Dashboard

Introduction

The dashboard is the left part of the CumulusUtils Website as generated by the Website Generator. The Dashboard contains twentyfour panels of which twelve can be displayed at the same time. The menu choice Toggle Dashboard changes between the two sets of panels. It is fixed part of the website and cannot be removed (just like the reportview on the right).

Examples of the two dashboards are shown on the right.

The Dashboard is configurable in two ways: the contents of a panel and - only if you use the ChartsCompiler - the click event attached to a panel. Because click events are not configurable in the default configuration, it is advised NOT to change the panel content when not using CDL (but you're free to experiment).

Dashboard configuration

To understand the configuration well the user needs first to understand the enumeration of the panels.

The panels are enumerated from left to right and from top to bottom. So the first dashboard which shows at startup of the website has panel nr 1 on top left (default content is Temperature) and panel nr 12 on bottom right (default content is Solar). The second dashboard has panel nr 13 on top left (default content is Temperature Gauge) and panel nr 24 on bottom right (default content is UV Gauge).

Beside this functional configuration the colouring as well can be adjusted. It is assumed the parameter naming is clear enough in this respect.

Content configuration

All panels can be assigned a block of predefined content which can be seen in the default configuration. The content itself is not user definable (and probably never will be). The cumulusutils.ini file has parameters for each panel (e.g. panel-1) in the Section Website. Assigning keywords to those parameters sets the content for that panel. E.g. panel-1=TemperatureGauge and panel-13=TemperatureText interchanges the gauge and text information panel content for the top-left panel in both dashboard toggles.

When errors are made in the keywords (e.g. typos) an error is written in the logfile and the panel remains empty.

The panels 5, 6, 7 (and the counterparts in the toggled dashboard nr 17, 18 and 19) have no parameter because they cannot be changed. The reason for this is technical internal. I am not saying it is impossible but it is too complex to give me any joy so you should not be asking for it.

The exiting content (the block names) and their default panel assignment is given below:

Panel-1=TemperatureText
Panel-2=PressureText
Panel-3=RainText
Panel-4=Clocks
Panel-8=WindText
Panel-9=SolarDisc
Panel-10=LunarDisc
Panel-11=HumidityText
Panel-12=SolarText
Panel-13=TemperatureGauge
Panel-14=OtherTempsGauge
Panel-15=PressureGauge
Panel-16=HumidityGauge
Panel-20=CloudBaseGauge
Panel-21=RainGauge
Panel-22=RainSpeedGauge
Panel-23=SolarGauge
Panel-24=UVGauge

NOTE: Contrary to the CMX standard, there is no need to configure FeelsLike anywhere. Both Apparent and Feels Like can be displayed. See page for Feels Like.

Event configuration

Each panel may have a click event attached to it: if a mouse click is received on that panel a predefined chart is displayed in the ReportView. There is a default set of events which is used if there is no ChartsCompiler used. Those events are:

['Temp','Pression','Rain',,'WindSpeed','WindDir','WindDir','WindSpeed',,,'Humidity','Solar','Temp','Temp','Pression','Humidity',,,,,'Rain','Rain','Solar','Solar']

Each of the 24 strings - separated by comma's - describes the chart which will be displayed when clicked. So if you interchange panel-1 and panel-2 (temperature and pressure) and you click on pressure you will see the temperature chart. These event/chart combinations cannot be changed by the user.

However, when using the ChartsCompiler / CDL combination, you can assign a chart to a Panel with the ConnectsTo construct.

An example of this you see here:

Chart Oversight Title Oversight of current weather status ConnectsTo 2 4 15 20
  PLOT Temperature Colour #058DC7 zindex 90
  PLOT DewPoint Colour #50B432 zindex 80
  PLOT pressure Colour red zindex 70
  Plot Humidity Colour #64E572 zindex 60
  Plot SolarRadiation As Area Opacity 0.2 Colour Orange zindex 20
  Plot RainFall As Area colour #33B4FF opacity 0.2 zindex 10
EndChart

So when panel-2 is clicked (the default content would be pressure) you get this chart. But this also is valid for panel 4 (clocks), 15 (Pressure gauge) and 20 (Cloudbase gauge). So combining the panel configuration of the dashboard with the event configuration of the ChartsCompiler gives the user almost full control of how the website functions.