Cumulus Support

Hi Hans

Over the years I have been collecting monthly average data covering rainfall, high and low temperature and solar stats. This I have recorded outside the CMX/CUtils umbrella on an excel spread sheet.

I have now started thinking about getting the graphs into CUtils as a user report. Initially I converted the excel file into an ODS file so that I could read it in LibraOffice Calc on my RPi. Then converted the ODS file into html which I loaded onto a CURPT and then made a new line in the CU Menu file to take the annual reports. On running UserReports the charts appeared on my website but with all the background data.

I know that you have a series of charts displaying the information but when you are trying to look at many years of data by month it looks rather untidy to my eye hence my attempt at getting a monthly/annual bar chart to quickly view the data and visually compare the same month in different years.

I realise my effort is not really very slick and only a starting point, but do you have any thoughts on improvements, does HighCharts allow bar charts for example, or is there a way of extracting the data from CMX?

You can see my initial work on my website under UserRepors Annual Charts

Hi Andy,

I assume you are hinting at this type of column charts as shown by Mark on his site. It shows the individual months avg tempartures with average per month.

So I would say: Yes, highcharts is able to make such display.

Organising those charts and getting the data is something specific and requires you to get the data from CMX which is never all that easy whether you use SQL, Access (as done by some) or by any spreadsheet you can think of.

I have two additional remarks in relation to CUtils:

1. CUtils avoids external tools by extracting data programmatically directly from CMX unless you see programming in C# as an external tool which up to a certain leven I can agree.
2. When starting in 2019 I studied several sites (Mark's inclusive) and opted out on the min/max bars per year because when the nr of years increases (and Mark is getting close with 15 or so years) that chart is actually confusing i.s.o making things clearer

One way to make min/max bars clearer is to group the years and have the grouping shift (somewhat like I do with the heatmap after 10 years).

You are asking for advise (or so I interpret your post) and that is difficult. The path you are taking has a diversity of solutions, most of those require programming, charting and a lot of choices to make. There is no definitive anser to what you want.

But yes:
1) Highcharts can do what you want
2) Yes it is possible to extract the data from CMX but it requires MySQL, programming or spreadsheets. To use the data in charts you require javascript (at least with Highcharts) but it also has other interfaces.

Using a spreadsheet makes it possible to organise your data and do charting but you are confined to what the spreadsheet offers.

Hi Hans

Thanks for the advice, it is probably what I expected. I think that it will need some clear research on my part to get to where I want to be with this. I will let you know how I get on but it may be a while.

Ok, good luck...