Cumulus 2 Overview
From CumulusWiki
This is a brief introduction to Cumulus 2.
Contents |
Background
Cumulus started out as something purely for own use for my first weather station, an Oregon Scientific WMR928. Basically, I didn't like any of the software available (although FreeWX is very good and I used that for a short while), and none of it did exactly what I wanted, so I decided to write my own, using Borland Delphi. I was soon persuaded to make it available to others. When I bought a Davis Vantage Pro2, I added support for that, and then later support for the Fine Offset and (some) La Crosse stations.
So, Cumulus 'just grew', and it started to get harder to add new features. So I decided to take the brave or foolish step of a complete re-write using Visual Studio (which is, in my opinion, a much better development environment than Delphi). As well as the problems with enhancing the current version, I wanted to start learning about and using newer technologies (such as WPF).
Technical Details
Cumulus 2 is developed with Visual Studio 2008. It is written in C# and XAML, and uses the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) user interface subsystem of the .NET Framework. It uses an SQLite database for data storage, and the Telerik 'Rad Controls' for items such as charts and gauges.
System Requirements
Cumulus 2 run on Windows XP SP2 or later, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 (and R2), and Windows Home Server. It requires .NET Framework 3.5. It uses more memory than version 1; it's currently using about 50 to 80 MB.
Roadmap
The plan is that the first release will be a 'preview' or alpha test version, with a limited set of facilities, just to check that it works OK on a basic level, and to give people a chance to say how much they hate it compared to version 1. It has no internet capability. This version was released in November 2009.
I have now decided to restructure Cumulus 2 into an 'engine' which runs as a Windows Service, and a 'viewer'. The engine will handle all aspects of retrieving and storing data, uploading to the internet, etc. The viewer will look rather like the original Cumulus 2. I'm not sure yet whether the first release of this restructured version will have any new facilities beyond the restructure.
The following release (after the restructure release) will bring it to a similar level of facility to Cumulus version 1.
After that, I can start adding new features.
Please do not ask for forecasts of when anything will be available; I can't give them!
Supported Weather Stations
The first releases will support the same set of stations as Cumulus 1. After that, I hope to add support for the Oregon Scientific WMR100 and WMR200, and possibly other stations too.
More to be added when I think of it...
