Cumulus Support

Hi

My Fine Offset Station (DigiTech CX0348) has very high counts stored in the station for no apparent reason, eg. today 0.3mm fell as rain, and some time latter that day it will show 3489mm, which then ripples across Weekly, Monthly,Total. Has done it in other areas also.

Can anyone suggest a reason or a solution for this erroneous data.

Kim

Mine used to do this, but hasn't since I replaced the batteries in the sensors so I assume it was because of that. Search the FAQs for an answer on how to get rid of the erroneous data, its not hard, but follow the instructions exactly even if they seem counter intuitive.

Hills

Thanks for the advice. I'll try the batteries and see what happens, even thought they are fairly new.

Did look in FAQ under all sorts of queries types and got no help even remotely looking what I was after. Even tried Bad data, bad data logger errors and so on.

try have a look here :
http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#My_sta ... it_to_zero

This can happen for a couple of other reasons as well:

1) Movement of the rain sensor (tip buckets being activated) – by either wind, birds landing on it or other movement say when servicing

I know that many have located the rain sensor away from the other detectors on flat solid bases. I have mine on a thicker pole with clamp brackets either side which seems to work at isolating any movement.

Some have also reported spiders and other insects getting inside the rain sensor and activating the tip buckets!

2) Electrical Interference - things that can interfere include electric fences, garage/gate remote controls, wireless alarm systems etc.

This can be harder to resolve as the effect is not usually regularly repeatable. For a start see whether you have anything else that operates on or around 433 mhz. Worth also seeing if you can identify when erroneous data occurred and whether it corresponds to another event – e.g. operating electric gates.

Good luck!

Thanks for the info. I just repositioned on a taller pole and its been extreemly windy the last few days. The increase only happened at one time period and not since, even though its been still very windy (30km/h). I will look at adding guywires to the pole to give greater ridigity.

I did note that the Highest Wind reading was also high from same period (just one reading for both). Being in the country and isolated the only item that possibly could cause this may be the electric fence energiser, but that is over a 1Km away.

So my thinking is that it is the system sensors at the remote end I need to keep an eye on after I replace the batteries tomorrow.

Many thanks for the pointers

Kim

I've got the Clas Ohlson branded Fine Offset, and have actually seen negative rainfall figures. I'm new to all this so have no idea as yet if this is a glitch in the sensor or the software

andyohare wrote:I've got the Clas Ohlson branded Fine Offset, and have actually seen negative rainfall figures. I'm new to all this so have no idea as yet if this is a glitch in the sensor or the software

This is another symptom of the Fine Offset rainfall counter doing odd things, in this case going down. In most cases Cumulus will convert apparent negative figures to zero, but there are probably also some conditions where the negative value can creep through.

Mine's generated some peculiar figures recently too:

• Highest maximum temperature 999oF
  Lowest minimum temperature -500oF
  Highest wind gust 146mph
  Highest rain rate 1.138E5 mm/hr
  Highest hourly rain 9438mm

I just put it down to the cheap'n'cheerful nature of the weather station equipment, but it's a bit annoying nevertheless.

Red Sky wrote:Mine's generated some peculiar figures recently too:

• Highest maximum temperature 999oF
  Lowest minimum temperature -500oF
  Highest wind gust 146mph
  Highest rain rate 1.138E5 mm/hr
  Highest hourly rain 9438mm

The rain and wind figures are down to the station doing odd things, but the temp ones are the start of day figures from Cumulus. If you somehow get to the end of the day with those figures still current, that's what gets logged (I think I've done some changes recently to prevent that, after someone called me stupid ).

Sometimes, the very first day you run Cumulus you can get those; normally it's best to delete the first entry in dayfile.txt after you've run Cumulus for a couple of days (typically your first day will be only a partial day anyway, so the end of day summary isn't really valid). But if you have a look in dayfile.txt you should be able to find them and delete them, wherever they are.

Hi

I've been running mine for 6 days now and what Steve says seems to be correct. I've even noticed that the Cumulus monthly rain figures for example are correct, whereas the Station figures were not. I now disregard the Station and just use Cumulus. Cumulus must calculate its own monthly and other figures from the raw data.

Kim

Hi
my fine offset station has been recording ok but sending (the same repeated) wrong data to cumulus- which has quite happily uploaded the flat-lined data to my website for 24 hrs! Don't know what caused it- maybe a not properly closed down easyweather- unplugging and plugging the usb cable seems to have reastablised proper coms, but i needed to change the time-stamp to get cumulus to redownload the correct data from the station. All ok again after deleting false data now. phew!
G

An easier way to 'rewind' is to copy the files from one of the backups which Cumulus creates when it starts up, assuming there's a suitably recent one.

oh - thanks for that - I'll know for next time!
Will post if it happens again and I can pin down what causes it.
Great software btw !


thanks again


George

Hi - had the temperature error thing yesterday again. Data ok in logger but cumulus insisting outside temp flat-lined all day. 'Rewound' ie reloaded data from the station by using using back ups- worked a treat- all ok now.
Not sure what caused it- only weather data seemed effected and only above a certain value.
Anyhow, can definitely recommend using the autobackup files, thanks Steve!