The Alternative Interface (ai.cmx)

An Alternative (additional) Interface

Overview

Following the release of the responsive default website for CumulusMX, I am now looking at the development of the main CumulusMX Interface.

Although the main focus of the Interface is to manage your weather station, it also provides your initial view of the data that you are collecting. As such I feel that it should also use the same up-to-date features as the supplied public default website.

Like the public website supplied with CumulusMX, the AI uses colour themes and, wherever possible, is fully responsive. This should make it easier to use on tablets and phones as well as the more traditional desktop/laptop screen.

Like the supplied Interface, the AI includes all the required pages to manage your weather station but also provides some additional information, especially on the dashboard page. It also provides 30+ themes that can be applied to it and the default public website, it required.

How it fits with the existing inteface

The AI has been developed as an alternative to the existing Interface - it is not a replacement. The existing Interface should always be retained as it is this that will be updated by Mark as and when required.

As said above, the AI includes all the same resources needed to view the data being generated by your website; to configure your station and to edit data should errors occur.

However, some changes to layout have been made:

• The Header and Footer are both fixed by default. This can be changed by you if required.
• The Menu has been adapted to take less space but includes a button to return to the default Interface pages.
• The Dashboard page
  • Shows the alarm LEDs at the top of the page.
    (These can be hidden/re-displayed using the button provided with the page title).
  • The Sun and Moon rise & setting times are displayed in a popup; again using the button in the page title bar.
• The Charts pages
  • All charts can be zoomed, i.e., you can swipe the mouse over parts of the chart to view readings in detail.
  • The recent and historic charts use buttons that always span a complete line (or lines).
  • The Select-a-Chart groups the buttons in threes, as in the default Interface.

 Page under development.  All information is, however, still current.
 

One other alteration is on the main dashboard. I have moved the alarms panel to just underneath the sun and moon times. When using the Interface I like to be made aware of any alarms without scrolling; especially ones about the system. This page is already being modified to improve its layout - I will be releasing a new version shortly that enables the alarm panel to be hidden once scanned for issues.

Overview

Below are a number screenshots of various aspects of the alternative interface.

Version 1

• 

  Showing the weather records.

• 

  NOAA Reports. No significant change to this page in version 2

• 

  Version 2 of this page enables you to re-order each block to suite your weather station resources

This has now been superseded by Version 2. (See below).

Version 2

• 

  The v2 Dashboard showing some version 3 developments ideas

• 

  A sample of the carts page - note all charts are zoomable and any buttons always spread across the width of the page

• 

  The Today verses Yesterday page. All panels can be re-ordered as required.

• 

  The 'Edit Data Logs' page showing rows hovered and rows selected.

• 

  The same page showing the edit popup.

• 

  The Alarms settings page.

• 

  The extra Webfiles page. Note I put a heading in the first entry of every page to identify role of upload.

• 

  Showing the combined diary and current conditions editor.

All the above are taken from my current Version 2 of the Interface. The only exception is the image of the dashboard that shows some of the developments I am playing with.

• One is the inclusion of Davis Weather Station details so that I can see when the battery needs replacing or if there is some other issue.
• The second is the inclusion of "New Record" LEDs in the appropriate panels. I don't yet know how detailed this needs to be; at the moment its limited to just the four main categories - Temperature, Pressure, Rain and Wind. It might start getting very cluttered if I include all possible LEDs. Let me know your thoughts.

You can download version 2 of the Alternative Interface (AI) using this link Interface for CumulusMX v2. This upload has been updated on 2nd December 2021 @ 10:55am. This update fixes the Feels Like gauges not displaying data, the Dew point temperatures title to 'Other Temperatures, and the popup editor used on the Day File, Sensor (and extra Sensor) logs pages. It also improves the Edit Records pages which were not loading the required stylesheet. It is also available on the Forum under CumulusMX ~ Alternative Interfaces.

Following Marks update to build 3159, the zip file below contains the changes applied to the data log editing pages and their associated javascript files. build 3159 Changes ONLY, updated 9th December 2021 - further modifications to the Datepicker javascript to correct 'date To' selector reverting to start date. See included readme file.

Installation

Once you have downloaded the zip file, extract it somewhere other than your CumulusMX installation. This will avoid accidentally overwriting your existing Interface contents.

The Extracted package should consist of a single folder - ai.cmx, which can then be copied into the existing Interface folder so it shows as a sub-folder.

You are then ready to start using it. If you use the url: http://localhost:8998/ to run your normal interface, you can simply add the folder name to the end like so: http://localhost:8998/ai.cmx/. (Note the trailing backslash)

Of course localhost can be replaced with the IP address of the machine running CumulusMX.

You still have access to the default interface if you want. It can also be run from the alternative interface - there is a menu item at the right end to do this.