Cumulus Support

Hello
I have recently converted to Cumulus and am very impressed with the programme. I do have one issue which relates to the Wind High Gust in the Recent Extremes section as the data shown by my weather station is not replicated by data shown by Cumulus. As an example - today up to now - my weather station indicates the highest wind gust as 16.8mph yet Cumulus shows the High Gust as 14.5mph as does the Alltime records page. I am aware that averages might well be affecting the Cumulus readout but is it possible and perhaps should the Cumulus High Gust in the Recent Extremes reflect the actual highest wind gust recorded by the weather station? Perhaps I am missing something! Help please?

Tony

Hi Tony, welcome to the forum.

The 16.8 wind gust on the station -- was that recorded today, or is that a historic reading?

Cumulus will only start from the point you install it, so if 16.8 was recorded prior to you using Cumulus it will now be shown. You can edit your All Time Records and manually add it if you wish.

You can also force Cumulus to read all the historic data your station holds in memory (but it needs a bit of careful editing of your data files afterwards)

Hello David

I installed Cumulus several days ago and it has accurately recorded data downloaded from the station since then with the exception of the High Gust data. On each day since installation the High Gust data has been recorded as less than the actual speed of the gust indicated as the daily maximum high gust on the station. The 16.8mph was recorded late this morning and the subsequent data download earlier this afternoon recorded only 14.5mph. This has been the situation each day since I installed Cumulus i.e. the High Gust indicated by Cumulus is several mph less than the station.
Any ideas?

Tony

Do you a have a multiplier set? (Check the Cumulus menu..... Configuration, Calibration)


Anything other than 1 for a multipler value tells Cumulus to adjust up (or down) the readings it receives from the station

Hello again David
I've checked the multiplier section and Wind Speed and Wind Gust are both set to 1. So this seems OK. I've manually amended the alltime record page to correct the wind gust speed but don't really want to have to do this on a regular basis.
As an experiment this afternoon I loaded the weather software programme which came with my station and let it transfer the stored weather data from the weather station. Interestingly this did indicate the correct maximum wind gust speed of 16.8mph - I've subsequently uninstalled this later programme in case this causes a clash with Cumulus. I'll monitor this situation over the next few days but as this problem has occured from Wednesday onwards when I downloaded Cumulus, I'm not confident that there will be any change.
If, perhaps, you have any other suggestions, you'll let me know.
Many thanks,

Tony

See: http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#Cumulu ... my_console

You don't say how you are using your kit - is it connected to and is your PC running 24/7 ?

Whilst PC is 'talking' to base station data will be 'read' approx. every 48s (Fine Offset types), but if you are turning your PC off (at night for example), then Cumulus will be loading the data snapshots at the periodocity set on the base station - which may not contain the 'true' minima / maxima values.

I think .....

Good point Beteljuice

Beteljuice has almost certainly hit the nail on the head. The station's logger only contains 'snapshots' of the data at the point where the logger interval occurs and it moves on to the next memory location, so the wind speeds recorded in the logger are those at that point, regardless of what happened previously. The longer your logger interval (in the station) the more likely you are to miss peak values.

Thank you for the advice and I think this has resolved the problem. Rather than have Cumulus running constantly, I have tended to switch off the computer when I've finished with what whatever I'm doing. When I've I started up the computer again, I've let Cumulus update the records which have been stored on the station in the interim. These records are provided by the station at 5 minute intervals - don't think the station set-up allows for a shorter interval - in comparison with the 48 second updates from the station when the computer is running. Quite obviously any 'extremes' that have occured within the 5 minute segments stored by the station are ignored unless, of course, the extreme record coincides with the 5 minute stored record.

This morning having left the computer on constantly, Cumulus has recorded the todays extremes!

Is there any possibility of a future update to Cumulus which would allow people like me, who do not keep their computers running 24/7, to upload 'extremes' which fall outside of the stations reporting schedule?

Many thanks.

Tony

I think the station only records all-time highs and lows, rather than daily etc? So you can use the all-time record editor in Cumulus to manually add any that get missed.

One possible enhancement that I am considering is an option to make use of the max and min data held in the station (effectively making the above operation automatic). Cumulus doesn't currently read those memory locations, and determines all-time records only from the data that it has read.

Steve

The enhancement you are considering to read station extremes rather than just the data reported would be welcomed.

Tony

It sure would , occasionally Cumulus misses the day's highest gust (running live) for me.

Sorry, I edited your post instead of replying!

It sure would , occasionally Cumulus misses the day's highest gust (running live) for me.

I can't remember if we ever explained that? Running live it should never miss a reading, with the 'VP sleep time' set sufficiently low. Of course, the Davis DLL does behave a bit unpredictably.

Fine Offset users should note here that the station only stores all-time records, unlike the Davis, so with FO stations this proposed change would only be to use those; so overall I wouldn't expect it to have much of an effect.

steve wrote:Sorry, I edited your post instead of replying!

It sure would , occasionally Cumulus misses the day's highest gust (running live) for me.

I can't remember if we ever explained that? Running live it should never miss a reading, with the 'VP sleep time' set sufficiently low. Of course, the Davis DLL does behave a bit unpredictably.
.

Yeah we did discuss this and I have a sleep time set in the settings, still doesn't stop it from missing data. I run other software through Virtual VP and it sometimes misses the odd data point too, so I am sure Cumulus is not at fault.