Category:Cumulus MX: Difference between revisions

If you are new to Cumulus, then you will be wondering what benefits Cumulus MX has over other weather recording software. In that case start by reading [[About Cumulus|the article that introduces Cumulus]].  

<big>'''AN APPEAL''' - please will someone take over maintenance of articles such as this one on the Wiki, ensuring it continues to be relevant regardless of whether the reader is using an old version or the latest build.  There were so many releases in 2020, the first person revising this article could not keep up, and abandoned the task after 6 months of updates!</big>

 

=== Summary of early history of this article ===

As mentioned in introduction, when this Wiki article was originally created by Mark Crossley it contained exactly what Steve Loft said in the [https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=39 MX early builds support forum]. At that time Steve had only started early experimenting with Cumulus MX, and access was restricted to those willing to experiment with his tests.

The article was then rewritten by somebody who used to use Cumulus 1.  It was based on experience of some early experimentation with MX, while Cumulus 1 was still the main system used. This is why there are comparisons of Cumulus 1 and MX included in this article, although the detail about moving to MX from Cumulus 1 has now been moved to a separate article, with a link included later in this article.  The article continued to be revised as the author abandoned Cumulus 1 and gained experience of running MX on a Windows 10 PC. Subsequently, there were further revisions as a Raspberry Pi computer took over running of MX, again experiences initially documented here have been moved to a separate article that also has a link below. Although some information from posts in the Cumulus Support Forum was added to this article (or the articles that are linked from this article), there are so many posts on the forum, this has not been maintained since Summer 2020.  

It is true that operation on a Raspberry Pi has been much, much, more reliable than running on Windows 10 PC, so that meant it was just left running without worrying about upgrading to new MX builds, and with no new experiences to report, the updating of the Wiki has largely ceased, hence appeal for someone else to reflect the many changes since July 2020.

 

 

With hindsight, much of what has been documented could be made clearer. Much of this article was edited by directly quoting what was said in the forum, it was not always possible to understand it sufficiently to find an alternative clearer way of explaining the particular information. Writing for the Wiki is always tricky, some readers want everything made very simple and other readers look to the Wiki for the full technical information. One solution is to to have simple summary sections and sections that give full details.

 

Although a lot of material has been moved out of this article into separate articles linked from this article, a new contributor might wish to move more off this page to continue to simplify this article.  One problem I encountered was that I tried to edit articles created by administrators, or locked after I edited them when administrators changed after the wiki was migrated to a new host.  As my permissions are limited, I have in some cases had to create replacement articles, and where possible persuade administrators to remove or amend original article.

Although each contributor to the Wiki may be tempted to use a different style, this should not put you off contributing. Something I was taught, when I was responsible for computer system documentation in paid employment, was that it is best to use short sentences, lots of headings, and bullet points whether numbered or not, and multiple sub-levels. Use that advice as your starting point and your contribution will fit in.

 

*If you have some ideas, but are unsure whether to apply changes, please use the discussion page first.

*If you have ideas, but an administrator has not seen you are requesting write access to this wiki, please write your suggestion in the support forum for wiki suggestions at https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=38. The same forum can be used for posts begging an administrator to check outstanding requests for Wiki access.

* Cumulus 2 did prove that a number of concepts (like separating "engine" from "admin interface") could work, and it was a useful learning curve for when Steve decided to write Cumulus 3 (see below).

*One change that had been requested by several Cumulus 1 users was for better international viewing of web pages, with less dependence on time zones. To achieve this, one suggestion was that Cumulus should work in GMT (more widely replaced now by UTC, which is not technically identical with GMT). Cumulus 2 therefore read and logged all readings by UTC. Unfortunately, converting from local time used by weather stations, and most computer devices, never worked as smoothly as Steve Loft hoped, so this is one idea that was not adopted for Cumulus 3.

* Furthermore, Cumulus 2 never succeeded in getting some of the basic functionality like driving web pages to work reliably, so it never offered much of the more useful functionality of Cumulus 1.

*In 2015, Cumulus 3 (also initially known as MX, and 'MX' is what was adopted once it was made available to users), was experimental and it had limited functionality, much less than was available in Cumulus 1. This made MX innovative, but unfriendly.

*Consequently, at that time, most Cumulus users were using Cumulus 1, and just those eager to take part in beta testing (perhaps because they wanted to move to Linux operating system) used MX.

*Steve Loft started development of MX while he was still in full-time employment, but as retirement approached he worked fewer days per week.  Consequently, he was faced with the question as to whether to spend his time on MX development, or to focus on spending time with his wife, Beth, exploring places.

*Various people offered to help him with MX if he was willing to make his source code available. Initially, Steve was keen to protect his intellectual property.  He did not want anyone else to interfere with his creation.

*When he and his wife found a new home in France, there was no longer any doubt, the priorities changed in favour of a focus on his new life. Having decided to make the source code for MX available (he no longer had the development environment for editing Cumulus 1, and he had aborted Cumulus 2), Steve was able to forget about further development of MX.  Indeed the [[Software|source code]] he released included various feature that were developed prior to the last MX release he made available.

*Steve Loft was closing down his Sandaysoft.com host, so the software source, and release code, had to find a new home, as did this Wiki. SaratogaWX (Ken True) has taken over (see [[CumulusWiki:About|Cumulus  Wiki:  About]], and agreed to also the host source code files as they were at time of handover. 

*Some information was copied from the support forum to the new Wiki host, as at the time of Wiki transfer it was unclear whether the forum would remain available.

*Sandaysoft.com also hosted the support forum. Freddie (Niall Hosiene) took over the hosting of the forum the month after Ken True took over Wiki.

There is a page (created in October 2018) listing [[MX Issues|MX Issues to be resolved]], but I suspect it is out of date.  If you look through the release announcements for 2019-21, yes there are a lot of new features being added, but almost every build also involves resolving bugs.

 

You may be reading this article on MX as a Cumulus 1 user considering moving to MX, if so then it explains all issues when moving from Cumulus 1 to MX, including what functionality you will gain and what you will lose by moving to MX. The article will help you to decide whether to stick with Cumulus 1's stable release as many MX releases have bugs as the developer tries revising the code, to simplify it, as well as to introduce new features.

 

As a new Cumulus user, using MX on Windows (but with no experience of Cumulus 1), the separate article linked from the heading to this section will still interest you as it is a definitive guide to installing Cumulus MX on Windows.

 

Whether you have been using Cumulus 1, or are new to Cumulus, you may be tempted to install MX on a Raspberry Pi, operating in headless mode (instead of connecting a screen and keyboard to it, you do all access to the Pi from another computer on same network). The developer has made life easy for you by combining the '''Raspberry Pi Lite Operating System''' with a pre-installation copy of MX.  

Find out more about using this pre-built Raspberry Pi image file to create a basic headless server in the article linked in the heading.  

 

Whether you have been using Cumulus 1, or are new to Cumulus, you may be tempted to install MX on a Raspberry Pi. A Raspberry Pi (and similar devices from other manufacturers) is much simpler than a normal computer, but it can still run various operating systems that allow you to use it perhaps for both running MX and a web server. Find out more in the article linked in the heading.

Whether you have not updated for a long time, or simply wonder whether you are updating the easiest way, follow the link in the heading for this section, to an article that focusses on all to do with updating from one MX version to another. This includes the recommended approach (letting zip overwrite previous installation), and other approaches. It also expands on issues relating to web templates, database tables, and other optional features in MX.

Critically, this linked article contains advice '''both''' for those updating each time there is a new release available '''and''' how to upgrade from an old version in a series of steps, skipping some in-between versions.  So read the article linked in the section heading whether you are still using Steve Loft's beta version of MX or an old Mark Crossley release.

Before I swapped, I made a detailed study to check MX could do all I used to do with Cumulus 1 and much more.  Before I add items to this article I play around with MX experimenting with what works and what does not work, but I have saved you the pain of where I went wrong, just telling you what is correct. I do need to add, that I don't have a separate testing environment, and therefore I am not willing to attempt anything that might muck up my collecting of weather information, plus my knowledge of modern technology is poor as I belong to that generation who did not have desktop computers, nor mobile devices, until some time into my working life. This all places restrictions on what I can test out, and therefore on the coverage of these notes.

'''If anyone else, can improve these notes, wants to split off more parts, or in any other way make the documentation better, then please do.  This article already contains improvements that were suggested by others.'''

 

*Create a new directory (recommended name CumulusMX) and unzip the contents of the [[Software|download package]] into it.  

*See notes below for extras required in various operating systems.

*The package contains everything else you need to read from your weather station (if it is a supported model), to load up the admin interface (for settings and some simple templates used to create web pages to see on a device connected to your home network).  You might want to read topics on the MX support forum to discover about other people's experiences.

The software currently called .NET was originally for all operating systems, but Microsoft then decided to restrict it to just Windows (and that was the position while MX was being developed and is still true in early 2020 when this article was rewritten), mostly to encourage greater dominance by Microsoft software and hardware.  

You only need to do that once. If you do not issue this command, administrative rights are needed every time to access the port.

# Next '''start the admin interface''', it does not need to run all the time, but only when you need it (when you first use MX you will need it to access the settings where you tell MX what type of station you have and what units you want to use, and set various timing options), it normally runs on port 8998 (to vary that there is a '''-port''' parameter that is followed by required port and that port parameter has to be entered every time you start MX if you are not using the default port). More information on admin interface [[MX Administrative Interface|in separate article]].

**For example, in 'Raspbian' on the Raspberry Pi, you can install mono with the following commands, but '''first you need to have set up various pre-requisites''' (see [[Setting_up_Raspberry_Pi]] article  for details):

 

Note that you do need to have the '''mono-complete''' package installed, not just the Mono for developers.

Next start the administrative interface, basically same as described for Windows above. More information on admin interface [[MX Administrative Interface|in separate article]].

The distribution zip contains various '''.dll''' files and these are the libraries used by MX itself. The exact mix of libraries included has varied at various times, the list below is a snapshot of those included at the version that was investigated when this article was extended to include this section, and may not be right for the current MX version.