Wunderground Alert - Cumulus not reporting....

[souwesterly]

Just recently I decided to go mad and connect up to the wunderground weather network so I could have my Watson weather station online.
Everything went fine and soon I was able to see my own display - made me (as an old pensioner ) feel quite proud even if it was a very minor 'thing to do'!

Anyway, a bit later on, when I used my laptop (to watch the Tet match at around 3 am....I got woken up by rain on the window) there was an email from wunderground.....
"The Weather Underground PWS network has detected that your personal weather station (ID #ITAUNTON2) has not reported to http://www.wunderground.com for more than 2 hours."
'Fair enough', I thought, 'my PCs been turned off overnight' - and sure enough, moments after I'd turned it on again in the morning, another email arrived saying my PWS was now reporting again.

But now I've discovered that if I turn off my on-screen Cumulus display (which I don't necessarily need because of my display console), then my PWS goes offline. Seems obvious, and yet.....
I hadn't realised that beforehand and I saw no note of it when doing my set-up and connection to wunderground.....so I thought I'd mention it now for the benefit of those who follow.

So Steve, there's a way round it?
Since my PC is running and connected 24/7 by a router, why isn't Cumulus connected too?
Is there a way for it to be "rewired" so it remains online, even if I turn my on-screen Cumulus off?
Any thoughts will be of interest.
Cheers,
Chris

[steve]

Can you explain what you mean by "I turn off my on-screen Cumulus display"? If you mean you closed Cumulus down, then how can it keep updating WU if it isn't running? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding?

[souwesterly]

Hi Steve,
Apologies if I'm not saying the right things!

Right.....first thing in the morning, I turn on my PC.
My Watson display console is always connected to the PC via it's usb lead and is constantly displaying 'now' weather, but to find, for example, what the overnight minimum temperature was, I click on my Cumulus desktop icon and bring up my on-screen (monitor) display.
At that point my wunderground connection is re-established.

Anyway, that opens up my Cumulus display, which loads it's data and then I can access information from the past - and also obviously see current conditions.

If I then close down that on-screen display (because I obviously don't need to see Cumulus all the time as the Watson display tells me what's happening), I disconnect from wunderground.
It just seems that while my PC is turned on and connected then surely Cumulus is or should be too, whether or not my on-screen display is activated or not.

Ok - if my PC is turned off for the night then fair enough - no connection.......
But surely my on-screen Cumulus display is 'additional' to it's background activities.....especially as my weather station is active 24/7.

Presumably I'm wrong and need to have my Cumulus opened (minimised if necessary) in order to remain connected to wunderground.

Hope that makes sense.....
Cheers,
Chris

[steve]

Presumably I'm wrong and need to have my Cumulus opened (minimised if necessary) in order to remain connected to wunderground.

Yes, Cumulus has to be running in order to update WU in real time. If you close the Cumulus window (rather than minimising it, say), you are telling Cumulus to exit; it's then no longer running and therefore it's impossible for it to be updating WU.

If you select the 'minimise to tray' option in the display options, then when you minimise the window, it won't appear on the task bar, only as an icon in the system tray ("notification area"). But it's still running.

[souwesterly]

Thank you Steve,

Makes sense - I'd got it wrong - I was pretty well thinking that Cumulus was acting as an integral part of the PC rather than a stand-alone program.

I'll keep it running when my PC is connected now.

Kind regards,

Chris