Cumulus Support

Right, I hope to be setting up my weather station at the weekend. Has anyone done anything to help waterproof either where the rj11 wires plug in (on the wind and main bit), or the battery compartment. I know people have made bigger screens, and someone sprayed something like engine starter around the connections, but wondered if anything else.
One thought I had was to use some kitchen / bathroom sealant around the connections, and run a "line" of it around the battery cover. My only concern would be how easy it would be to remove when the batteries need replacing, however when I was re-doing a kitchen a few years back I do seem to remember that once you got a grip it did seem to pull off quite easy.

Can someone confirm something about the data log interval. Now from what I can tell there are the following:

The Weather Station log interval: How often data is saved in the station. The default is 30 mins and that can be changed with Easy Weather.
The Data Log interval in Cumulus: How often data is read when the station is connect to the PC? Now looking at the Cumulus basic installation guide.pdf it recommends that this is the same as the station interval.
The Web page update interval: How often the data is uploaded to the web site. E.G this one here http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/ says every 15 mins.

Now how does that fit in with the graphs here http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/trends.htm The text says that the large graphs are sampled every minute, now does that mean that the Data Log interval in Cumulus has been set to 1 min. Also I assume that though the graph shows 1 min intervals, it is in fact only updated (uploaded to the web) once every 15 mins.

I hope to have the PC on 24/7, but there will be times when it's off such as when on holiday. This could be upto 2 weeks, so I would need to set the station interval to at least 5 mins so that it stored all the data, so is it best to set the Data log interval in Cumulus to 5 mins from the start, or can the log interval in Cumulus be changed as I go along. And if the Data log interval in Cumulus is set to 5 mins, I assume the plot point on the trend graphs on the web would be 5 mins.

Ian.

iandrews wrote:Has anyone done anything to help waterproof either where the rj11 wires plug in (on the wind and main bit), or the battery compartment.

I've done nothing with mine and it has ran without issue for 18 Months, from temps as low as -17C to the high 20'sC. Rain, snow, ice!

The Weather Station log interval: How often data is saved in the station. The default is 30 mins and that can be changed with Easy Weather.

Correct, it's the only thing you need Easy Weather for (to change that setting). Most people change it to 10 or 15 minutes.

The Data Log interval in Cumulus: How often data is read when the station is connect to the PC?

Cumulus reads data every 10(?) seconds -- something like that -- very frequently

Now looking at the Cumulus basic installation guide.pdf it recommends that this is the same as the station interval.
The Web page update interval: How often the data is uploaded to the web site. E.G this one here http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/ says every 15 mins.

Now how does that fit in with the graphs here http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/trends.htm The text says that the large graphs are sampled every minute, now does that mean that the Data Log interval in Cumulus has been set to 1 min. Also I assume that though the graph shows 1 min intervals, it is in fact only updated (uploaded to the web) once every 15 mins.

So this tells Cumulus to update it's web pages every 15 minutes, however the graphs are based on data figures every minute so when you do an upload the graphs incorporate all the previous minutes worth of data -- does that make sense?

I hope to have the PC on 24/7, but there will be times when it's off such as when on holiday. This could be upto 2 weeks, so I would need to set the station interval to at least 5 mins so that it stored all the data, so is it best to set the Data log interval in Cumulus to 5 mins from the start, or can the log interval in Cumulus be changed as I go along. And if the Data log interval in Cumulus is set to 5 mins, I assume the plot point on the trend graphs on the web would be 5 mins.

Why 5 mins, you could leave it at 15? If your PC is off for a period of time, turn it on, plug in the Console, start Cumulus and it will download all the data it has missed (You will not get graphs with 1 minute plots, but 15 minutes plots as the station only hold data at 15 minute intervals). You could do 5 minute data logging but the console only has a limited number of memory slots so if it fills them it starts overwriting data. (The console has 4080 memory slots so you need to connect it to Cumulus before the slots fill!)

Timings:

Almost correct !

Whilst the base station is connected to the PC AND Cumulus is running, Cumulus will collect changed data at a 'high' frequency (basically from the display values) - you have no say in this !

Cumulus logs a 'snapshot' of data at whatever frequency you have set in Cumulus - the higher the frequency the more accurate the data and any figures / historic graphs produced from it.
BUT ... when Cumulus is NOT running, or the base station is NOT connected to the PC, Cumulus can only recover what is in the base station log.

The frequency of your base station log can ONLY be adjusted using EasyWeather (Turn off Cumulus FIRST !)

I went for 5 mins because 60 (mins) * 24 (hours) * 14 (days) = 20160 divide that by 5 (mins) and you get 4032, so 2 weeks (and 4 hours) worth of data would fit at 5 mins.

So with the station connected, Cumulus will show data "almost" real time, but will log to a file at the Data Log interval, and this interval is then used when plotting charts.

Ian.

iandrews wrote:So with the station connected, Cumulus will show data "almost" real time, but will log to a file at the Data Log interval, and this interval is then used when plotting charts.
Ian.

I would change this to read....

So with the station connected, Cumulus will show data "almost" real time, but will log to a file at the Data Log interval, and data every 1 minute is then used when plotting charts.

BUT

with the station dis-connected, when re-connected Cumulus ..... will log to a file at the Data Log interval, plotting historic data on the chart at 'the data log interval' and data every 1 minute going forward

iandrews wrote:So with the station connected, Cumulus will show data "almost" real time, but will log to a file at the Data Log interval, and this interval is then used when plotting charts.

While Cumulus is running it plots points on the charts at 1-minute intervals - this is fixed.

When Cumulus starts up, it pre-loads the chart with the last 24 hours (or 12 hours, depending on your setting) worth of data from the log file. The frequency of the plots in this case is therefore determined by the station logger interval and the Cumulus logging interval - which is one reason for recommending that the station logger interval and the Cumulus logger interval are set to the same value; to reduce the number of different intervals that appear on the chart. Ideally, the 'live' 1-minute plot rate would be configurable, then all three could be the same and the graphs would be homogenous. I may make it configurable at some point.

Got it.

Thanks very much.

Ian.

Great -- have fun with the station at the weekend

Quote:
The Weather Station log interval: How often data is saved in the station. The default is 30 mins and that can be changed with Easy Weather.

Correct, it's the only thing you need Easy Weather for (to change that setting). Most people change it to 10 or 15 minutes.


You also need EW to set your relative pressure

nking wrote:You also need EW to set your relative pressure

You can set it from the console on mine, I think.

Yes, you can set it from the console -- admittedly, it is easier on EW (not that I think that is a plus to EW!)

Steve/Dave - apologies for jumping in without thinking . I do find the display a pain and do use EW for ease.

How do you get the nice quote outlines etc., a pointer in the right direction will help.

nking wrote:Steve/Dave - apologies for jumping in without thinking . I do find the display a pain and do use EW for ease.

No, it was a valid point well made

How do you get the nice quote outlines etc., a pointer in the right direction will help.

Rather than "reply", use the tiny "quote" button top right of a message.

Basically you enclose the part of the message you wish to quote within these tags