FAQ: Difference between revisions

All versions of Windows from XP to Windows 10 inclusive (and the server versions). It works on 32 bit and 64 bit editions. It may also work on Windows 2000, but this is not supported. You will probably not be able to get it to work on Windows 2000 with a Fine Offset station.

On the [http://sandaysoft.com/downloads downloads page]

*'''WOW''' - this feature is to update your observations ontoUK Met Office Weather Observations Website, the update will happen automatically while Cumulus is running if you configure it in the WOW frame within Cumulus internet settings.

Please create an [http://sandaysoft.com/forum/tracker.php enhancement request].

I develop and support Cumulus in my spare time, and I have a full time job. I invite donations, but I don't make a living from Cumulus. I add facilities when I can. There is a long list of  [http://sandaysoft.com/forum/tracker.php enhancement requests] already, and I am slowly working my way through them as time permits. If there is an enhancement request for the facility you have asked for, and the facility is a reasonable one (in my opinion) then I will hopefully get around to adding it one day. Please be patient. Please don't ask for a forecast of when a feature will be added.

The installer will always upgrade the following files (replacing them, ignoring existing versions):

A converter for Weather Display log files is available from this thread in the forum: http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10118

A converter for WeatherLink log files is available from this thread in the forum: http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11349

* The rainfall totals, are initialised when Cumulus is (re-)started by adding up the corresponding daily totals in dayfile.txt and storing those sums in memory. Two of the totals can be seen using default settings on '''View''' menu, ''This month'' screen for this month, ''This year'' screen for this calendar year, but the third total for the rain season (you can change starting month) is seen on the ''main'' Cumulus screen.

* The rainfall totals shown on the ''This period'', ''This month'', and ''This year'' screens within the '''View''' menu are generated by adding up the daily rainfall totals found in [[dayfile.txt]] for the selected period. So any rainfall for the current (meteorological) day is excluded as the latest dayfile.txt row is for yesterday. Totals are recalculated when you press the ''Update display'' button. Important note: The view menu 'This year' screen always calculates the total for a selected calendar year starting in January.

* The rain figures that Cumulus uses for displaying in 'This month' and 'This year' on the Cumulus ''main screen'' are updated each time Cumulus receives a rain reading from the station, so will not be displayed if Cumulus is unable to read rain information from your station.

* For the web tags, Cumulus takes its stored sums and adds today's latest total each time, to give the current totals for this month and this rain season (year so far) when processing 'thismonthT.htm' and 'thisyearT.htm' web templates.

**If you have set a 'year to date' value and Cumulus is being re-started when the year specified beside that figure matches the current year, your year-to-date amount is also added into this year's total. This should normally only be relevant in your first rain season of operating Cumulus, but could be used if in any season you needed to add an extra amount because for some reason you had a gap in your recording period.

**There is no corresponding setting for calculating the total for the first 'this month' of Cumulus operation.

The built-in dayfile.txt editor is used if it is necessary to amend the daily totals (to correct any monthly, rain season, or calendar year, totals); the built-in all-time (or monthly records) editor(s) in Cumulus is used if it is necessary to regenerate the extreme records from dayfile.txt; see [[#My_station_invented_some_rain_that_didn.27t_really_occur.2C_and_I_want_to_set_it_to_zero_.28or_some_other_figure.29 |FAQ about correcting incorrect rainfall displays]].

*You can install Cumulus on more than one PC, but each copy must connect directly to its own weather station (one station connected per PC).

*You can install 2 copies of Cumulus in different paths on a single PC, ''if you have two weather stations'' and Cumulus is able to distinguish between them, e.g. they are from different manufacturers, or both are serial port stations (different ports), or one is USB and one is serial, or one is a Weatherlink IP. In other words the  combination that does not work on a single PC is two USB stations from the same manufacturer. Note that Davis stations with USB loggers are serial port stations as far as Cumulus is concerned, so there are no problems using multiple copies of Cumulus with multiple Davis stations on the same PC.

Use the 'rewind feature' of Cumulus.  Look in the backup folder for the backup which Cumulus took when it first started up today. Stop Cumulus, copy all of the files from that backup folder into the data folder (overwriting the files which are there) - this restores Cumulus to the state it was in before you ran it today. Start Cumulus and it should then download the data (from the date when it last stopped running onwards), to get up to date.

As mentioned elsewhere, you can even choose an older back-up and rewind back further providing the information is in the station logger. Remember however, that when you restart Cumulus it will only have access to observations at the station's logging interval, so any extremes picked up by the frequent querying of the station while Cumulus was previously running during the period you are now rewinding may be lost.

*If you have only installed Cumulus a few days ago, or have just re-started Cumulus after it was stopped and encounter multiple ''rogue readings in the catch-up from the station logger''; '''one possibility''' is to stop Cumulus and find the backup files that it took when you started it up (or just after the previous roll-over time), copy those files into the data folder, overwriting the ones that are there, then when you start it up again it could sort itself out.

== How to restore a corrupted log file ==

Full information about all the log files is in the [http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/Category:Log_Files Wiki], so you can study the notes linked from there, but here is a very quick summary.

Both Cumulus 1 and Cumulus MX create a copy of each of the logs in the backup folder, both at end of day rollover, and when the software is (re-)started.  If the corrupted file in 'data' folder is a log holding extremes (not the detailed log created for each month nor 'today.ini'), then the easiest way to remove false extremes recorded recently is to to overwrite the current file with the one from the most recent back-up.  Since 'today.ini' is updated very frequently (every time Cumulus interogates your weather station), it is not advised that you overwrite that file, unless you are able to do a rewind as described in previous answer. If you were to use the backup folder copy of the detailed log, you would lose all of the stored values since the backup, so again only do that in a rewind context where all the files from the backup are overwriting those in data folder, and you simply want to copy in what is still in any station logging memory.

Cumulus MX does not provide editors for any log file - stop Cumulus MX and use an external editor.

=== (Invented rain) Error in today's total===

#correct today's total using the [[Today.ini#Editing_rainfall_in_today.ini_within_Cumulus | 'today's rain']] editor on the edit menu (select from main screen in Cumulus 1, or find in the MX browser interface).

#optionally stop Cumulus and edit [[today.ini]] to change the ''LastTip=''(look up previous value in a recently backed up today.ini) parameter.

#Remember that 'ConsecutiveDryDays' and 'ConsecutiveWetDays' do not include today.

Just edit the total or rate for the relevant day in dayfile.txt, using the [[Cumulus_Screenshots#File.2FEdit.2FHelp_Menu|dayfile.txt]] editor on the Cumulus 1 edit menu (or a suitable external editor for Cumulus MX).

=== (Invented rain) Error in all-time records ===

See [[#How_do_I_correct_my_all-time_.28or_monthly_all-time.29_records.3F |this FAQ]].

Note that other rain figures, such as 'rain last hour', 'rain last 24 hours' and 'rain since midnight' depend on a sensible progression of the rain counter, so it's not easy to correct this; it's easier to wait until the erroneous figure is far enough in the past so as not to affect the calculation. If you really do want to try to correct it; you would need to stop Cumulus, then find and edit multiple field 11 (assuming date is field 0) the Cumulus 'rain counter' values in the [[monthly_log_files]] in the current monthly log file so they are correct relative to the current value of the rain counter (i.e. the latest one logged). Note that if you're using a midnight start of day then you don't need the 'rain since midnight' figure anyway, as it is normally the same as 'rain today', and that figure is much more easily corrected.

The USB support in the Davis DLL which Cumulus uses doesn't seem to work. You need to use the CP210X USB/serial software which Davis supply, and use the station in serial mode. If you have previously been using your station with Weatherlink in USB mode, you will need to change to serial mode in Weatherlink before you can use the station with Cumulus. You can do this using [http://www.davisnet.com/support/weather/download/CP210X_USB_Serial_Converter_ver2.exe this utility from Davis]. See also this FAQ entry - http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#How_do_I_get_my_Davis_station_with_USB_working_with_Cumulus.3F

All-time extremes are held in [[alltime.ini]] and monthly all-time extremes are held in [[monthlyalltime.ini]], the cross-references will help you understand the various items and how they can only be updated as Cumulus is processing a new observation if that observation is higher or lower than the existing extreme, so you removing a rogue past value will not affect them. For both these files if you are using ''Cumulus MX'' you will need to use an external text file editor (don't use a word processor), but if you are using ''Cumulus 1'' you can use the [[Cumulus_Screenshots#File.2FEdit.2FHelp_Menu|built-in appropriate editor]] from the first couple of commands in the Edit menu to do this.  

If you know the correct figures, you can enter them manually.

*You can look at the [[Alltimelog.txt]] file to find the previous values for the [[Monthlyalltime.ini|all-time records]].

*Similar entries are logged to the [[diags]] files for the monthly highs and lows in [[month.ini]].

*You can also get the editor to scan the [[dayfile.txt|daily summary log]] and [[Monthly_log_files]] to find the highs and lows from those files, click the Help button for details. Note that to use this facility you first need to correct any incorrect values in the files being scanned; you can use the built-in editor in Cumulus to edit dayfile.txt.

Cumulus takes a backup of all the active data files when it starts up, and also at the start of the meteorological day (just after midnight for a lot of users). The backups are kept in folders within the backup sub-folder in the Cumulus installation. So an alternative method would be to find the latest backup from before the error occurred, and copy the ''alltime.txt'' and/or ''monthlyalltime.txt'' file from the backup to the Cumulus data folder. Do this with Cumulus stopped.  There is more information in [[:Category:Log_Files]], for all of the types of file.

You need to initialise them. See the release announcement for version 1.9.3, which is when this facility was introduced: http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9286

See this forum post - http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14148

Cumulus doesn't support Secure FTP. You can configure Cumulus to invoke an external program like WinSCP, as described here: [[SFTP | SFTP article]]

Modern Stevenson Screens are uPVC constructed with a black interior (so they do not radiate heat onto the sensors) and a white exterior (so they reflect as much radiation as possible).  There is a lot of discussion on the [http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=16 Homebuilt forum] about different approaches to improving measurements, and the problems with out of the box instrumentation from the different manufacturers.  

There is a lot of discussion on the [http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=16 Homebuilt forum]. In terms of siting, it is important to position your rain gauge where you can safely get to it.