Migrating from Cumulus 1 to MX: Difference between revisions

From Cumulus Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

Migrating from Cumulus 1 to MX (view source)

Revision as of 16:13, 22 March 2021

312 bytes added ,  22 March 2021
m
Text replacement - "Cumulus.ini" to "Cumulus.ini_(Cumulus_1)"
m (Text replacement - "[[MXDiags" to "[[MXDiags_folder")
m (Text replacement - "Cumulus.ini" to "Cumulus.ini_(Cumulus_1)")
* 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 administrative interface. The latter is viewed on a browser ''on any device connected to the same local network'' as the device that runs the engine. On this admin interface you change settings, you can edit the various logs, and you can view a series of web pages that allow you to see all the weather derivatives output from MX.
* The settings for both Cumulus 1 and MX are held in [[Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)|'''Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)''']]. For MX the file name is case sensitive [on non-Windows devices] and must have capitals where shown.
**The case sensitivity of MX [on all devices, even Windows,] also applies to the section names within the file e.g. [FTP site] must use capitals for the FTP and must use lower case for site. Edit any section names that do not follow format in the wiki article for this file referenced above.
**All the characters used within this configuration file must be within ASCII range (represented by binary 0 to 127, basically A to Z, a to z, 0 to 9, and some punctuation), any extended characters (such as those used for accented characters, symbols and non English characters) must be removed.
#*This approach requires you to manually copy various files from old folders to new location
#*MX requires all files from "data" and "Reports" folder created by Cumulus 1.
#*You also need "strings.ini" (if you use that), and "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)", plus any other tailoring set-up files, batch processes etc. you might use.
#*This approach is generally easier if you want to be able to go back to running Cumulus 1
 
=== 1: SIMPLE OVERWRITE APPROACH===
 
Unzip the MX download (from [[Software]] for latest version or from https://github.com/cumulusmx/CumulusMX/releases if you want an earlier release version) so the folder '''CumulusMX''' is the same folder as that which has "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)" in it. The unzip ensures all the files that need to be in sub-folders go into correct sub-folders.
 
Your [[Category:Log Files|log files]] in the data folder and any NOAA reports you may (they are optional) have created in Reports folder are available to MX. You should read the page in that log file link, as you might need to edit some items in the '''.ini''' files. For the '''.txt''' files, you need to check that all lines are consistent in using the same character to separate the 3 parts of the date, and the same character is used throughout to separate the items in list of fields.
Next obtain the MX distribution release as a zip as per previous option.
 
Now unzip Cumulus MX into the original Cumulus folder. The new CumulusMX.exe should end up in same folder as existing Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1), there will be other files in this folder, and there will be some new folders you have not seen before like '''interface''' and '''MXDiags''', but MX continues to use the existing sub-folders without any change of name.
 
This saves you from copying any of your Cumulus 1 files, they just stay where they are and get used by MX.
 
Where your existing [[Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)]] file makes reference to local folders (in say Extra Web Files), those references stay valid. The only edit you will make to configuration that affects Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) is dependent on your weather station type, as explained later MX uses a different parameter to refer to the port used by the weather station.
 
Be aware that MX changes the date formats in some files, so that Cumulus 1 can no longer understand them, so be cautious about copying log files (.ini and .txt) back to your Cumulus 1 back-up should you want to revert to using Cumulus 1.
#* your previous '''data''' folder contents into the new data folder created by unzipping, as before you might need to edit some log files
#*your previous '''Reports''' folder contents (if any) into the new Reports folder created by unzipping
#*your Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) file goes into the top level folder, the one with ExportMySQL.exe, CumulusMX.exe and the .dll files,
#** Check that destination file, it must be "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)" (ensure it starts with capital letter and all other letters are lower case)
#** In the new "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)" edit any lines that made reference to the old windows location. Remember, that only windows uses "\" in paths, and your new device will require reference to new locations. Even if you are still using windows, you may need to make changes to reflect that the files are now in a new location.
#**You can delay changing other settings (like the port used to access your weather station which uses a different parameter in MX) when you have access to the Settings pages in the MX admin interface
#* any other configuration files that you may have created (e.g. strings.ini, twitter.txt etc).
Do remember that with Cumulus 1 on Windows, each line in every file ends with both carriage return and line feed. If you are moving to MX on a Mac, each line should end with just a Carriage Return. For all Unix-based operating systems (Linux, Raspberry Pi OS, and other variants), each line should end with just a Line Feed. There are various editing tools that can do the necessary modification of all lines for you in just a couple of clicks; one such tool is Notepad++ (which although mostly used on PCs, can be used in other operating systems).
 
===Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)===
 
If you are running MX on Windows, filenames are not case sensitive, so MX will recognise "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)" or "cumulus.ini". But although Cumulus 1 might recognise "Cumulus1.ini" or anything else other than "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)", MX only recognises "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)".
 
If you are planning on running MX on another device, filenames are case sensitive, and your Cumulus 1 configuration file must be called "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)" with an initial capital followed by lower case, so it might need to be renamed.
 
If you read the [[Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)]] article, you will see that some parameters in the configuration file are only used by Cumulus 1, some only by MX, and some apply to both. MX will ignore any Cumulus 1 parameters it does not recognise, so you don't need to edit out lines. MX will also add any parameters it needs as read/write parameters for its settings, so in general you do not need to add them manually, you can simply set them using the relevant page in the settings part of the admin interface. There are of course a number of read-only parameters (these are ones that are entered directly into the configuration file and cannot be edited using settings), and there are some of these that are Cumulus 1 only and some that need to be added manually if you want to change the default.
 
There are a few exceptions to the above paragraph, if you look at [[Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)#Parameters_changed]] you will see the list of a few parameters that '''may need to be changed''' in this configuration file (it depends on what type of weather station you use). But you don't need to look them up as they are also mentioned in next 2 sections (station settings and web pages) below.
 
There are also some differences in how some parameters in this file are used in the 2 flavours.
It is advised that you work through all the MX settings screens once you have the [[MX Administrative Interface|Admin interface]] working, ensuring they do represent how you want MX to work. Some of the settings are for functionality you did not have in Cumulus 1 versions, and for these you will need to look up the link earlier in this sub-section.
 
For the read-only settings in Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1), you may need to read the documentation in the forum. The Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) article in this wiki has had read-only parameters added to it now, but it is impossible to know if all have been covered there.
 
== Station connections==
 
If your weather station used a port to connect to Cumulus 1, that port was set on the settings screen as a number and stored in Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) in the station section as Port=n. In Cumulus MX, as it runs on various operating systems, the port is specified using text (instead of a number), again you select it within settings, on Station settings screen, but that is stored within Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) in the station section as Comport=tttttttt. If your old number was 3, and you are still using Windows, the new setting would have value of COM3, for other devices it might be /dev/ttyUSB0.
 
== web pages==
# First, I copied my \Cumulus\strings.ini to \CumulusMX\strings.ini. This preserves any tailoring I have done of terminology.
#* Remember, "\Cumulus\web" and "\CumulusMX\web" have different content, so don't do any copying between these.
# Next, I copied my existing Cumulus 1 alarm sounds in "\Cumulus" across to MX folder "\CumulusMX\interface\sounds" as these were referenced in my main Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) file (I will edit that file next to reference the new location of these files).
# Now, I copy my \Cumulus\Cumulus1.ini (don't worry why my file had a "1" in its name, just remember that yours probably won't) to \CumulusMX folder as "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)". I then edit the MX "Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1)" file:
#* In the [Alarms] section (your Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) may have sections in a different order to mine) I edit all the parameter lines where the attribute ends in "File" to reflect their MX location in the sounds folder (there is no such folder in Cumulus 1).
#* I checked that I had a "[FTP site]" section (yes, mine was named correctly with second word all lowercase, but if your has [FTP Site] you will need to edit that section title to put second word entirely in lower-case)
# I now had to decide whether
I believe MX will do some tasks better, but there is a lot more to learn about how to use MX. MX does lack some features that I used in Cumulus 1. I found the View Period screen in Cumulus 1, where you could look at any day, week, month, season, or year in the past extremely useful. MX does not have such functionality yet.
 
While I was using Cumulus 1, I found with my Chas Olsen Fine Offset I had to define EWpressureoffset=x.y otherwise Cumulus 1 frequently failed to read the correct pressure. In implementing MX, I decided to try without that line in the new Cumulus.iniini_(Cumulus_1) file; I have not had any problems either when I first ran MX or indeed 2 months later when it is more than a month since I last ran Cumulus 1. Consequently, if you used to have pressure reading problems, you might find you don't with MX.
 
Some days after I first started trying MX, I have tried out more MX features, been happy with those, and as MX is now doing all I want I have stopped using Cumulus 1.
Sfws
5,838

edits

Retrieved from "https://www.cumuluswiki.org/a/Special:MobileDiff/7964"

Navigation menu