Cumulus Support

I was just wondering whether 1-Wire weather sensor support was going to be added to Cumulus, in the near future.

I have a Wireless Pro Touch Screen WS1093 Weather Station USB (http://www.scientificsales.co.nz/wirele ... s-pen.html), which seems to be a re-branded Fine Offset WH1091 Weather Station. Ever since I have had it I have found the temperature sensor to sometimes be a lot (2 - 3C) higher than my old WM-918 station. The WM-918 weather station seemed to be a lot closer to what was being reported at the local airport.

I have created my own fan aspirated radiation shield out of white plastic pudding bowls and a CPU fan, but that has not produced the desired results.

Last week I setup a DS18S20 sensor (http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/2815) in the same radiation shield, without the fan aspiration at that time and found this temperature sensor to be within 1 - 1.5C of the temperature being recorded at the local airport. I would prefer to use this sensor as by temeparture sensor, however Cumulus does not currently support this type of sensor.

If Cumulus will not support 1-Wire type devices in the future, is it possible to hook into Cumulus, to override the temperature value that is sent of to WeatherUnderground, prior to the data being sent? If you do want to add 1-Wire sensor support, then I am perfectly happy to do any sort of testing for you.

I know there is other weather station software out there that does support 1-Wire sensors, but I find that Cumulus has such a clean un-cluttered interface and is so easy to use.

Thanks



Gregg

If the protocol is freely available, then it's certainly something I can look into adding one day. "Near future" is not a concept that fits into the "one-man-in-his spare-time-already-spending-far-too-much-time-on-this" development model, unfortunately.

Steve,

I think that you have written an awesome product for retrieving data from Automatic Weather Stations. I hope I did not come across as ungrateful, in any way, as this was not my intention. I am very appreciative of the product you have created and was just wondering whether 1-Wire device support was in your plan for the future of the product. I probably shouldn't have used the term "near future".

To answer your question, yes the 1-Wire protocol is freely available, with software development information found at the following location:

http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutto ... ources.cfm

I am a Senior Software Developer, with programming experience in C, C++, C#, Delphi and Python, so if I can be of any development/testing assistance, please let me know. I would be really happy to help out in any way, to reduce the burden of your "one-man-in-his spare-time-already-spending-far-too-much-time-on-this" development model.



Gregg

GreggWard wrote:I hope I did not come across as ungrateful, in any way, as this was not my intention.

No, not at all. I just like to keep pointing out at every opportunity how impossible a task I've set myself

To answer your question, yes the 1-Wire protocol is freely available, with software development information found at the following location:

http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutto ... ources.cfm

That's good; we can put that down as a "definitely, eventually", then . In fact I think I might have known that already, from being asked some time ago.

I am a Senior Software Developer, with programming experience in C, C++, C#

Hmmm... It's very tempting, and I do keep thinking about asking if there's anyone with C#/.NET experience who could help out. I'm having to learn a lot of new stuff that less than a year ago I had never even heard of. I seem to have recently added "WCF" to the list. But I can't help but feel that it would start to get a bit complicated to involve anyone else...

steve wrote: Hmmm... It's very tempting, and I do keep thinking about asking if there's anyone with C#/.NET experience who could help out. I'm having to learn a lot of new stuff that less than a year ago I had never even heard of. I seem to have recently added "WCF" to the list. But I can't help but feel that it would start to get a bit complicated to involve anyone else...

The offer is always there.


Gregg

I have one question, is there a possibility to support 1-wire device such as a solar radiation sensor or an UV index sensor ?!
I would very much like to add one solar radiation or UV sensor in my weather observation equipment or even a sun duration sensor as I've seen on this forum.
Thanks, Eugen

I also need 1-wire support. I'm looking for a nice program that can interface with my 1-wire station and broadcast APRS data. I'm completely new to this, but I like your software as I play with it, so I would love to have support for my station.

Thanks

Just a tought, but could the 1-wire module be created as a plug-in? Or any other "reader" module for that matter?

It would require to change Cumulus, and forces Steve to create some kind of API between his work and others, but that way, one could create an interface for any kind of sensor of any brand, as long as it would be supported.

The "support" would be as simple as values and type of unit to display the data. The source itself would be of no importance because it would be handled by the reader.

want to add 1-wire?
Create a "reader" that sends :
bedroom, 1,value, unit

where
"bedroom" is the id of the sensor
1 is the type of reading (say 1 is a temperature)
value is the read value by the plug-in
unit of the reading (metric / english, others)

Type of reading could be 1=temperature, 2=humidity, 3=corrected pressure, 4=uncorrected pressure, etc

The unit item is also interesting, because some sensors only output in one unit (say output is only F) while the user can want celcius. A unit converter can be build in easily.

Those data should of course wrapped in a XML form, but it is still easy to create on the sending end, and easy to parse on the receiving end

Steve could decide on the standards he wants to use concerning the type of reading, the units, and publish them. If someone wants to send some new kind of data (say, water level in the rain collector cistern), he asks Steve to accept some new type of reading and how to handle that data. A new version can be compiled and released quickly, because only small changes were needed to add the data from that new reader.

for example,this cistern reader could send ["cistern",5,134,"mm"] and be handled as mm of rain (data type 5)

The API used could be as simple as a web service interface, which receive "put" HTTP calls, very easy to do. It would also allow to extend the source of the readings, such as computers across half the planet, that can do HTTP calls via the internet. If you go the .NET way, it's fairly well explain how to do it as web service comes as a library for visual studio (System.Web.Services).

Web services are also easyer on the programmers, because they can use a language they want as long as it supports web services, which is all "modern" language on almost all platforms.

The software doing the PUTs could be running in the same computer as the cumulus software, across the house, or even across the planet. Distributed weather readings... talk about "cloud computing" for a weather software!

On a more vague future, web services included into Cumulus could also be used to send data to specialized software (in fact, the special software would GET the data from Cumulus) that would do special tasks, such as special displays, database inserts, and such.

I understand that this post is quite long and technical (sorry, this is my day job!) But is it very far from me to decide which way Cumulus should go. But going this way would allow for more people to create "readers" for Cumulus while Steve only have to manage the incomming data, not the way to obtain it. For a guy with not enough time, that could be a way to distribute the work without letting the source out of his computer.

Spou

Something which is a possibility at some point is a sort of API, as you suggest, but a simple file-based one. So you could define a file-format which is produced either by some existing software (rather like the original 'easyweather.dat' method for Fine Offset stations) or by some software which you write yourself. Cumulus would then read the file periodically to obtain the data.

A more sophisticated protocol-based API like the one you suggest is certainly a possibility in Cumulus 2, as this is a .NET application and already uses WCF.

For sure that I as not thinkng about modifying the actual Cumulus, but indeed make version 2 compatible with a new API. Not that version 1 is dead, but such a kind of work should be done in a new version and not as an enhancemnt to the actual one.

Of course, if "adjusting" version 1 could be possible, it might help some people, but when V2 comes out, one would need to change the "reader" to fit the new protocol. Thta's why I was proposing something for V2.

Spou

any news about 1-wire to work with Cumulus???

If there was any news, I would have posted it. It's still a (very) long way off.

Dang, I was hoping not to see the "(very)" part of that

Not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask - but what are the limitations of the easyweather.dat file in getting data to Cumulus? I'm thinking along the lines of creating that file using another piece of intermediate software to read 1-wire sensors. Would I be able to write data such as UV and solar (along with the usual in/out temp, humidity, baro, rain etc) to that file and have it read by Cumulus?

Cheers
Colin.

41south wrote:Dang, I was hoping not to see the "(very)" part of that

At the moment, I'm not even sure when I will get back to developing Cumulus (as opposed to the bug fixing and tweaking that I'm currently doing). There are a lot of enhancement requests that would be of use to people with "standard" kit that I would address first.

Not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask - but what are the limitations of the easyweather.dat file in getting data to Cumulus? I

It's quite limited, and I haven't updated it for UV data etc. This thread has a list of the items that Cumulus reads: https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4344

There are a lot of enhancement requests that would be of use to people with "standard" kit that I would address first.

Oh, I'm hurt, 1-wire is standard - well sort of standard anyway

I shall go back to taming my WH3081 then