Cumulus Support

Maybe it's just me, but has anybody else noticed that the wgust variable in realtime.txt (and consequently, banner.php) does not always display, IMO, the correct gust speed (supposed to be for the last 10 minute period, if I'm not mistaken). It changes too quickly, I believe, as in every time I refresh the realtime.txt/banner.php on my site. A quick check of other members' banners seemed to indicate I wasn't the only one experiencing this phenomenom. Therefore you may see various stations with gust speeds lower than the average speed.

My station is a Davis VP2. I'm updating the realtime data every five seconds. It's at http://www.vicweather.net/cumulus/realtime.txt

Here's an example from my own station:


Again, perhaps it's just me, or perhaps it's normal but to me it seems a bit odd.

The gust value in realtime.txt (7th item) that the banner uses is actually the 'latest gust', i.e. the last reading from the station, the value that Cumulus shows as 'latest' on the main screen. The 10-minute high gust is the 41st item in realtime.txt. I've modified my banner to use that item. I believe that when the banner code was written, this item wasn't in realtime.txt.

It is perhaps a bit confusing that the 'gust' can be lower than the 10-minute average speed, but some stations do refer to the current reading as 'gust', and that's why I started using the term in Cumulus in this way. I renamed the display to 'latest' to try to ease the confusion, but the variable holding it in Cumulus is called gust (I should rename it, I suppose) and I do tend to slip into referring to the latest reading as 'gust', which is why the realtime.txt spec says wind speed (gust) for item 7 and why it was used (I believe) in the banner in this way.

Incidentally, the <#wgust> web tag does provide the 10-minute average gust, and the <#wlatest> supplies the latest reading.

The banner I'm using is version 3, which (I just found out) is based on the 1.8.2 beta version of realtime.txt. Which banner version are you using, Steve? Essentially I want my banner to display the actual 10 minute gust instead of what it is currently doing.

Mine says:

Version: 3.0 - October 19th, 2008

But as I said, I've modified mine so it uses the 10-minute high gust (which clearly wasn't available at the time the script was written).

Change line 95 to: Change line 269 to: Steve

Thanks, Steve, that fixed it!