Cumulus Support

lardconcepts wrote: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 wrote: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

lardconcepts wrote: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.

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).

steve wrote: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.

hungerdunger wrote: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.

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.

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

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