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Lack of updates

Topics about the Beta trials up to Build 3043, the last build by Cumulus's founder Steve Loft. It was by this time way out of Beta but Steve wanted to keep it that way until he made a decision on his and Cumulus's future.

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steve
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Lack of updates

Post by steve »

I'm sorry that there haven't been any new releases of Cumulus recently. I've been very busy preparing our motorhome for our trip to France in September (we changed motorhomes while we were away during the winter, and I had a long list of jobs to do on it once we got home in April). I've have just about finished these, just need to do an oil change and change the front shock absorbers.

I had hoped that now I could do some work on MX for a couple of months before we set off for France. However... we appear to have sold our house, without really trying. We weren't really planning on selling until next year, but an opportunity has arisen, and it would be foolish to turn it down. This means that we are now busier than ever, as we have to empty the house before we go to France. We're not planning on buying another house in the near future (or perhaps not at all) so everything has to go. Some of it to be sold, some of it given away or recycled, and some of it thrown away. Getting rid of nearly all of your possessions when you live on a small island is quite a challenge.

What this all means is that I won't be able to do any work at all on MX for quite some time. I can just about spare time to read and reply on the forum while having a break between sorting out the house. This has made me start thinking about whether I want to continue with Cumulus at all. It seems to me that if I can only manage one update a year, is it really worth bothering at all? There is so much that needs doing, I'm never going to get around to doing it all.

One possibility I'm considering is releasing the MX source code - basically handing over development to "the community". I don't know how well this would work in practice. One problem is that the code is actually quite poor. This is mainly as a result of where it came from. Some of it is new, some of it is re-used from Cumulus 2 (MX is written in C#, like Cumulus 2), and a lot of it was semi-automatically translated from Cumulus 1 (written in Delphi Pascal). So it's really not very well structured and has no real consistency in how it does things.

Anyway, I've been meaning to post about this for some time now. So there it is.
Steve
agsteele
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by agsteele »

Thanks Steve.

I can see the challenges and I trust that preparations for your trip are as painless as possible. Selling up cannot be easy whatever your decision about the future.

I can also see that releasing the MX code to the public domain is a challenge. I've only done a very small amount of coding and I always promise to properly document and remark what I've done but then, when I come back later I see lots of things that needed comments to make the steps explicit that I just forgot to do. Perhaps that's the key. The code could be untidy but if it is commented well then your successors could take things forward.

Anyway, best wishes for the work on the motor home - may it be a great home over the next year.

Andrew
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by Hunter362 »

Best wishes in whatever you decide to do, Cumulus does what most of us want right now anyways.
Updates are always nice, especially when you added lots of new features, etc... you always tried to take care of any "bugs" as a priority 1st.
Hey, it works just fine as is, don't regret not spending time on it now, you have way more important things on your plate right now.
Those of us that have been here for a long time (7 yrs for me) totaly understand!!

Cheers and good will to you and the Mrs. on this new continuing chapter in your life's.!!!

Bill
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by grwkak »

Cumulus MX has been running very well for me and seems to do exactly what I need. Updates once a year would be fine as far as my needs are concerned. As long as there is support for issues - which this forum does well I am not sure much change is needed.

Glad to hear you got an opportunity to sell the house! Focus on what you need to do!

Guy
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by RayProudfoot »

Hi Steve,

I wish you well whatever path your life takes you down. Life must seem very different now to when you worked from home.

Cumulus 1 continues to be totally stable for me and I'm just 15 days away from 3000 days of observations. Great software!! :D
Cheers,
Ray, Cheshire.

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jachym
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by jachym »

Hi Steve,
I completely understand your reasons and all I can say is that I hope you enjoy your new life-style (just out of curiosity, which island are you moving to?).

I also totally understand your worries with regards to making the code available. I have the same dilemma. Many people asked about whether I would like to put Meteotemplate on GitHub. I said no. And one of the reasons (though there were other) was that even though Meteotemplate already is open-source, it is mostly used by people who know very little about programming or are not professional programmers - quite the opposite of who visits and uses Github - professionals. And given that everything I know about HTML, PHP etc. I have learned over the last 2 yrs by working on MT, the code that was developed at the beginning is quite poor, in fact it is still quite poor and messy and if I was to do it from scratch today, I would have done many things differently, but it is difficult to try to change things now and not always possible.

It is totally up to you what you do, either way I think Cumulus is a great piece of software and the fact it does not get many new updates is also in a some ways advantageous - it is practically bullet-proof, no major bugs and it does what people expect it to do.

Enjoy your summer, wherever you are and whatever you do!

Jachym
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by jim-easterbrook »

GitHub is not only a home for high quality software. There's some good stuff, some bad stuff, and some ugly stuff. (And that's just my projects.) Anyone offended by anything they find is welcome to fork that project and do it better.
Jim
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by scanman »

Whatever you decide to do, I wish you well! Cumulus has been a great success - evident from the number of users worldwide - and I for one would like to thank you for all your hard work in producing it and helping me out when things got the better of me.
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by sperry russ »

I know how things can be with major changes in your life. Retirement. Selling a home. Moving to a different location. I had to give up some things I had put a lot of work and effort in. You have put a lot of effort into Cumulus and CumulusMX. Cumulus in some ways is an extension of your life.

I have used it since I got my first weather station in 2012.

Hopefully if you do release the code it will continue on in a similar manner as it has in the past.

New horizons no matter what you decide!
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by posixx »

Hello steve,

Lot's of changes for you. you brought us very useful software which simply works. Many thanks for that. That said i would be very interested in the source of CumulusMX released to github (or maybe a closed git repo) to be able to continue development. For instance; i myself would like to add a webservice for getting realtime data to homeseer. i know this is currently stored in realtime.txt but using that would mean homeseer and cumulusMX need to run on the same PC.. Also restarting the data loop when a disconnect from weatherlinkIP is happening would be something to add.

Good luck in making the decisions and have a very nice holiday in France!

Frans
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by mcrossley »

posixx wrote:For instance; i myself would like to add a webservice for getting realtime data to homeseer. i know this is currently stored in realtime.txt but using that would mean homeseer and cumulusMX need to run on the same PC.
Have you looked at using the API data that MX makes available? You can access that remotely, though you may not want to expose that to the 'tinternet.
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by 1619Farm »

mcrossley wrote:
posixx wrote:For instance; i myself would like to add a webservice for getting realtime data to homeseer. i know this is currently stored in realtime.txt but using that would mean homeseer and cumulusMX need to run on the same PC.
Have you looked at using the API data that MX makes available? You can access that remotely, though you may not want to expose that to the 'tinternet.

you have cumulus save realtime.txt to any pc on you local network and/or ftp it anywhere and have homeseer pick it up from there
bruce45
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by bruce45 »

A while since I posted anything because cumulus is working fine since 2009. Cant tell you how many days but wish and your better half to all the best for the future.

Why fix whats not broken, code may need cleaned up but hey most of us could do with a make over. All the best Steve and the hope you keep in touch about your new life without cumulus taken over you life totally.

Live Long And Prosper

Bruce
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by greyman56 »

Release the code Steve. Don't worry about it's messiness, every programmer on the planet has created something like that. If not, then they have not been learning new things (and probably out of work now).

Don't be afraid of releasing on github either. There are plenty of good projects there that still have a hodge podge of code under the hood, but the community can help make it better. The biggest challenge is getting the revamped versions tested properly in the miriad of computer environments that it runs on.

I, for one, would help fix some issues. I run on Fedora linux and we seem stuck on mono-3, whereas the OS distribution currently wants to install mono-4.8 which does not work with MX on my system. So OS upgrades are always tricky. :(

In the 30+ years I have spent in the computer industry, I have repaired and maintained plenty of other people's (and my own) messy code. I've written software from small network management utilities through to whole database driven custom applications driving websites.

Graham
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steve
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Re: Lack of updates

Post by steve »

You can try to fix the mono issue without the MX code, as the problem is not in MX. It’s in the USB library which MX uses - https://www.nuget.org/packages/HidSharp/

Someone did offer to have a look at this, there’s a thread somewhere about it, but nothing seems to have happened as yet.
Steve
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