Cumulus Support

A few questions from user mdlawler:

Where do you set logging settings within the gui? Configuring logging options via the GUI is now "sticky" across sessions - ie the settings are saved to Cumulus.ini. This change is primarily because new or inexperienced users would expect that behaviour and the original behaviour was confusing to lots of people.
1. How do I use the new noaamonthfile and noaayearfile variables?
2. What is the day file and the dayfile variable for?
3. The alarms UI is now speaking great!
4. What are alarm notifications and how are they used?
5. How often does the alarm to notify for Cumulus MX upgrades run meaning once an upgrade is released when should it email me?
6. Can a link to the download for the upgrade be added to the email when an upgrade is released?
7. Can the accessibility of the noaa reports be improved? Currently they seem to just be text. Can they be laid out kind of like the today or yesterday pages where the data is in a table?
8. Can an option be added when the data stopped alarm triggers to also send an email when data restarts?
9. Can the units under noaa settings thresholds use the units I selected fahrenheit and inches rather than celcius and mm?
10. Can the ftp system be changed to either be on, off, or copy to local folder? This would allow for sites like mine where a local server is being used to just work without having to put everything in extra web files.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm Where do you set logging settings within the gui? Configuring logging options via the GUI is now "sticky" across sessions - ie the settings are saved to Cumulus.ini. This change is primarily because new or inexperienced users would expect that behaviour and the original behaviour was confusing to lots of people.

Under Program Settings > Program General Options

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 1. How do I use the new noaamonthfile and noaayearfile variables?

Just the same as existing log file variables.
For example:
Use "<noaamonthfile>" as the source file, this will be expanded to the current NOAA monthly file name.
Use "destfolder/<noaamonthfile>" as the destination file name. You can omit the "destfolder" if you want it in your FTP root folder

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 2. What is the day file and the dayfile variable for?

A typo/error, I meant to refer to the current monthly log file variable - <currentlogfile>
Please see this page about Cumulus.ini entries that documents the variables.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 3. The alarms UI is now speaking great!

Thanks for the confirmation.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 4. What are alarm notifications and how are they used?

When the main dashboard page is open, they generate a message in the Windows Notification Area (not sure what the equivalents are on Linux and MacOS).
However, most browsers are now deprecating and removing this feature

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 5. How often does the alarm to notify for Cumulus MX upgrades run meaning once an upgrade is released when should it email me?

It checks when Cumulus is started, and thereafter once a day at a random time (the same random time each day for the same run of Cumulus).

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 6. Can a link to the download for the upgrade be added to the email when an upgrade is released?

Possibly, but it is important to read the announcement of the forum and update.txt file before installing an update as there may be information there about changes you need to be aware of or take proactive action about after the update.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 7. Can the accessibility of the noaa reports be improved? Currently they seem to just be text. Can they be laid out kind of like the today or yesterday pages where the data is in a table?

Not really, they are text files with a fixed format because some scripts machine read them.
I can see that a nicely formatted versions of them would be a good addition to the web pages, but producing those is not in the current plan.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 8. Can an option be added when the data stopped alarm triggers to also send an email when data restarts?

The alarms are designed as a warning that an event has occurred. At present none of them have the ability to tell you when they have cleared.
Implementing this would require some thought, the latching period was introduced to prevent alarm flooding, sending alarm clear messages would be a real candidate for flooding if some state started toggling rapidly.

The data stopped also means you have "lost" data, many people will want to take action anyway to try and recover that lost data.

It's not a "no", but this would be a low priority.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 9. Can the units under noaa settings thresholds use the units I selected fahrenheit and inches rather than celcius and mm?

These and a few thresholds use standard units rather than user units for some historical reason. Changing them now would be possible, but it would mean deprecating the Cumulus.ini settings and introducing new settings, all of which means backward compatibility with Cumulus 1 is lost or difficult to implement.
If I changed them just for the GUI interface that would be confusing because then people would see different values in the two places.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 01 Jun 2021 3:07 pm 10. Can the ftp system be changed to either be on, off, or copy to local folder? This would allow for sites like mine where a local server is being used to just work without having to put everything in extra web files.

That is on the ToDo list already.

Thanks again, Mark. I'll pass the answers on.

On 9, I believe that there are 2 reasons why Steve Loft selected standard units for thresholds.
First, the original Cumulus was written to suit the needs of Steve himself, so in his spare time he did minimal changes when necessary to amend to suit other people.
Second, Steve was very concerned about rounding errors, so he liked to do as much calculation/comparision as possible using units that weather station used, and leave conversion to user units as final action before display and before storing.

A couple of additional questions from Michael:

11. There is a button on the reports page that says choose your month. From what I've been told the months are something that you have to hover over with the mouse which is inaccessible. Could the months be in a combo box like the year?

12. Can you change the alt attribute on moon.png to something more useful such as "Moon: Waning Crescent 39%"?

freddie wrote: ↑Sat 05 Jun 2021 7:18 am A couple of additional questions from Michael:

11. There is a button on the reports page that says choose your month. From what I've been told the months are something that you have to hover over with the mouse which is inaccessible. Could the months be in a combo box like the year?

12. Can you change the alt attribute on moon.png to something more useful such as "Moon: Waning Crescent 39%"?

Also for point 6 above, Michael has asked if a link to the release announcement can be included in the text of the email in lieu of a link to the download of the release?

6. @freddie - Is there a way of perma-linking to the last post in the announcements thread? It would make more sense to link to that than the download to make people read it!

11. I'll take a look at the accessibility of that page, there are a few aspects of the "chooser" I'm not happy with.

12. Trickier given the way the page data is populated, it would have to be processed as an exception, and that data would have to be added to the JSON file. A much simpler alternative would be to add an aria-labelledby attribute to make the image description just link the Moon Phase field?

@mcrossley: Michael sends his thanks for implementing 10 and 11 (above) and that they are working well.

Thanks for the update. It's getting there, slowly!

Another accessibility request from Michael:

13. Is it possible for labels to be added to all of the check boxes under internet settings interval configuration like has been done for the alarms settings?

mcrossley wrote: ↑Mon 07 Jun 2021 10:11 am12. Trickier given the way the page data is populated, it would have to be processed as an exception, and that data would have to be added to the JSON file. A much simpler alternative would be to add an aria-labelledby attribute to make the image description just link the Moon Phase field?

This from Michael: For the moon phase percentage perhaps it could be calculated when the png is generated and generate another file along with it that contains the percentage to display. The reason I want this is that currently I don't get the detail that you see with the picture, with just waxing and waning crescent and gibbous, and new and full.

mcrossley wrote: ↑Mon 07 Jun 2021 10:11 am 6. @freddie - Is there a way of perma-linking to the last post in the announcements thread? It would make more sense to link to that than the download to make people read it!

@mcrossley: sorry, I missed this question. I'll look into it.

freddie wrote: ↑Wed 04 Aug 2021 7:22 am Another accessibility request from Michael:

13. Is it possible for labels to be added to all of the check boxes under internet settings interval configuration like has been done for the alarms settings?

Not without making the page even more difficult to read on mobile screens

But I had a play around, and with a bit of scripting I can add Aria label attributes to the check boxes. So the text will not show on screen but screen readers should pick it up. I tested on Narrator, and that does work.

Though I notice it does not pick up the filename for each row unless you move the cursor into it manually. I think this is because the items are disabled to make them read-only. I have not been able to find a solution to that. I have added Aria labels post render, but because the text is disabled it still gets skipped.

freddie wrote: ↑Wed 04 Aug 2021 7:28 am

mcrossley wrote: ↑Mon 07 Jun 2021 10:11 am 6. @freddie - Is there a way of perma-linking to the last post in the announcements thread? It would make more sense to link to that than the download to make people read it!

@mcrossley: sorry, I missed this question. I'll look into it.

@mcrossley it looks like you can't perma-link to the latest post in a topic
How about duplicating the release post to a page on the Wiki and linking to that page from the "upgrade available" text? Or perhaps have that page with a link to the release post?
Could have a link to the downloads page on that page too.

mcrossley wrote: ↑Wed 04 Aug 2021 2:23 pm

freddie wrote: ↑Wed 04 Aug 2021 7:22 am Another accessibility request from Michael:

13. Is it possible for labels to be added to all of the check boxes under internet settings interval configuration like has been done for the alarms settings?

Not without making the page even more difficult to read on mobile screens

But I had a play around, and with a bit of scripting I can add Aria label attributes to the check boxes. So the text will not show on screen but screen readers should pick it up. I tested on Narrator, and that does work.

Though I notice it does not pick up the filename for each row unless you move the cursor into it manually. I think this is because the items are disabled to make them read-only. I have not been able to find a solution to that. I have added Aria labels post render, but because the text is disabled it still gets skipped.

Michael has responded with "Perhaps you could use scripting to grab the file name and add it to the Aria label."