Option to send wind gust data to Wunderground...

[Drew]

I just noticed this morning that in the Rapidfire updates being sent to Wunderground, it is the average wind speed and direction. The wind gust is being reported every 5 mins. on the regular updates, but I was wondering if it's possible to add the "live" wind information to the Rapidfire updates instead of just the average.

I have been using cumulus for about 6 months now, and it is the most stable weather station software I have EVER used. I want to thank you Steve for making such a great piece of software!

[steve]

First of all, apologies for not replying sooner. I have turned on approval of first posts to try to combat the increasing amount of spam I was getting here, but the board seems not very good at notifying when posts need approving - I'll have to investigate this.

I'm not really sure what you're asking. The same information (including both speed and gust) is sent to Wunderground on rapid fire updates and on 'normal' updates - in fact, when rapid fire is in use, there are no normal updates at all, they are all rapid fire updates. So I guess it's down to the way Wunderground displays the data.

Steve

[Drew]

I apologize for not being clear in my previous post. It sounded like I was referring to the data sent to Wunderground on the scheduled updates. I meant to ask if it is possible to send the "live" wind speed/direction data in the rapid fire updates, while still sending the average speed in the scheduled updates (i.e. 5 or 10 mins, depending on setting).

For an example, on my rapid fire page http://www.wunderground.com/swf/Rapid_F ... KALFLORE15 the average wind speed is being reported, and I would like to see the "live" wind speed on those updates...only if possible of course.

Again, thanks for such a great program. This is by far one of the most stable pieces of weather station software ever developed.

[steve]

I think we still have a misunderstanding

When you have 'rapid fire' selected, all of the updates are rapid fire, this is the way Wunderground expect it to work. So there is no concept of sending different data for rapid fire updates, all of the updates are the same.

[wshimmin]

Steve

Sorry to reopen the topic. I've just enabled rapid fire and I'm also seeing what seems to be average wind speed and direction in Wunderground (http://www.wunderground.com/swf/Rapid_F ... ENGLAND214) rather than the gust data that Wunderground is expecting.

How is data uploaded to Wunderground? Could the wind data fields be in the wrong order so that Wunderground is picking up the average wind data instead of gust?

William

[steve]

Sorry to reopen the topic.

That's OK, we didn't get it resolved anyway, because of the confusion over the perceived difference between the rapid fire updates and the normal updates, whereas in fact there is none.

I now think I understand (part of) what's happening. For the Wunderground 'windgustmph' parameter, Cumulus is sending the 'max recent gust', i.e. the peak gust from the last 10 minutes, the value that's displayed in the 'Gust' box on the Cumulus display. I guess this is down to a bias on my part towards the 10-minute gust figure being more useful than a snapshot of the current figure read by the station. I guess I could change it to send the 'latest' figure instead (and there's actually a separate parameter for 10-minute gust anyway).

But I can't make that tie up with what I'm seeing. What is that graph supposed to be showing? Is the red line the average speed and the yellow line the gust? If so, I don't know why they both appear to have the same value, when Cumulus is sending different values for them.

[wshimmin]

Steve

The red line is the average speed, but should be the gust. The yellow line is just a pointer to the red line!

Here's somebody else's page to give you a sense of what it should be doing - http://www.wunderground.com/swf/Rapid_F ... =ISHROPSH3

William

[steve]

I see - the yellow line is just pointing to a peak in the red line. If you think the red line is showing what Cumulus displays as the average speed, then it's not what Wunderground call 'gust', it's what Wunderground call 'speed'. These are the wind speed parameters that Wunderground defines:

windspeedmph - [mph instantaneous wind speed]
windgustmph - [mph current wind gust, using software specific time period]
windspdmph_avg2m - [mph 2 minute average wind speed mph]
windgustmph_10m - [mph past 10 minutes wind gust mph ]

The red line appears to be plotting windspeedmph.

Cumulus currently sends two of those:

windspeedmph - Cumulus "average" (either 'speed' supplied by the station, or a calculated 10-minute average if you have that option set)
windgustmph - Cumulus "gust" - i.e. the peak gust in the last 10 minutes

If what I'm currently sending isn't correct, then I'm at a loss to understand the Wunderground terminology and to know what to send that is reasonable for all types of weather station. Any suggestions?

[steve]

Having slept on this, I now think that what Wunderground expects for "windspeedmph - [mph instantaneous wind speed]" is what Cumulus calls "Latest". But if that's the case, I don't know what it expects for "windgustmph - [mph current wind gust, using software specific time period]", given that there is also "windgustmph_10m - [mph past 10 minutes wind gust mph ]"...

By the way, William, what type of weather station do you have - a VP2? Could you put it in your profile, please?

[steve]

After some more thinking, and some investigation into what other software does (i.e. WUHU) I propose to change to send 'latest' for 'windspeedmph' (which I believe achieves what is being asked for in this thread), and continue to send 'gust' (i.e. peak 10-minute gust) for 'windgustmph'.

[wshimmin]

Steve

Thanks for this. I've updated my profile with weather station info - Oregon Scientific WMR-928.

William

[steve]

I've done the change in the latest beta:

http://nybbles.co.uk/downloads/beta188/CumulusSetup.exe

[wshimmin]

That seems to have done the trick. Thanks, once again.

William

[RayProudfoot]

Many thanks Steve. I can also confirm Cumulus is sending the right data to WU for wind gusts. I've now switched over to Cumulus for WU updates and can finally cease running that intrusive DLL addon in WeatherLink.

How often are those updates sent? As you know the VP2 captures wind gusts every 2.5secs.

[daj]

How often are those updates sent? As you know the VP2 captures wind gusts every 2.5secs.

rapidfire updates are sent to WU every 5 seconds