Cumulus Support

Hey,

I have recently found out why my cumulus was freezing at every minute... it seems to be freezing for roughly 9-17 seconds @ 0:59 seconds of every minute!

I edited my website update interval to 5 mins (originally set to 1 min interval) and it only freezes on the minute it updates (every 5 minutes)

Is this normal for Cumulus to do this? If not can somebody advise me if possible on how to fix it ?

I find the freezing bothersome as it frequently misses high wind gusts etc....

Many Thanks

Pad

Sounds like the FTP process is having problems connecting to your hosting computer.

Have you by any chance got "Use active FTP mode" ticked in your Configuration Settings for the Internet. If you have try removing the tick.

Other than switch FTP logging on to see what the problem is.

Thanks for getting back to me on this water01

No my "Use active FTP mode " is not ticked.

Okay I have a tick beside the FTP Logging button... what happens now?>

With Davis stations, a couple of extra functions are performed once a minute, on the minute. These require reading extra data, and because of the way the Davis DLL works, this takes time out from the normal reading of data.

The first is calculating Altimeter Pressure for uploading to CWOP. You can turn this off (and then it will send MSLP instead), by stopping Cumulus and editing cumulus.ini. In the [Station] section, add a line

DavisCalcAltPress=0

The second is forcing the barometer to update, if the option 'VP 1-min barometer update' is selected. This isn't needed on recent stations, so if you do have it selected, turn it off.

I suggest you try turning both of those off and see if it makes a difference. This shouldn't cause Cumulus to 'freeze', though, as it's done in a separate thread from the UI. It depends on what you mean by 'freeze'. Does the clock stop updating?

I don't understand why changing the web update interval would affect this, as most of that is done in a separate thread. Only the processing of the files is done on the main thread. Are you using the standard web pages?

What version/build of Cumulus are you using?

What firmware version does you console have?

The logging will produce a file called ftplog.txt in your Cumulus program directory. Let it run for a few uploads and then switch it off and take a look at the file by using Notepad or equivalent.

You should see the FTP client logging and then proceeding to uplaod and rename the files one by one and any errors etc. that occur. It also shows you the time in the left hand column to the millisecond and that will show you if your hosting computer is responding slowly. Typically on my hosting server I am getting responses every 100-800 milliseconds during an upload of normal files (9) and an additional 11 files I have in the Files Tab which equates to about 1 minute 15 seconds including all the graph images etc.

Therefore if you are doing the same updating every 1 minute is probably pointless as it will not complete one task before it tries to start the next. Even 5 minutes is to quick for this type of static data if you are using realtime as well, I would tend to leave realtime at 30 seconds and static HTML pages at 15 minutes.

EDIT Steve of course knows a lot more about the code of the program than I do as he wrote it, so I should follow his advice first.

Hi Steve thanks for getting back to me on this.

I have done what you have said

*unticked VP1 Barometer
*Added in line to Cumulus.ini

But its still doing it.

Basically if you watch the clock on the top right, it freezes on eg 19:21:59 then freezes and the clock resumes at 19:22:09

Its the latest version of cumulus, I downloaded it last October 2012

Firmware is 2.14

I am using Saratoga on my website. Plus i cant seem to get realtime updates on my website...

That would seem to confirm that it is the web update that is the problem. But the actual ftp doesn't take place on the main thread. When you said you changed the web update interval, are you just uploading to your web site, or to sites such as Weather Underground, and if so are you using the same interval?

Could you show screen shots of your internet settings, please, both tabs?

It's still worth looking at the ftp log as David suggests.

i change the web settings interval

will i copy and paste some of my ftp log onto here?

pad199207 wrote:will i copy and paste some of my ftp log onto here?

Best to zip it up and attach the whole thing.

Could you show the other tab ("files") of the internet settings as well, please?

With the settings that you have, the things that will happen at the 'normal' (as opposed to 'realtime') interval are:

The standard web page templates are converted to web pages (this always happens, even when 'include standard files' is not selected).
The standard images are produced and resized.
The images are copied to the web/images folder - this one is rather odd as they are there already!

Then, in a separate thread:

The images are uploaded to your web site.

Your 'freeze' is most likely caused by one of the three actions in the first section above. I don't understand why you're using the 'copy images to folder' setting to copy the images to themselves. Perhaps this is the cause.

The other action that may be the cause is the image resizing. I do seem to recall someone else finding that this took quite a long time on their system.

You are uploading realtime.txt as part of your realtime settings AND you are uploading it in your file settings, which means you are uploading it twice every realtime cycle.

Unless I have got this completely wrong you do not need to upload realtime.txt in your files area.

Okay...

I have stopped the using the "copy images to folder" setting but to no effect.

Now...

I unticked the resize button and now the freeze is only two or three seconds long, so an improvement...

oops now my website is gone back to black and white!!!!

www.naasweather.com

Pad,

You need to upload the "weatherstyle.css" to your website using the same "Files" tab in the Internet Settings.