Author Topic: Cumulus dropping Rainfall Data on Battery Change - Help Please (Read 4511 times)

JennyLeez · « **on:** May 27, 2015, 10:55:32 AM »

I am bouncing off a comment made by Intrepid in the Weather Chat Box concerning Cumulus wiping out the rainfall totals when batteries are changed in the console.

When Intrepid changes his batteries, the year, the month and the all time rainfall totals return as zeros.

Has anyone else struck this. My first thought was make sure lithium batteries are being used.
But really I can not see that it is the console at fault.

If I change batteries, then empty history on console, Cumulus does not zero out all entries.
Cumulus reads the ini files for the data to my knowledge. There would be no reason for those ini files to drop the rain values from each file.

Intrepid have a look at the rain values in all those ini files. Look in the Data Folder for them. Year.ini, month.ini and alltime.ini.
Are they right.

You could copy one into a post below for us to have a look at.

Meanwhile has anyone else had this happen or have any ideas to help.

Cheers
Jenny

(P.S. and yep, I know where the Cumulus forum is if all else fails)

gabba · « **Reply #1 on:** May 27, 2015, 12:55:50 PM »

Just a guess

How old and what type / model is the console?

I'm guessing that there is a battery in the console that allows those totals to be stored for a while even when the batteries are replaced. At a guess it might charge when the batteries are inserted in the same way a CMOS battery does for a computer. If the console is old, then the battery may not be holding its charge.

Cumulus will just read the data from the console unless there is a data logger between the two. So if the console resets it's data this will come straight through to Cumulus

It's a theory anyway.

Can you adjust these totals directly in cumulus so that it will add a certain amount each time it reads from the console?

Martin4Jay · « **Reply #2 on:** May 27, 2015, 08:27:43 PM »

Sorry cant help you still got the other batteries in waiting for a friend to put the lithium batteries in but arn't they blooming expensive

JennyLeez · « **Reply #3 on:** May 27, 2015, 10:44:06 PM »

I have just gone through Cumulus wiki.
The dayfile.txt is the source for the Year, Month, yesterday and alltime rainfall totals.

'The rainfall totals, are initialised when Cumulus is (re-)started by adding up the corresponding daily totals in dayfile.txt and storing those sums in memory.'

'The rainfall totals shown on the This period, This month, and This year screens within the View menu are generated by adding up the daily rainfall totals found in dayfile.txt for the selected period.'

These are updated every time your rain bucket tips.

So, the question is, why is Cumulus not reading your dayfile.txt and calculating the day, yesterday, month and year tallies.
Have a look at your dayfile Intrepid - Off the menu - Edit - Dayfile.txt.
Scroll along to Total Rain.
Scroll that column down. Are there daily rain totals listed ?

intrepid · « **Reply #4 on:** May 28, 2015, 05:18:51 AM »

Oh, one thing that wasn't made clear...everything is fine until the first read from the restarted consoe! Then all the years rain occurs in the first read...so that affects all the records, which is why I have to go through and change all the records back to what they should be.

The next read from the console returns the daily rain back to zero, so from then on, its fine.