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→Should I use Cumulus 1 or Cumulus 2 or Cumulus 3 (MX)?: UPDATED ! (and added "I use Cumulus 1 and want to move to Cumulus MX")
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== Should I use Cumulus 1 or Cumulus 2 or Cumulus 3 (MX)? == | == Should I use Cumulus 1 or Cumulus 2 or Cumulus 3 (MX)? == | ||
Steve Loft (who originated all 3 versions) had no recommendations one way or the other. However, since he focussed on enjoying retirement and withdrew from involvement in Cumulus, a lot has changed. | |||
Now newcomers should probably choose Cumulus MX, but read on if you are not sure. | |||
Cumulus 1 is a finished version, and because the development environment is obsolete no further changes are possible. That said there have been two recent patches to the screen interface, allowing dates from 2021 to 2030 to be selected in drop downs, but the core code will never change. Cumulus 1 is reliable and has more functionality to cope with problems if your weather station set-up may experience problems. However, it does not support some new weather station models, and it will only run on a Microsoft Windows device, so those two facts may imply you cannot use it! Although there remains some expertise with Cumulus 1 established users, any newcomer may prefer to choose a MX as that has more technical support available. | |||
Cumulus | Cumulus 2 explored an improved data approach using UTC and having better handling of rainfall. Although it was hoped it would make enhancement easier, and allow use of alternative languages possible, it proved too complicated. and has been abandoned and is no longer available, so if you don't already have it hard luck. Subsequently, some of the developments in Cumulus 2 were ported into new version 1.9.0, and remain in final Cumulus 1.9.4 from where they were in turn ported to Cumulus MX. So whichever of the two versions still available you choose, you are benefiting from work done for Cumulus 2. | ||
Cumulus | Cumulus 3 is live and is still being improved. It is more often known as Cumulus MX. It is using a different architecture (partly inspired by Cumulus 2), it provides some enhancements in functionality and will run on a range of platforms. It can be used in a production system as it has good reliability, but perhaps should be avoided in a few rare cases where people's systems are not very reliable. Initially MX lacked several key parts of the functionality in Cumulus 1, but the number of such facilities continues to decrease as Mark Crossley is adding missing functionality. | ||
Cumulus | == I use Cumulus 1 and want to move to Cumulus MX == | ||
You can move between versions fairly easily, but you should really read all the guidance in the Cumulus MX support forum. However, here are some key points: | |||
* While Cumulus 1 has a tool to generate graphs itself and then uploads them to your website, the graphs used in Cumulus MX are drawn when the end-user loads the web page, they use Highcharts routines that are free for non-commercial use only, i.e. you may not use MX with these graphs on a company web site. | |||
* While Cumulus 1 runs as an application that includes a main screen, and other screens, that appear when you start it, Cumulus MX is two separate applications, there is the "engine" that connects to your weather station and processes that data, but there is also a separate user interface that can be viewed on a browser on any device connected to the same local network as the device that runs the engine (for key security reasons this user interface should not be exposed over the wider internet). | |||
* If you want to use your Cumulus 1 data folder with MX, and you use decimal commas in your Cumulus 1 data, you will need to edit the '.ini' files to change, in each stored value, the decimal commas into periods/full stops, because Cumulus MX always expects periods/full stops in .ini files regardless of the locale in use. Look up the individual .ini files in this Wiki as there are a few lines where the representation of a date is different between Cumulus 1 and Cumulus MX, so you should edit those lines for the files in your MX data folder. | |||
* The '.txt' files in the data folder will work with both Cumulus 1 and MX - assuming you are using the same decimal and list separators in MX as you used in Cumulus 1 (i.e. the same locale). | |||
* Any web tags on your web pages or in your scripts that use date and/or time formatting to change the default will need to be edited. See the [[Webtags]] page for information on how to change these. | |||
* Your "Cumulus.ini" file must start with a capital letter for MX, and all the characters used within the configuration file must be within ASCII range, Cumulus 1 on Windows is not fussy about case in the file name. Cumulus MX adds further items to this file, but you do not need to change the contents of it for moving in either direction except in regards to the NOAA reports. Those from Cumulus 1 and MX are set up differently because of different codes to output a month format parameter as the change to date/time formats in webtags also applies to NOAA report file format lines in Cumulus.ini. Also the [FTP site] section in Cumulus.ini will only work in MX with 'site' entirely in lower case, so if it is different in your copy, edit that. | |||
*(Other file names within MX will be as supplied in the file that you download, or as Cumulus MX decides when it creates the file). | |||
* The settings in Cumulus 1 and MX work differently, for Cumulus 1 you choose to save changes by clicking OK, for MX changes are generally saved when you move on to next setting. | |||
Finally if you are moving from Windows to Linux, remember you need to learn a host of new commands! | |||
== What operating systems does Cumulus run on? == | == What operating systems does Cumulus run on? == | ||