EasyWeather Format

Many of the entry level weather stations can be classified as "EasyWeather" or "FineOffset"; they are rebadged or generic models of the device produced by FineOffSet Electronics

The software shipped with the device is EasyWeather and while it peforms its role of reading and storing data from the weather station, it is quite limiting and inflexible.

Of course, most users switch to Cumulus and stop using EasyWeather.

Simply for reference, below are some useful technical links on the EasyWeather format

The File Format

Easy weather stores all its data in easyweather.dat. The file format for this has been described in detail here.

NOTE: EasyWeatherPlus is different - perhaps someone with knowledge of that can produce an article equivalent to this for that.

Transferring past observations from EasyWeather to Cumulus

If you need to import EasyWeather data from a period before you started using Cumulus, then close Cumulus and run EasyWeather. If you have been archiving your EasyWeather Easyweather.dat files, you will need to rename the latest one,and restore the relevant old one before you run the EasyWeather program.

• In that program use the History option on the Record menu.
• Select 'user defined' in Search Conditions box. Select a start time before you got your weather station, leave end time at default of today.
• Click Export button, tick Header, choose as Separator: the symbol that is used to separate fields in your Monthly log files.
• Click Export button below the separator, complete the 'Save as ...' for a text file, and wait a couple of minutes (depending on size of file).
• Open resulting file in a text editor and see hints in Monthly log files on how to convert between formats.
• For dayfile.txt, you can create missing data from the newly created monthly log files, but you still may wish to insert breaks at rollover time in your raw EasyWeather table, possibly adding calculation of maximua or minima to such meteorological day groups, so you can scan though each day to check what has been created in dayfile.txt and edit as required.

Using EasyWeather data as current input

As an alternative to above (that was for transfer of historic observations), Cumulus has the option to read the latest observations (the last line only) directly from an easyweather.dat file (see Cumulus help for how to fill in the station configuration screen) and process these. You might want to do this, perhaps for testing purposes, on a short term basis, but it is better to select the Fine Offset input for normal purposes (again see Cumulus help).

(You can view easyweather.dat like any text file either using a text file editor like Notepad or by using a database file viewer).

Sfws 12:17, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Steve has contributed the following to the forum (http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4344) see that forum thread for more details:

This is to document the fact that Cumulus now reads the date and time fields, and checks that they have changed before using new data from the file. Here's the format of the easyweather.dat file, with the fields Cumulus uses in bold:

easyweather.dat fields:

0 - Record no

1 - Transfer date

2 - Transfer time

3 - Reading date

4 - Reading time

5 - Interval

6 - Indoor Hum

7 - Indoor Temp

8 - Outdoor Hum

9 - Outdoor Temp

10 - dew point

11 - wind chill

12 - abs pressure

13 - rel pressure

14 - wind average

15 - wind average bft

16 - wind gust

17 - wind gust bft

18 - wind direction number

19 - wind direction text (N, ENE etc, converted to a bearing as an integer)

20 - rain ticks

21 - rain total

22 - rain since last reading

23 - rain in last hour (used as rain rate)

24 - rain last 24 hours

25 - rain last 7 days

26 - rain last 30 days

27 - rain last year (used as rain 'counter' to determine other totals)

Memory Map

This page describes in some detail the data records produced by the Fine Offset device

Thanks to Jim Easterbrook for all his work on pulling this data together http://www.jim-easterbrook.me.uk/