Cumulus Support

What exactly are the sunshine hours supposed to represent? As it's 8.35 am clear blue skys and I am getting zero hours?

Cumulus has no idea whether the sun is actually shining, it uses the 'light' reading from the station to make a best guess, based on where you are, the date, and the time of day. You may need to 'tweak' the solar settings - see the help for the station settings screen. There are also a number of threads about this on the forum, here's one which may help, for example: https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14747

Note that you need to have provided Cumulus with your correct co-ordinates for this to work at all.

So I need to tweak the settings so when the sun goes behind a cloud it stops recording as sunshine hours? Or is this trying to record from when the sun rises to when the sun sets?

Once a minute, it attempts to determine whether the sun is shining. If it is, it adds a minute to the total for today. You can use the yellow sun indicator on the main screen to determine whether Cumulus currently thinks the sun is shining, and compare it with reality. Note that there will be a lag, as the station only updates its light reading once a minute (I think).

So it's a fine balance, I presume were not trying to record actual sunshine on the station,

I presume were not trying to record actual sunshine on the station,

Unless you use a Blake-Larsem Sunrecorder station http://www.komokaweather.com/weather/su ... ay_v1.html

Enjoy,
Paul

Hi,

imballinger wrote:.... I presume we're not trying to record actual sunshine on the station,

Well Yes, provided that the sun is able to shine directly onto the sensor (it's the small white dome inside the Solar Pod). But this may create major issues with the accuracy of the External Temperature, etc.. (due to the poor "Sun Screen" over the T/H sensor/transmitter). Moving the Pod (or the T/H transmitter) to a more favourable position, by extending the cable is possible, but not easy.

Cheers, Alan.

Is there any way I can use the UV Index to calculate sun hours? If UV index is above 0 then count that the Sun is shining?

Snicker wrote: If UV index is above 0 then count that the Sun is shining?

That's very unlikely to give a useful value. In summer, the UV Index can be well above zero, even under cloudy skies (and resolved only as an integer).

Estimation of "The Sun is Shining" can be quite difficult (particularly between Summer and Winter and near sunrise/sunset) even with quite sophisticated hardware and software. This thread is currently up to 429 posts,

Cheers, Alan.