Hello from mid-Wales.

[lardconcepts]

Hello from windy, rainy but surprisingly mild (for the time of year*) mid-Wales.

Cumulus looks like an excellent bit of software - I feel a donation coming on already.

Looks like there's no-one else round these parts with a weather station online, so tomorrow, I'm going to dig out the old EEEPC 701 4Gb - a tiny, old, slow model, but very low power usage and should be ideal. Then I'll hopefully find my old copy of Windows XP, then follow this guide to slipstream a "micro" version of XP, using nlite and a guide called Reinstall XP on a Netbook with No Optical Drive.

Assuming all of the above works out AND I can get both the weather station base AND wifi all in range of each other, I should have a web-page to show you tomorrow afternoon.

*On this day last year, we had several inches of snow and it had been -7c since mid-day. It's now 11c. Is this the calm before the ice-storm?!

[uncle_bob]

Cool! Let us know when it's up.
Welcome to the forum btw

[mermaidbeachweather]

Hello from windy, rainy but surprisingly mild (for the time of year*) mid-Wales.

Cumulus looks like an excellent bit of software - I feel a donation coming on already.

Looks like there's no-one else round these parts with a weather station online, so tomorrow, I'm going to dig out the old EEEPC 701 4Gb - a tiny, old, slow model, but very low power usage and should be ideal. Then I'll hopefully find my old copy of Windows XP, then follow this guide to slipstream a "micro" version of XP, using nlite and a guide called Reinstall XP on a Netbook with No Optical Drive.

Assuming all of the above works out AND I can get both the weather station base AND wifi all in range of each other, I should have a web-page to show you tomorrow afternoon.

*On this day last year, we had several inches of snow and it had been -7c since mid-day. It's now 11c. Is this the calm before the ice-storm?!

[mermaidbeachweather]

Welcome to the forum, you certainly have extreme weather conditions, I can't understand how people exist in these conditions, but i guess its what you are used too. I think we are spolit here in Queensland, but then we do have cyclones and floods, the last cyclone Yasi really tore the state apart, some resorts have been completely destroyed and will not be rebuilt, very sad as people have lost their livelehood.

cheers
Brian

[Matt.j5b]

Hi and welcome, hope all goes well with your setup.
look forward to see how it goes.

Welcome to the forum, you certainly have extreme weather conditions, I can't understand how people exist in these conditions, but i guess its what you are used too. I think we are spolit here in Queensland, but then we do have cyclones and floods, the last cyclone Yasi really tore the state apart, some resorts have been completely destroyed and will not be rebuilt, very sad as people have lost their livelehood.

cheers
Brian

Brian I would agree our weather in Queensland ( I’m in Brisbane) for most of the time is a bit easier than some parts of the world, but of course we do often do get extreme weather like the last summer which was full of damage to a lot of communities. But I guess that part of the weather, mother nature isn't alway kind.

[lardconcepts]

G'day sports! Seems like Cumulus isn't just of interest to us Poms!

I promised I'd come back and say how I got on - badly! I spent nearly 5 hours looking for my old Windows XP CD. It's got to be here somewhere. Unfortunately, we've got a toddler, which means that things tend to vanish or get posted into slots in irretrievable places. It's gone AWOL.
Even more annoyingly, I binned another old copy of XP just a couple of months ago thinking I'd never need it again.

So, I need to find another way of getting a very basic copy mini version of XP onto this laptop (4Gb disk, so smaller install the better!).
I hear rumours that you can download these things - of course, purely for educational and research purposes. In fact, a friend of a friend might have already tried it, but apparently all he found were infected downloads or zip files which turned out to be porn when extracted. Apparently....

But if anyone wants to PM me with any hints and tips regarding this dilemma, I'll be sure the pass the message on. For educational and research purposes only, of course...

That said, I'm happy to give WINE a go, but I've read a post here from a year of so back, that it can't read the USB port - has anyone had any luck since?

All I need the laptop to do is run Cumulus and access the wireless network...

[lardconcepts]

Well, finally, I got round to getting my station online:
http://weather.talking-news.info/

It was far easier than I actually thought it would be! (Donation sent

At some point I'll tweak it to have the navbar at the top, but apart from that, I like the layout as it is.

I think I need to dig deeper into the FAQ as to why my "wind chill" is so different from what the actual weather station is reporting - when I get Cumulus to calculate it, it seems the same as the display, just without a minus (ie: last night, the display said wind chill -4, cumulus said 4), and when I untick that box, it seems to be a bit random. But as I say, that's probably just buried somewhere in the wiki.

Don't know if I should make this a separate post, but does anyone know the column headers of the large "every 5 minutes" file?
I know the headers for the dayfile are explained, but I was going to try using the uploader to upload either the alltimelog or monthlog.txt files. then use Google Spreadsheet's import function - I'm mostly after the temperature so I can get Docs to average the week's temp and automatically add it to my air source heat pump graph (long story).

PS - I never did find the windows key to be able to have my low-power ASUS eee-pc online 24/7, so until I either find that or work out how to get USB working in WINE, it's not usually currently updating between about 10pm and 7am.

[steve]

I think I need to dig deeper into the FAQ as to why my "wind chill" is so different from what the actual weather station is reporting - when I get Cumulus to calculate it, it seems the same as the display, just without a minue (ie: last night, the display said wind chill -4, cumulus said 4), and when I untick that box, it seems to be a bit random. But as I say, that's probably just buried somewhere in the wiki.

Fine Offset stations don't make wind chill available to software, so Cumulus always calculates it, whether or not you tell it to, so you shouldn't see a difference either way.

Don't know if I should make this a separate post, but does anyone know the column headers of the large "every 5 minutes" file?
I know the headers for the dayfile are explained, but I was going to try using the uploader to upload either the alltimelog or monthlog.txt files. then use Google Spreadsheet's import function - I'm mostly after the temperature so I can get Docs to average the week's temp and automatically add it to my air source heat pump graph (long story).

The format of the monthly log files is in the help and the wiki; the installer also puts a file into the Cumulus installation folder called monthlyfileheader.txt which contains headers for the fields in the file, separated by '|' characters.

[lardconcepts]

The format of the monthly log files is in the help and the wiki; the installer also puts a file into the Cumulus installation folder called monthlyfileheader.txt which contains headers for the fields in the file, separated by '|' characters.

You're quite right. It WAS about 1am last night when I was doing it - For some reason, my addled brain hadn't linked the two together. I should have looked again with a fresh head this morning.

How embarrassing.

You know that thing where you do something, then look back at it later and realise how wrong you were, and how obvious that all seems now.
To get an idea of what I mean, imagine listening to Chris Moyles for 5 minutes and thinking "that's not too bad", then later on thinking "what was going through my head at the time?!?". Well, it's a bit like that...

Thanks again - off to read more wiki now. I've submitted for a wiki account so I can add my station too

[hungerdunger]

One other thing to think about is your pressure reading. I think you may be displaying absolute pressure (i.e. the pressure where you are), rather than Mean Sea Level Pressure ("relative" pressure on your fine offset). Currently your site is showing a figure about 12hPa lower than other stations in south/mid Wales.

[lardconcepts]

One other thing to think about is your pressure reading. I think you may be displaying absolute pressure (i.e. the pressure where you are), rather than Mean Sea Level Pressure ("relative" pressure on your fine offset). Currently your site is showing a figure about 12hPa lower than other stations in south/mid Wales.

This is a bit embarrassing - I can't actually figure this one out and would appreciate some guidance.
I currently have: relative: 1016.2 absolute: 985.8

I searched the Wiki and I get: http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#Cumulu ... et_console

To circumvent this, you can edit cumulus.ini, and in the [Station] section add an entry:
EWpressureoffset=x.y
where x.y is your pressure offset. Cumulus will then use this instead of reading it from the station.

Then I read the manualand it says:

3) Touch the PRESSURE section the third time to set the Relative Pressure value. The + and –
button will be flashing, rel icon will light up. Touch the+ button or – button to change the value,
hold the+ button or – button for 3s to change the number in great step

This is all well and good, but I can't find anywhere that explains by how much I should change the offset! Do I just make one equal the other? IN which case, why would it have two separate items? What have I missed?

I think we're about 300m above sea level, if that helps. Or at least, that's what the neighbours and the contours on Google Maps suggest, and we're about level with nearby Llangurig, which at 1000 feet is apparently the highest village in Wales, and as 1000 feet is 304 metres, that all seems to fit.

So we're pretty high up here - possibly that explains the difference? I'm fairly new to this as you can probably tell!

[steve]

The SLP in mid-Wales at the moment is about 1027 hPa, so you need to set your console's relative pressure to match. Ideally, you would do this when the pressure is relatively stable and you can get a figure from an official site not too far from you. But for now, it will be better to just add 10 hPa or so to your reading so you are at least somewhere near.

[lardconcepts]

The SLP in mid-Wales at the moment is about 1027 hPa, so you need to set your console's relative pressure to match. Ideally, you would do this when the pressure is relatively stable and you can get a figure from an official site not too far from you. But for now, it will be better to just add 10 hPa or so to your reading so you are at least somewhere near.

Thanks, Steve.

OK - just before I do that, what height (and location) is the station you're getting that reading from?
I'm looking at this table http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-a ... d_462.html and it suggests that the difference between ... oh, hang on, it doesn't give it in hpa! Just double checked - we are about 300m (if not higher) above sea level - has that been taken into account here?

Incidentally, I thought I'd plug all the stations in Wales on the Wiki into Google maps - http://g.co/maps/kwtgh - we're right in the middle of the "x" as it were, so it would be good to contribute that data... accurate, of course!

[steve]

OK - just before I do that, what height (and location) is the station you're getting that reading from?

Lake Vyrnwy. Doesn't matter what height it is, that's the whole point of SLP.