will go below 0 tonight so that should trigger my current "Alarm if temperature falls below 0" as a test.

I'd totally misunderstood how alarms worked: I thought that low battery and data/sensor stopped were always enabled, and that temperature/wind etc were triggered when they went outside an entry on one of the Records web pages, rather than being related to limits that the user chose, as was the case with Cumulus 1. As I say, I need to RTFM

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Now for the "fun" of blending my changes and yours for the web templates and dashboard "interface" templates. I've been putting it off for about a year. By contrast, copying the actual EXE and DLLs over the top of the existing ones is easy. As always, I'll rename the current CumulusMX directory, expand the latest ZIP file into CumulusMX and then start applying changes, so I have a way back if I've cocked things up. This time I'll keep a copy of your distribution version of the files I've changed, so I can diff them against the ones in a future release.