Cumulus Support

StuartaGray wrote:they said i can run Cumulus but as a newbie am not sure. will prob need some help on how to upload to web

As long as they allow ftp, most of it should be fine. Some free hosting doesn't allow .txt files, so that means the Flash gauges I provide (which are pretty poor anyway) won't work (they need the realtime.txt file and it has to have that name).

Do they have any instructions for ftp to their sites?

Ridgekid wrote:OK. Stupid question. Why can't I use my desktop computer to host my weather station? Are there security measues to prevent hacking in these cases? I have 200 GB of space available. How much room would someone need?

It's certainly possible, technically. A few people here do that and will hopefully advise. You need to run a web server (e.g. WampServer) and you need to make a hole in your firewall for the web server, and you need to be sure you have enough bandwidth on your internet connection. You only need a few MB of disc space.

I'm hosting my website on an ancient old laptop (12 years old), I am using XAMMP as the web server and MySQL host. XAMMP has some example config files for secure implementation - I don't suspect mine is very secure, but I see numerous attempts to launch the config/control apps all of which fail fortunately.

I have severe ADSL drop out problems at the moment, so now may not be the best time to look at the site! Looking at the router it has been up for 8 minutes now

Took care of my gadget problem:

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail. ... &bt=1&pl=1

Just had a look at that one, and no offence to its creator, but its nowhere near as good as the one distributed here,

Well I can't comment on the person that created one on this website because I can't extrat it the way he described. (read previous posts)

its quite simple really, you just download it, change the extension from .zip to .gadget

If you cannot see the extention, then you need to go into folder options, and enable the box that shows all extensions

Ridgekid wrote:OK. Stupid question. Why can't I use my desktop computer to host my weather station? Are there security measues to prevent hacking in these cases? I have 200 GB of space available. How much room would someone need?

As with Mark, I have been hosting my Cumulus pages using XAMPP for Windows - the required software, such as the Apache server, PHP, the MySQL server, phpMyAdmin, and FileZilla FTP Server are iinstalled on their own hard drive and are all running under Windows 7 32bits.

I also have a independant/separate (and much more secured) NAS (network-attached storage) unit connected to my home/office network (on that NAS unit, the same server software are installed/available but they are running under Linux) - for the time being, it is only used for internal testing (and learning) purposes.

So, to answer your question, anyone can indeed host one's weather station Web site on one's own desktop/notebook/netbook computer. But one has to be careful that one does not take/use too much bandwidth for that local Web site as one might have one's Internet services terminated without warning from one's provider - most Internet service providers stipulate in a very very very small-print warning that one's cannot operate a server on one's home computer...

That said, once the required server software (such as XAMPP or WAMP) have been installed, it is just a matter of placing the required Web templates into their appropriate sub-root directories, and setting up one's router to pass along one of the ports directly to one's computer.

It is possible to make adjustments to the setting of the Apache server to increase its security processing, but then, one's ends up running a Web site where users have to be invited because they need to have pre-established access security levels.

robynfali-
If you read my previous post it was noted that I attempted to install the gadget per creators instructions. I did not have a stack of books icon. I had the winzip Icon. When I changed the extention and clicked on it, it wanted to extract the files. For me, having a executable file inside a zip file is must easier. Please advise If there is a differant procedure.

gemini06720-
Thanks for the info, although most of that is over my head. I'm more of a plug and play type. I was looking at the weatherhub2 http://www.ambientweather.com/weambnslu2.html but from what i read it comes with it's own software and thus I could not use cumulus. BTW- Very nice weather station!

Ridgekid wrote:If you read my previous post it was noted that I attempted to install the gadget per creators instructions. I did not have a stack of books icon. I had the winzip Icon. When I changed the extention and clicked on it, it wanted to extract the files. For me, having a executable file inside a zip file is must easier. Please advise If there is a differant procedure.

Are you writing about this New V1.3 - Live Personal Weather Station data Vista/Windows 7 Desktop Sidebar gadget? If so, once downloaded, it should be saved with the '.gadget' extension (such as 'PWS.v1.3.gadget') - NOT with the '.zip' extension. By default, when Vista/Windows 7 sees a file with the '.gadget' extension it knows what it needs to do...

Ridgekid wrote:I'm more of a plug and play type. I was looking at the weatherhub2 ... but from what i read it comes with it's own software and thus I could not use cumulus.

Indeed, the 'Ambient Weather WeatherHub2 Universal IP Ethernet Server' is using a Linux-base software (I think) from Meteohub, "...a miniaturized weather server, that records weather data from a weather station, evaluates this data, draws user defined weather graphs and uploads these via ftp to a web server; furthermore, Meteohub can upload weather data to Internet weather networks and can export recorded weather data in WSWIN or WD format to allow for further processing on a PC; Meteohub supports a wide range of weather stations and allows to record these data ongoing and to transport the information to the Internet, without having your PC switched on..." Unfortunately, Cumulus being a Windows-base software, cannot be installed into any of the devices mentioned on the Meteohub Web site.

Ridgekid wrote:BTW- Very nice weather station!

But, but, I have not shown you my weather station ... unless you drove in front of my house without stopping to say hello... But the weather pages are not bad looking either...

Gemeni-

1. That gadget worked fine. There is a third party one at this forum I could not get installed.
2. Weatherhub understood.
3. Correction- Nice webpage.