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Category:Cumulus MX: Difference between revisions
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= Cumulus flavours =
==Cumulus 1 ==
*When this article was first created in 2017, Cumulus 1 was still recommended for most users.▼
*It had extensive help screens built into the package, it had an installation package, and produced a main screen when it was running that summarised the weather and gave access to all the settings and editors.▼
*Cumulus 1 was created in 2003 when Steve Loft moved to Wanlockhead and bought himself a weather station. Initial releases were very much tailored to his needs, changing what weather station it supported to match the make he was using.
*In 2017, Cumulus 3 also known as MX, was experimental and it had limited functionality, much less that was available in Cumulus 1.▼
*Subsequently, he made his software available to anybody, and enhanced what it did to suit not only his requirements buy also what other users asked for.
*Consequently, at that time, most Cumulus users were using Cumulus 1, and just those wishing to take part in beta testing used MX.▼
*The functionality of Cumulus grew and grew, there were a few bugs, and a few mistakes, but generally Cumulus software had a high reliability, and grew in popularity, especially when the internet made it easier for people to praise Cumulus on many unrelated sites.
*Even now in 2020, there are many, many more people using Cumulus 1 than are using MX.▼
*Increased popularity meant an increase in demand for more functionality, increased functionality made it more popular, and the spiral of development continued.
* During 2020 much extra functionality has been added to MX, and MX is now able to persuade Cumulus 1 to make the swap to MX.▼
▲*
*Demand for enhancements soon exceeded the amount of spare time, Steve could devote to Cumulus outside his full-time job. A register of enhancement requests was created, so that Steve could track which he had implemented, but that register was lost when Steve moved to a different host.
*One widely supported request could not be implemented for Cumulus 1, to offer a version that would run on multiple operating systems, so Cumulus 2 was born (see below).
*Cumulus 1 development was halted for a while by the focus on Cumulus 2.
*Cumulus 1 development restarted when Cumulus 2 was aborted.
*The development environment for Cumulus 1 became obsolete, and Windows operating systems changed, making the development of Cumulus 1 more difficult, so Steve decided to have another go at a replacement (Cumulus 3).
*Development of Cumulus 1 ceased once Cumulus 3 (aka MX, see below) was able to work better than its C# predecessor Cumulus 2.
*Steve Loft decided not to release source code for Cumulus 1, so nobody else can develop Cumulus 1 any further.
*Consequently, Cumulus 1 functionality can not be changed, and without knowledge of how it was written, there is no ongoing support, just the experience of those who have used it, or are still using it.
*Fortunately, Steve Loft documented Cumulus 1 very well in the forum, and in the new Wiki that was started in August 2009, so Cumulus 1 continued to attract new users even when Cumulus 3 was made available as MX.
▲*When this article was first created in 2017, Cumulus 1 was still recommended for most users, and it would remain so for another couple of years.
▲*Even now in 2020, '''there are many, many more people using Cumulus 1 than are using MX'''.
== Cumulus 2 ==
*Steve Loft produced a Cumulus 2 where he tried to start again in September 2009. It was written in C# (which is the language used for MX), and it is fair to say that Steve did not find that new programming language easy, and in March 2010 he was really struggling to make Cumulus 2 work how he desired.
* 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).
* Despite that Cumulus 2 never succeeded in getting some of the basic functionality like driving web pages to work, so it never offered much of the more useful functionality of Cumulus 1.
*But it was a good testing ground for new functionality and enhancements that did not work fully in Cumulus 2 at least indicated what Cumulus 1 lacked.
*In August 2010, the new features being tested in Cumulus 2 were added to Cumulus 1, and Cumulus 2 was discontinued.
== Cumulus 3 ==
▲*In
▲*Consequently, at that time, most Cumulus users were using Cumulus 1, and just those wishing to take part in beta testing 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 and was faced with the question as to whether to spend more time on MX or more time with his wife, Beth, exploring places.
*When he fully retired, a life on the road beckoned, and they started travelling. Work on MX decreased, and work on Cumulus 1 was no longer possible, as he was limited to what his laptop and internet connection at stops could cope with.
*Various people offered to help him with MX if he was willing to make his source code available. Initially, Steve did not want anyone else to interfere with his creation, but when he and his wife found a new home the priorities changed in favour of a focus on his new life, and he wanted to cease involvement with Cumulus software, its wiki and forum.
*Steve Loft who wrote and developed Cumulus 1 and MX while he was in Scotland, decided to cease to offer any support from his new home in France. After quite a while considering it, he decided to make the source code available.
*The various people who had offered to help develop MX now were able to see the source code and decide whether they really did want to get involved.
*One programmer launched Cumulus 4, a new approach. Work continued on this for a while, but as far as I know it never made it into a working system, and I believe like Cumulus 2, it is abandoned.
*Other programmers looked at the source and thought we can make MX useful by adding the missing functionality, both what Steve added in the source but never got into a public release; and the functionality that makes Cumulus 1 so popular but is missing in MX and makes it difficult for those who are using MX.
== The MX future ==
* Mark Crossley was one of those who tried updating the MX source and producing a new release.
* In 2019, he made a successful first new release, and then focussed on adding some of the missing functionality. By 2020, he was not just adding in his own version of features that had been in Cumulus 1, he was also making MX talk to new weather station designs and deal with new sensors.
▲* '''During 2020 much extra functionality has been added to MX''', and MX is now able to persuade [[Moving from Cumulus 1 to MX|Cumulus 1 users]] that it might be the right time to make the swap to MX.
*Cumulus 1 was designed to work with weather stations that were available when it was written, the technology used by stations, and the models available, have both been changing since then.
*The ongoing development is adding lots more functionality into MX, it can do a lot more with the the numbers it reads from weather stations, and it can be updated when weather station features change.
*Currently, Mark Crossley who has been responsible for all recent MX releases is able to answer questions in the support forum [https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=40 for recent MX releases], but this article will hopefully allow him to spend less time answering questions and more time improving MX (and more time for everything else in his life)
It would be wrong not to
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 2020, yes there are a lot of new features being added, but there is even more work on resolving bugs.
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