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Rain - "This Year" issue

Discussion and questions about Cumulus weather station software version 1. This section is the main place to get help with Cumulus 1 software developed by Steve Loft that ceased development in November 2014.
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ppan2015
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Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by ppan2015 »

Hi there,

set the rain year at the station settings in Cumulus to October, as our official rain season starts on 1 October each year. It showed the correct rain until 30 September for the year (although it is unclear if Cumulus means "This year" as the calendar year or season year on the dashboard). Since 1 October it gives a random number under "Rain This Year".... but no rain was recorded and the station shows nothing.

What might the issue be? Is there a way to reset it to 0 somewhere?

Many thanks
PP
Why 32,7 for "This year" ("calendar year" or "rain season year"?)
thisyear.png
Correctly showing this calendar year rain!
rain_thisyear.png
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ppan2015
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed 06 Sep 2017 3:15 pm
Weather Station: noname
Operating System: Windows 10

Re: Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by ppan2015 »

I figured out:

"Rainfall - This Year" under dashboard shgows 32.7 bc that is what I set under "Station" "Annua Rainfall - YTD amount". It is strange though, that when the new rain season started (1 October) it reset the Annual Rainfalls (the 275.1 mm) to that amount. It is thus not taking the calendar year after a new rain season starts, but still uses the YTD for the calendar year. Seems to be wrong.

Regards
pp
sfws
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Re: Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by sfws »

This FAQ was written to answer these sort of queries http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#Where_ ... ls_from.3F.

It tells you that the year you enter beside the year to date figure is compared with the current year to decide whether to add the figure on to what is displayed, i.e. the year you should have entered on that set-up screen is the year for the October prior to when you first started using Cumulus. For what it is worth, I made the same mistake when I first used Cumulus, and as a result I expanded that FAQ from the original single paragraph that Steve Loft provided.

If you have not read all the Cumulus FAQ, you are missing out on a lot of knowledge.
ppan2015
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed 06 Sep 2017 3:15 pm
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Operating System: Windows 10

Re: Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by ppan2015 »

Thanks, read the FAQ but does not answer and it is hardly usable for normal users (far too technical).
"i.e. the year you should have entered on that set-up screen is the year for the October prior to when you first started using Cumulus." I did that - I put 2016 while I started using Cumulus from November 2016 on..

Question is: Why is Cumulus mixing up Calendar Year and Rain Year...

1) "YTD Rainfall" (station settings) is clearly for the calendar year,as it gives e.g. 2017 underneath
2) "Rainfall - This year" (dashboard) is clearly for the calendar year
Question: Why did it then change showing the calendar year rain (but still shows YTD rain from station setting as "rainfall this year") exactly on the start of a new rain season (as set in station settings)? It should either still show the 275.1 (see screenshots early) total for the calendar year or it should show 0 for the current rain season year (1 October-30 September)?

Thanks a lot
pp
sfws
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Re: Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by sfws »

You have not recorded in your forum profile the type of weather station you use, but if it is of the Fine Offset family, then it might be that one of the parts of the console memory (i'm trying not to be too technical) got corrupted leading to Cumulus reading the rainfall wrongly.

Start at http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#I_get_ ... h_readings and work downwards until you find the solution.

EDIT - I just checked and you have already raised similar points in https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 40#p126540. Did you make the corrections to dayfile.txt etc suggested then? AllyCat did explain about Fine Offset in that earlier answer.
ppan2015
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Re: Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by ppan2015 »

It does still not answer the question, unfortunately, and it does not help to come always back to "blaming others"...

Once again: Is Cumulus using calendar year or rain season year? It seems it is freely mixing up both of them. It is simply a software (programmer) errorif one is writing "This year" and not stating what year is meant (2017 vs 1 October 2017-30 September 2018!

Cheers
PP
sfws
Posts: 1183
Joined: Fri 27 Jul 2012 11:29 am
Weather Station: Chas O, Maplin N96FY, N25FR
Operating System: rPi 3B+ with Buster (full)

Re: Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by sfws »

"Blaming others" - a bit unfair, you have chosen to use Cumulus, it was not designed and written specifically for you, you have to accept that it might not work in the way you think it should.

In both this thread and the previous you were advised that you could alter the contents of your files to correct what Cumulus displays. You have not answered whether you have made those corrections. You can't honestly expect any software to work back through past data and make the right corrections when only you can identify where the wrong figures are. I would guess that many Cumulus users would agree with me that Cumulus 1 provides a lot of editing features that would not be found in other software.
ppan2015 wrote: it is hardly usable for normal users (far too technical).
Steve Loft provides Cumulus Help screens, those are the non-technical brief guides, and designed for everyone to understand.

The Wiki tries hard to give extra detail and is only technical to the extent that it needs to explain the answers, and remember it has to also provide answers for those who do have more technical knowledge.
ppan2015 wrote: Is Cumulus using calendar year or rain season year? It seems it is freely mixing up both of them.
Yes, in some places Cumulus uses one, in some places it uses other.
Personally, I appreciate that feature and display both figures on my screen.

I can't find it now and it probably was on an old beta forum topic, but a very long time ago I asked Steve if he could display a label quoting "rain season" to separate the two figures as at the time there were two different people posting about being confused between the two different figures. His answer at the time seemed quite reasonable to me, it read something like this, the vast majority of Cumulus users don't use a rain season that is different to the calendar year, so such a change would benefit few people and therefore be very low priority compared to many other changes that people have requested and since he was unlikely to deliver all higher priority requests it would never happen.
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steve
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Re: Rain - "This Year" issue

Post by steve »

I would have to look at the code to see how it handles this, but I’m happy to just concede that it’s a bug or a “feature”, to save me having to do that (as looking at the Cumulus 1 code is now quite difficult).

Sorry that you find the FAQ “far too technical”. Meteorology is a very technical subject in itself, so a degree of technical ability has to be assumed, as otherwise the documentation would be huge and impossibly detailed (and there’s already quite a lot of it).
Steve
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