FAQ: Difference between revisions

2,602 bytes removed ,  24 June 2012
== My station invented some rain that didn't really occur, and I want to set it to zero ==
 
You can correct today's total using the 'today's rain' editor on the edit menu.
Cumulus calculates rainfall from a counter supplied by the station which keeps increasing as the rain causes the rain gauge to tip. Cumulus remembers the value of that counter at the start of the meteorological day, so that at any time during the day it can calculate today's rain by subtracting that figure from the current value of the counter. The start of day figure is stored in today.ini as the "Start=" figure, and the current value of the counter is stored in the monthly log files (e.g. jan10log.txt) as the 'total rainfall counter'. See the [[:Category:Log Files|Log Files]] section of this Wiki for the formats of the files.
 
If the erroneous rainfall didn't occur today, you just need to edit the total for the relevant day in dayfile.txt, (andusing optionallythe editdayfile.txt editor on the entriesedit inmenu. You may then need to restart Cumulus to get the correct monthly logand file)annual totals. If itthe waserroneous rain occurred yesterday, you can also optionally edit yesterday's total (which is only held temporarily for display purposes) in today.ini, while Cumulus is stopped.
'''Note:''' Version 1.9.2 has an editor to make adjusting today's rain total much easier, and makes most of what is described here unnecessary.
 
So, to set today's total to zero, '''stop Cumulus''' and look for the current value of the total rainfall counter on the last line of the current monthly log file (it's the 12th item on the line), and set the Start= figure in the today.ini file to that value. '''Don't just set the Start figure to zero, that will give you a large total for today!''' You can set today's total to other values in a similar way; just set the Start= figure so that the difference between that and the current total rainfall counter is the total you want to achieve - but if you have set a 'rain multiplier', you will need to take that into account. You may also want to edit the "Total rainfall today so far" values for today in the monthly log file to correspond.
 
'''Example:'''<br> My Start figure is '''43.2''' (ignore any superfluous digits; round to an appropriate number of decimal places)
 
[Rain]<br> High=0<br> HTime=09:00<br> '''Start=43.2000007629395'''<br> Yesterday=0.400001525878906
 
On the last line of my jan10log.txt file, my 'total rainfall counter' is '''49.4''', and hence my 'total rainfall today so far' is '''6.2'''.
 
19/01/10,17:20,6.8,89,5.1,25.4,35.2,159,0.0,'''6.2''',1020.56,'''49.4''',23.8,44,30.8,1.6,6.8
 
However, I know that it hasn't actually rained, and that 'rain' was caused by wind rocking the rain gauge, or electrical interference, or whatever. So, to set today's rain to zero, I set the Start figure equal to the total rainfall counter. (Another way of looking at it is: to remove the 6.2 units of rain, I add 6.2 to the Start figure):
 
[Rain]<br> High=0<br> HTime=09:00<br> '''Start=49.4'''<br> Yesterday=0.400001525878906
 
and I set the total rain so far today to zero:
 
19/01/10,17:20,6.8,89,5.1,25.4,35.2,159,0.0,'''0.0''',1020.56,'''49.4''',23.8,44,30.8,1.6,6.8
 
Note that I don't edit the 'total rainfall counter', it would achieve nothing, it's simply a record of the actual counter in the hardware. I would probably also edit all of the other entries for today in jan10log.txt to set their total rainfall today so far values to zero.
 
If the erroneous rainfall didn't occur today, you just need to edit the total for the relevant day in dayfile.txt (and optionally edit the entries in the monthly log file). If it was yesterday, you can also optionally edit yesterday's total in today.ini.
 
== Cumulus is showing a different wind speed compared to my console ==