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Cumulus MX FAQ: Difference between revisions
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→Dealing with rogue or missing input or derivatives
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# When you first start running MX, it does not seem to be able to populate charts and recent history web tags for earlier times.
= Dealing with rogue
==INPUT ISSUES==
INPUT ISSUES: Sometimes a weather station will supply incorrect data bits that mean wrong numbers are input to Cumulus MX or that MX looking at byte level does not recognise what it is being sent.▼
Input issues are when Cumulus reads the wrong information from the weather station.
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*What Cumulus outputs, for up to 3 different wind speeds it can calculate, depends on the weather station and which outputs from the weather station are processed by Cumulus.
*For Fine Offset (not Ecowitt), MX has various options on '''Settings''' menu, ''Calibration settings'' page, '''Spike removal''' section to reject any readings that ''differ from previous value'' by more than figure selected. As mentioned, this is not available for most weather stations, only those that can optionally output to Easyweather software.
*For all weather stations, MX has various options on '''Settings''' menu, ''Calibration settings'' page, '''offsets''' and '''multiplier''' sections to calibrate what is read from the weather station by applying a multiplier (in some cases both first and second order multipliers), and/or an offset.
*MX can also reuse the last good reading (for up to 6 times) if there is a problem with individual readings. After that it gives up and labels that sensor as not working (see next point).
*MX can stop running if it is unable to obtain readings for key measurements, i.e. temperature, pressure, wind speed, humidity, although there are some settings that can over-ride this action.
== DERIVATIVES ISSUES ==
Derivatives are any values that Cumulus reports which it has not read directly from the weather station. In a sense, every out put by Cumulus is a derivative, because the units that the weather station supplies readings in, have to be converted to the units that the user has requested.
*Cumulus MX ignores any maximum and minimum values supplied by a weather station; it calculates these highest and lowest derived values each metrological day for itself, from every measurement it processes, not the small sample of it actually writes to the standard log.
**As each new standard sensor reading is read in it is first converted to units selected by user, then the reading is added to the recent history array, then it is compared against the previous highest/lowest for that meteorological day, updating those as needed, and finally the reading is placed into web tags (for web pages), application programming interface that can feed it to admin interface, and a subset are logged in the standard log file.
*Currently, MX does not calculate maximum and minima for any extra sensor measurements.
*For rainfall, MX does not use any rainfall readings supplied by the weather station, instead it works with a long term counter, and derives daily readings to output from subtracting one counter value (at end of required period) from another at start of day. For rain this month, Cumulus adds the current day's reading, and the readings logged in the [[Dayfile.txt|daily summary log]] for each preceding day in the month. For rainfall this year (also shown on the current conditions output, not any output for this year), the rainfall being output is the sum of the Year-to-date figure in the '''Settings''' menu, ''Station settings'' page, '''Annual rainfall''' section, today's rain, and the total rain stored in daily summary log for every previous day in the same calendar year.
*Depending on weather station (and settings selected), Cumulus may either use values from the weather station, or values it calculates itself, for items like Wind Chill and Forecasts.
*Weather stations do not supply Canadian Humidity Index (Humidex), USA Heat Index, Australian Apparent Temperature or the Feels Like temperature indices. For all these, Cumulus will calculate them by looking at various simultaneous readings (temperature, wind speed, and humidity for those two examples).
*The current conditions that Cumulus outputs are derived from every individual measurement, although if the weather station does not update between every output by Cumulus (e.g. Fine Offset that update only every 40 seconds), then Cumulus may repeat its previous readings for two outputs in succession (Cumulus will output at least every minute, sometimes every second if weather station updates that frequently).
**Cumulus provides recent history web tags to give you access to a selection of outputs for every minute in past 7 days.
EXTREMES ISSUES: When MX is calculating those maximum and minimum derivatives, these are within an individual day, but they are compared against others in the same month (to update both the this month web tags and the monthly extremes web tags), against others in the same year (to update the this year web tags) and against all previous derivatives (to update the all-time web tags). I say update web tags, because that is how you view the extremes, but actually there is a log file for maximum and minimum in a day (today.ini), for this month (month.ini), for monthly-all-time (monthlyalltime.ini), for this year (year.ini), and for all time (alltime.ini). These log files are where MX stores the extremes and where you need to do corrections. For total rain this month, this year, maximum rain for this month in all years and highest rainfall (hourly, daily, monthly), the same log files are used. The highest daily wind run per month, per year, in the same month for all years and all-time is similarly stored in these log files and made available as web tags.
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