Lost Rainfall details

[moose]

Hi to you all,

This is my first post and a total novice, I am in the process of finding the best place to site my W-8681 so any figures at the moment will be eroneous. I will declare now, to save future embarrassment that I am a virtual computer illiterate.

I love the clean look and easy to read layout of Cumulus, much better than other options, and they charge you for it !

A couple of questions if I may

1. I have had Cumulus running for 3 days now, using the latest Beta version.
I do not have the pc running all day, when I do connect the stored details upload absolutely fine, however the next time I connect when a new day has started (set to midnight) the 'rainfall' column all resets to zero same as the 'rain rate' box on the 'yesterday' column. Is this normal ?

2. Am I right in thinking, that calibrated settings will not show the corrected amount on the main display only in print outs, graphs etc ?

3. When I work out the best siting for the instruments how do I reset, totaly the readings. So as to start afresh ?

4. I seem to have an unrealistic figure in the Rain Rate under 'recent extremes'
(215.7 mm/hr). Is there a way of resetting/removing this from the display ?

Hope this makes sense

[steve]

1. I have had Cumulus running for 3 days now, using the latest Beta version.
I do not have the pc running all day, when I do connect the stored details upload absolutely fine, however the next time I connect when a new day has started (set to midnight) the 'rainfall' column all resets to zero same as the 'rain rate' box on the 'yesterday' column. Is this normal ?

It depends on whether you've actually had any rain 'today', or am I stating the obvious? The 'rain rate' in the 'yesterday' column should show the highest rain rate at any time yesterday (i.e. it effectively gets transferred over from the 'today' column at the end of the day). Are you saying this isn't happening correctly?

2. Am I right in thinking, that calibrated settings will not show the corrected amount on the main display only in print outs, graphs etc ?

The calibrated values should appear everywhere.

3. When I work out the best siting for the instruments how do I reset, totaly the readings. So as to start afresh ?

With Cumulus stopped, delete the contents of the Data folder.

4. I seem to have an unrealistic figure in the Rain Rate under 'recent extremes'
(215.7 mm/hr). Is there a way of resetting/removing this from the display ?

Yes, I'm trying to get a reasonable algorithm for rain rate in the beta compared to the clunky 'rain in last hour' version that I had before. It will keep doing this. To remove it, you'll need to stop Cumulus, and edit Nov08log.txt (format in the help) and today.ini (should be obvious). But it will come back again next time it rains. Fix soon, hopefully.

Steve

[moose]

Thanks Steve,

With relation to the rain data. The data from yesterday (it did rain) is not being transferred, the 'yesterday', 'this month, 'this year, and 'yesterday extreme' rain data all reset to zero.

[steve]

That's odd. So you closed it down last night, when it started up this morning it downloaded the data from the station, but yesterday's rain total didn't transfer? How are all the other values in the 'yesterday' column?

Steve

[moose]

That is correct.

All other details however transferred perfectly.

Shall I do the same tonight and post the result tomorrow ?

Sorry, but one other matter. the pressure reading on Cumulus is now higher than what is shown on the station display, it was in sync this morning

[steve]

That is correct.

All other details however transferred perfectly.

Shall I do the same tonight and post the result tomorrow ?

Yes, that's an idea. Also, have a look in dayfile.txt and see what's in there, and also yesterday.ini.

Sorry, but one other matter. the pressure reading on Cumulus is now higher than what is shown on the station display, it was in sync this morning

Are you comparing absolute pressure with relative (sea-level) pressure? Cumulus always displays the latter.

Steve

[moose]

No, Cumulus is displaying a different figure entirely to either the rel or abs on the station

Station Cumulus

Abs 985.6
Rel 993.1 998.1

[steve]

When Cumulus reads the pressure, the station supplies the absolute pressure. At startup, Cumulus reads the difference between the two values from the station and then applies that to all subsequent readings. So, unless that difference has changed somehow (e.g. you've recalibrated the station barometer), it's hard to see how that could happen.

The file from the Diags folder from the current startup (it will be the file with the latest timestamp) will have an entry that shows what values were read at startup.

Steve

[moose]

Steve

Good news

Todays rainfall figures transferred perfectly and to make things evenbetter, the 'rain rate' under extremes would appear to be displaying a correct figure. This would be due to the yesterdays Beta version ?

With regards to the air pressure reading, that was my fault, as you had suggested, I had been experimenting with the calibration feature and added 5.

Thanks

[steve]

Todays rainfall figures transferred perfectly and to make things evenbetter, the 'rain rate' under extremes would appear to be displaying a correct figure. This would be due to the yesterdays Beta version ?

No, nothing changed that would affect that. Something odd must have happened on the previous night.

With regards to the air pressure reading, that was my fault, as you had suggested, I had been experimenting with the calibration feature and added 5.

Cumulus only reads the pressure calibration from the station at start up (for Fine Offset stations), so if you change it, you do need to restart Cumulus to pick up the new value. I should make this clear in the documentation somewhere.

It could keep reading the offset, but it's in an area of the station's memory that it doesn't normally read after startup, so it would just be doing it unnecessarily most of the time.

Steve