Cumulus Support

I decided to increase the height of my weather vain/anemometer which necessitated increasing the cable length by 1.8M; I used a RJ11 coupler for convenience. Since doing so the outside temperature fluctuates by as much as 1 C between 5 min updates (from 18:00 hrs yesterday you can see the difference on the graph ). I have replaced the batteries just in case but this made no difference. Disconnecting the weather vain cable seems to stabilise the temperature somewhat. I am not an electronics skilled person but I cannot understand why the extended cable for the weather vain can only cause the outside temperature to fluctuate, all other data elements seem OK. Any suggestions apart from don't tinker with what you don't understand

In an effort to sort things out I have removed the batteries from both transmitter and logger station. As a result of my actions the transmitter rain counter has reset to zero (I made the change at 14:20 hrs). The temperature now seems to have stabilised (fingers crossed). I’ve had quite a few issues trying to sort out the Aug10 file and dealing with a rainfall of 442.5 (a new record!!). I have managed to get the data resolved to a great extent, however, I had .6 rain overnight which is not showing, the today.ini file has a start of zero. I’m now unsure how I should resolve this as I do not want to make matters worse – Can someone advise, the FAQ does not deal with this situation where the counter gets reset back to zero part way through the day.

Someone else (mcrossley?) had the same issue yesterday. Cumulus can only calculate the current daily rainfall based on the difference between the start of day counter and the current counter, so if the current counter is zero, it can't calculate any rain for today. I think it copes OK if the counter goes to zero while it's running, but not if it has to pick up again after a restart.

So basically the answer is to wait until tomorrow and then retrospectively correct the data.

Thanks Steve, I thought that might be the case. This is the first time I have changed the batteries and didn't appreciate that the counter then goes to zero, best to do it as early in the morning as possible in future (midnight would be best but could be dangerous!).

I've lost count of the number of times I've had to remove the batteries in the outdoor unit to deal with various problems and each time it has meant editing the rain data. It's definitely easier to do it the next day, retrospectively - you're not fighting the clock trying to get the editing done between updates. With Cumulus, once you get the today.ini right, the software corrects things automatically (as I recall).

Hi Gina,

Yes you're right, I'll do it tomorrow. With the original issue I thought I might be heading down the road you had travelled with spikes but touch wood (my head) it looks like it's OK now.... famous last words!