Cumulus Support

Hello, in the query I can only vote for one option, I have voted for CumulusMX, but I must state that I have Cumulus 1.9.4 running in parallel and it serves as a backup if any anomaly occurs.
Both programs are very robust and I am very happy with them.

I don't want to distract from the purpose of this thread but just wanted to add some statistics...
I don't know how many users of Cumulus1 there were at the time Steve stopped developing this version in 2014 but expect it would be well over 1,000 from the numbers that were shown on the Weather Underground weather programs being used for upload to them. Unfortunately, this WU published info also stopped more than 5 years ago.

However, there is information on the number of downloads of CumulusMX for each build. From that I have tabulated the version downloads for 2021 and 2022:
48 different builds, including 4 withdrawn in this 2 year period. A total of 43,285 downloads (build 3133 had 2,336 downloads and it was 2 months before a new build was posted). The tabulation summary below shows that when a new build is available there are immediate downloads - for 2 builds that had only one day before a new build was available there are 195 and 228 downloads. For a build that was available for 2 days before a new build there were 281 downloads, or average 140.5 per day. After builds were first available, the daily number of downloads become lower as expected after the initial excitement, and becoming aware of a new build. This summary ignores the presumed fact that some older build downloads may also have been downloaded after a new build was posted, but expect this number is quite low. As this survey shows, only a fraction of CMX users have responded - i.e. 181 of possible 2,000++. I expect the number of CU1 users responded are even a smaller percentage as they may not visit the forum as often - i.e. know that no new CU1 version will be posted!

I am a CMX 100-percenter, and also CU1 is 100% in reliability in doing what it was designed to do and does. Maybe a need for another poll!

Enjoy,
Paul

Then there are guys like me, who sat on CMX 3159 for quite a long time until yesterday when I bit the bullet and downloaded and installed CMX 3221a.

@Paul:
Nice statistics.

I agree, as not all users will download a new version, some 2000 users will be available, so 181 users responding will be roughly 10% of the CMX user base. tbh... I actually regard that as a good response given that not all users visit the forum and not all users respond.

CMX here…

Cumulus 1

Thanks to everybody who responded!

So, the poll ended and the standings are : From the comments we learn that the total number of CMX users probably is a around 2000 (my estimate won't go any higher than that) and the number of C1 users is very indeterminate. Given the number of respondents which remark that they use C1 either on its own or as a kind of backup for CMX shows it is a very conservative user base. Why? Difficult to say as it would be guessing only. Knowing that C1 ended five years ago and CMX has been very much improved, the above shows progress to the future will be slow.

The origin of the poll lies in the wiki revision which posed the question on where priorities lie. I would draw the conclusion that given the poll result, the C1 wiki, does not really require much attention and that part of the wiki will be set aside, just for reference.

The wiki requiring attention is the CMX wiki, however, communications around that wiki have stalled.
As the forum is very active in problem solving, it is of no immediate problem.

You will be informed when things change.

HansR wrote: ↑Fri 03 Feb 2023 3:35 pm Given the number of respondents which remark that they use C1 either on its own or as a kind of backup for CMX shows it is a very conservative user base. Why? Difficult to say as it would be guessing only. Knowing that C1 ended five years ago and CMX has been very much improved, the above shows progress to the future will be slow.

Hans,

you are probably one of those people who started their adventure with their weather station right away with CumulusMX. In that case, I'm not at all surprised that you don't understand the C1 phenomenon.

Personally, I have been using Cumulus for 13 years. It is already very intuitive, clear and readable for me. It has a friendly GUI, where the main screen has more information than CMX presents (until now I don't know why CMX doesn't show the average temperature in the "Now" tab.) The program works well and does not want to crash .

In the survey, I indicated that I might switch from C1 to CMX. I am waiting for the announced version 4. I am glad that you are developing CMX, new features are being added (I am very glad that Mark has noticed that additional sensors are becoming more and more important to users and are no longer treated as inferior to the main sensors). However, I know it will be hard for me to leave C1. The best option for me would be to have C1 and CMX at the same time, which would pull data from my VP2.

Dador,

Dador wrote: ↑Fri 03 Feb 2023 6:33 pm you are probably one of those people who started their adventure with their weather station right away with CumulusMX. In that case, I'm not at all surprised that you don't understand the C1 phenomenon.

Actually, I tried C1 in 2008, used something else and returned in 2012 to stay starting with CMX only in 2019

[...]
In the survey, I indicated that I might switch from C1 to CMX. I am waiting for the announced version 4. I am glad that you are developing CMX, new features are being added (I am very glad that Mark has noticed that additional sensors are becoming more and more important to users and are no longer treated as inferior to the main sensors). However, I know it will be hard for me to leave C1. The best option for me would be to have C1 and CMX at the same time, which would pull data from my VP2.

OK.

1. To be true: it is only Mark who develops CMX (apart from some specials), I have my own project CUtils.
2. Version 4 is still a side project but no date set and currently on hold. Ask Mark for specifics.
3. Yes, it's good that Extra Sensors have become main stream
4. Of course do with C1 as you wish but it does stand still with its technology no doubt disappearing at some point.
   We don't know when so be prepared

I am one of those who started with C1 in 2011 (I was GlueGuy back then). After I started hobby-ing with Raspberry Pi for another project, I took a look at CMX, and jumped in with both feet. It has, indeed, come a long way. It installs easily, runs months (perhaps years, but the local power utility is the main gating factor) on end without babysitting. I think I've updated my CMX perhaps 3 or 4 times, but as it runs so flawlessly, there is not a huge incentive to update it more often.

GlueGuy2 wrote: ↑Sat 04 Feb 2023 11:35 pm I think I've updated my CMX perhaps 3 or 4 times, but as it runs so flawlessly, there is not a huge incentive to update it more often.

Always good to hear from somebody who is glued to CMX

The main reason to update (let's say once or twice a year) would not be so much for functionality, if CMX as is fill your needs, but would definitely be the technological changes in the system itself. Libraries and underlying data handling (changing datafiles, added fields etc...) and interface (improving with almost every step). Moving in one go from a version from 5 years ago requires paying attention to additional tools and details and may make updating more complex.

So my advise would definitely be: update when you pay attention to your whole system during maintenance.
You do maintain your station device outdoors as well don't you (cleaning, removing spiders etc...)?