Cumulus Support

XPH SP3. Cumulus 1.8.5 on Com1.

I recently got a WS-2350. Works ok - even Heavy Weather - but I liked the look of Cumulus, so thought I'd try it.

I thought it was working ok, but then I noticed the pressure reading on the display was 7.3mb higher than the mPa reading on the 2350 display, and that on the Heavy Weather history file. Out of interest, I changed the PC input from USB (as com4) to the same as that for Cumulus - serial on com1, just in case that was causing the problem, but it made no difference.

As I had almost no records, I thought the easiest thing to do was uninstall and then reinstall Cumulus. Uninstallation via the Control panel seemed to go ok (Cumulus disappeared from the list), and I rebooted and reinstalled. I was a bit surprised when the installer informed me that C:\Program Files\Cumulus already existed, and did I want to install there anyway. As it isn't unknown for uninstallers to leave an empty program folder in C:\Program Files, I just let it install there, and immediately ran Cumulus. Next surprise was when when readings automatically loaded (the 2350 was already connected to com1)! Pulling up Configuration|Station, I was amazed to see the same screen as I had filled out when I first installed Cumulus (which is why it had found com1, and loaded the data). I then checked C:\Program Files\Cumulus via Explorer, and basically found Cumulus and its subfolders was still there. Interestingly, registry entries for a search on "Cumulus" were missing except for some MRU files in a text editor, ...\OpenSaveMRU\exe, and ...\MUICache.

I deleted everything in C:\Program Files\Cumulus and reinstalled Cumulus. This time I had to complete Configuration|Station, before Cumulus loaded data from the 2350.

Unfortunately, the pressure discrepancy persists. Any ideas on that, and why the uninstall did not work?

TIA

The uninstall leaves behind all your data files (including cumulus.ini). I suppose the uninstaller could provide an option to delete the user data.

Cumulus displays pressure corrected to sea level; perhaps you are comparing it with the pressure at your station?

Steve

Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe just a note in the Help file as to what is left after an uninstall could be useful.

I had wondered whether or not Cumulus calculated relative air pressure (from the altitude asl in Station configuration?). If it does it automatically, what does the pressure box in Calibration configuration do? I left it at 0.00. Would Cumulus automatically detect if I changed the 2350 reading to relative rather than absolute pressure?

J.

The station supplies the relative pressure; Cumulus just reads it. I would guess that it doesn't make any difference what you have the console displaying. The calibration box is there so that you can do any adjusting you want in Cumulus, but normally you would make any adjustments in the station itself.

Steve

The station supplies the relative pressure; Cumulus just reads it. I would guess that it doesn't make any difference what you have the console displaying.

As a newbie, I am confused! According to the 2350 manual, it displays absolute pressure unless I decide to change it. I haven't done this yet.

I just looked at the HeavyWeather history file, and the first column in that is Absolute pressure. There is no column for Relative pressure. But I just ran HeavyWeather Review, and asked it to show pressure. The graph showed two lines - one for absolute and one for relative pressure And when I changed this display to show data rather than the graph, there were two columns, one for absolute pressure and the other for relative pressure. I reckon you can guess the rest - the difference between them was always 7.3mb!

So my apologies for my confusion with Cumulus. It is doing what you intended it to do - download the data from the 2350. The question is why does the 2350 assume the relative pressure at my location is 7.3mb above the absolute pressure, when I have not told it that? In fact, according to the met office, the pressure should be about 13mb higher, not 7.3mb.

J.

It's presumably some sort of factory default (but you would expect it to use zero, really). I don't know anything about these stations, but I'm assuming there will be some way to change the current relative pressure reading so that it gives the correct value. Once set, the station will then maintain the difference between the absolute and relative values.

Steve