Cumulus FAQ

Installing and Running Cumulus

  1. What operating systems does Cumulus run on?
  2. What weather stations does Cumulus work with?
  3. Will you support weather station X?
  4. How do I upgrade to a new release?
  5. How do I back up my data?
  6. You seem to spend an awful lot of time answering questions that are already answered in the Help, the Forum, or the FAQ?

Troubleshooting

  1. I’ve configured my ftp details but the web pages aren’t appearing on my site.
  2. I’ve tried active FTP mode, buy my web pages still don’t appear?
  3. My web pages have things like <#location> in them?
  4. My ‘record’ light has stopped flashing
  5. I installed a new version and my web page templates got over-written
  6. I can’t find my data files!
  7. The moon rise or set time is showing dashes

Installing and Running Cumulus

  1. What operating systems does Cumulus run on?

    Any Windows NT based system, i.e. Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Home Server, and Windows Server 2008. Note that you may have problems with Windows 2000 and Fine Offset stations

  2. What weather stations does Cumulus work with?

    Davis Vantage Pro (VP) and Vantage Pro2 (VP2), Oregon Scientific WM918, WMR918, WMR928 and WMR968, stations which use the Easyweather software such as MyDEL, Nevada, Watson and Fine Offset, with model numbers such as WH1080, WH1081, W8681, 265NC etc, and the La Crosse WS2300 range.

  3. Will you support weather station X?

    It’s quite hard to support a particular weather station when I don’t have access to one. Also, most companies don’t seem to like third parties writing software for their stations, so don’t make the protocol available. However, if the protocol is available somewhere, and you are prepared to do all of the testing (it will be frustrating, hard work), I may consider adding support for your weather station. Please post a request on the forum.

  4. How do I upgrade to a new release?

    Back up your data, and run the new setup. Occasionally, there may be actions you need to perform before or after the upgrade - these will be documented in the readme.txt file.

  5. How do I back up my data?

    Copy the contents of the Cumulus ‘data’ folder.

  6. You seem to spend an awful lot of time answering questions that are already answered in the Help, the Forum, or the FAQ?

    I know.

Troubleshooting

  1. I’ve configured my ftp details but the web pages aren’t appearing on my site.

    Try setting ‘use active FTP mode’.

  2. I’ve tried active FTP mode, buy my web pages still don’t appear?

    Are you absolutely sure you have set the ftp path correctly? Most problems like this are a result of an incorrect path. Try turning on the ftp logging and look in the ftplog.txt and realtimeftplog.txt files.

  3. My web pages have things like <#location> in them?

    You’ve edited them with something like Dreamweaver, and it’s changed the angle brackets on the web tags to &lt; and &gt; - you need to change them back to < and >.

  4. My ‘record’ light has stopped flashing

    The ‘record’ light only flashes when an all-time record has been broken.

  5. I installed a new version and my web page templates got over-written

    The supplied web page templates are part of Cumulus and will be over-written on upgrade. If you want to create your own web pages, don’t edit the supplied ones, use the ‘extra files’ facility.

  6. I can’t find my data files!

    You’re probably running Windows Vista. Look in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Cumulus

  7. The Moon rise or set time is showing dashes.

    The moon doesn’t rise and set every day, the dashes appear when that event doesn’t occur on that particular day. The period between a moon rise and set is approximately 12 hours and 25 minutes, on average. The moon rises (or sets) approximately 50 minutes later, on average, each day. It therefore follows that sometimes the moon will not rise or set on a particular day - i.e. it had risen the previous day, or will set on the following day.