AUTOCOL - INSTRUCTION. COPYRIGHT FEEDBACK SOFTWARE 2002. INDEX. ------ 1) BRIEF DETAILS. 2) INSTALLATION. 3) STARTING OFF. 4) THE MAIN SCREEN. 5) LOADING A DAVIS FILE. 6) CHECKING FILE FORMAT & SETTINGS. (First time use only) (a) The Date format. (b) The First Line of Data. (c) Specify Columns. 7) FILLING THE GRID. 8) CREATING THE COL FORM. 9) SAVING AND SENDING THE COL FORM. 10) OTHER FEATURES. 1. BRIEF DETAILS ----------------- The program reads in tab delimited text files, such as output by your Davis Weather Software, with the first two columns of those files being Date and Time. The first rows may be Headings, such as "Temp", "Total Rain" etc. ***Please note : This file is **not** the Monthly Climatological Summary. *** It should be the file with every reading taken in a month. We understand that to get this file from Davis, go to "Export" enter a month, enter a filename, and the save format, ie "txt", enter a folder to store it in. AutoCOL opens this Text file and performs calculations on it, and puts certain results onto a form ready for email to Mr. Roger Brugge at COL. The following steps are needed. 1) Start the app. 2) File/Open/select your davis *.txt file 3) Populate the grid. (Fill Grid Button)(This is not done automatically as it gives the user a chance to check/edit certain items should they wish, such as column titles. 4) Click the COL button. The app gathers all relevant data from the grid, and places it into a clean form, which you can view. 5) You can enter any data not contained in the Davis file, such as snow/thunder etc. 6) Save and view the final COL report, and Send to Roger. 7) Simply enter Roger's usual COL email address into Outlook Express (or whichever your email client is), and there you go. 2. INSTALLATION. ---------------- Where you install the AutoColL.exe application is up to you. You might like to place it in the same folder that Davis stores it's data in, or create a new folder and put it there. The application creates a Settings file in it's installation directory. This simply keeps track of your set up between sessions, and is only 47 bytes. 3. STARTING OFF. ---------------- Double click the AutoColL.exe program icon in the directory you installed the program. If this is the first time you have used the program, you will be informed that the settings file is missing. Ok this, and you will then see that a settings file has been created for you using default settings. Do not worry about the settings for now, we will return to them later. 4. THE MAIN SCREEN. ------------------- The Main Screen of the program has the Menu, with File, Cut, Fill Grid, View Data, Settings and Help. All except the File menu item are greyed out. The next item is the Toolbar, with 8 buttons. This mostly duplicates the functionality of the Menu for ease of use. Hover the mouse over any button on the Toolbar to see a quick description of it. The buttons are: (L to R) Open, Cut, (See section 10 - Other features) FillGrid, (See section 7 - Filling The Grid) View All Figures (31x24) (See section 10 - Other features) View Day Figures (31) (See section 10 - Other features) View Day Figures (9:00 AM only) (See section 10 - Other features) View Wind Statistics. (See section 10 - Other features) View COL Form. (See section 8 - Creating The Col Form) All the buttons are greyed out except the Open Button. These buttons become active as you use the program. Under the Toolbar we have The Source Box. This is the box that will display the tab delimited source file that Davis outputs. Any adjustments needed to the data can be made here. At the moment this box is blank. Then, at the bottom, we have The Grid, which will be filled with the data from The Source Box. At the moment The Grid is empty. Holding your mouse over the join between The Source Box and The Grid will change the mouse pointer, and you can resize these two items. 5) LOADING A DAVIS FILE. ------------------------ Either click File/Open, or click the Open button on the Toolbar. Select your file, navigating through the folders if required. Click OK. The file should load into The Source Box. 6) CHECKING FILE FORMAT & SETTINGS. (First time use only). ----------------------------------- The first thing we need to do is ensure that the settings match the source file just opened. We need to check (a) The Date format ie UK or USA, (b) the First Line Of Data, and (c) Specify Columns - which Column is which. The default settings are created using examples of Davis file that have been "operated" on so far, so they are probably already correct, but best to check. Once you have done this settings check, you will not have to do it again unless you: i) Change the way your Davis program outputs its data. ii) Use data from different Davis software which is configured differently. Note: At this time, we have not come across any Davis file which does not follow the default settings, except for the Date Format option. (a) The Date format. -------------------- View the first column of The Source Box. Is the date in UK format (dd/mm/yyyy) or USA format (mm/dd/yyyy)? The default setting is for USA date. If your dates are in UK format change the setting by clicking on the Settings menu, and selecting the date option in the top right corner. Click Save Settings, then close the Settings Box. (b) The First Line of Data. --------------------------- Next, we need to check which lines are column headings, or titles, and which lines are the actual readings. In The Source Box, look to see where the first reading starts. In the example below, the first reading is on line 3. Temp Humidity Outside Wind Hi Low Outside Dew Wind Wind Inside Inside Archive Date Time Index Temperature Chill Temperature Temperature Humidity Point Speed Hi Direction Rain Barometer Temperature Humidity Period 01/01/2002 12:00 a -1.7 -1.7 -1.7 -1.6 -1.9 82 -4.3 1.0 6.0 E 0.0 1038.1 17.7 57 60 01/01/2002 1:00 a -2.1 -2.1 -2.1 -1.9 -2.3 84 -4.4 0.0 0.0 --- 0.0 1038.0 16.8 54 60 ...etc..etc The default setting for First Line Of Data is 3, so if your file looks like the one above, there is no need to change this setting. If you have more/less headings or titles, and your First Line is different to 3, change it by clicking on the Settings Menu, and altering the number in the top left corner. Click Save Settings, then close the Settings Box. Any lines above the First Line Of Data are inserted into the grid as headings/titles. NOTE: In the example Davis file given above, it is not always clear how to read the headings/titles. This is because of the way that tab delimited text files work. This can prove awkward to check the settings when specifying columns (see below). (c) Specify Columns. The program needs to know which column is which so that it can gather the correct information. The default settings fit with example Davis files checked so far, so will probably be ok, with the exception of Grass Temps. These are the default settings Temps Max = Column 5 Temps Min = Column 6 Temps Mean = Column 3 Temps Grass = Column 1. ** See Note. Humidity = Column 7 Pressure = Column 13 Rain = Column 12 Ave wind speed = Column 9 Gust = Column 10 Wind Direction = Column 11. Have a look at the settings for these by clicking the Settings Menu. This gives further details on this. Check that the column headings in The Source Box match those in the Settings. In (b) above, it mentioned that it might be difficult to read in the headings in The Source Box, making the settings-check hard. You can jump the gun a bit here by closing the settings, and clicking the Fill Grid button (3rd from the left on the Toolbar). This drops the data in The Source Box into The Grid, and formats the headers for easier reading. You can now go back to the Settings and check them more easily. But again, MOST settings should be OK. ** Grass temps were not measured in the Davis file used for testing. You need to specify which column is your Grass Temp column, if you measure that field of data. Any columns not measured are set as either 0 or 1, which is the default setting for Grass Temps. If you should change any settings, remember to save them if required by clicking Save Settings, then close the Settings Box. 7) FILLING THE GRID. -------------------- Once the settings are known to be OK, we can proceed. If you have not already done so, press the Fill Grid button (3rd from the left on the Toolbar), or select Fill Grid from the menu. All the data in The Source Box is read, the Headings are sorted out, and the actual readings are stripped of there tabs and placed into columns. This is the data which is operated on from this point on. 8) CREATING THE COL FORM. Click the View COL Form button (Toolbar - last button on the right) and the completed COL form will appear in a few seconds. You can move around the form by using the General/Temp/Rainfall tabs along the top. The data required by COL which can not be gathered from the Davis file, and needs to be entered manually is as follows: Max, Min and Mean Temperature Differences. Soil Temperatures at all depths. Average of Rainfall. Days with Sleet/Snow Falling. Days with 50% snow coverage at morning obs hour. Days with Thunder heard. Days with Small Hail. Days with Large Hail. Days with Fog at morning obs hour. Wind: Days with Gail. (10 mins with mean wind speed of 39mph or more) Currently not available. Requires readings taken at interval of 10 mins or less. Thunder Dates & Times Dates of Snow Lying Dates of Snow Falling All Sun & Black Bulb readings. Pressure anomaly. Cloud cover %. Frost Duration (hours) (Need to create an algorithm.) Piche evaporation and all Sea Temps. Enter into the relevant box on this COL form any data which neeeds to be entered. Leave the box blank if you do not collect that data. 9) SAVING AND SENDING THE COL FORM. ----------------------------------- Once all the data in the form is correct, you can save it as a text file by clicking Save As Text". Once saved, you can view the COL form by clicking View Saved File. Whether saved or not, yu can create an email ready for sending to COL by clicking Email. Your default email client (probably Outlook Express) will start, with the COL text included in the body of the mail. Enter Roger's email address, and there you go, ready to send. 10). OTHER FEATURES. -------------------- You may have observed upon the Toolbar some buttons not mentioned so far. These are: Cut, View All Figures (31x24), View Day Figures (31), View Day Figures (9:00 AM only) View Wind Statistics. a) The CUT Button. Chances are you will never need to use the Cut button. The cut button is used for when you have loaded a Davis File into The Source Box, and it might have extra text at the top or bottom of the file that you do not wish to have there. Select the text which is bot needed in The Source Box, and click the cut button to remove it. Remember to ensure that you alter the Settings/First Line Of Data setting if required. b) The View ??? Figures buttons. These three buttons are left over from when the program was young! It started life as a simple number cruncher - the user cutting and pasting data from somewhere (probably a spreasheet), and clicking a button to give averages/totals etc. The user spcified which criteria could be used in the calculations. Then The Grid and The Source were added. Once The Grid was filled with data from The Source Box, users specified which column they wanted to use for calulation purposes, and they would then click one of the View Data butttons. This can still be seen today. Open a file in the usual way, and Fill The Grid. Then click on a column of The Grid, (the white part with data in, not the grey headers) and you will see the header for that column change to Red. This means that this column is the one that will be calculated. For example, click the Rainfall column (column number 12 is the default setting for Rainfall), and the header for that column should change to Red. Click the View All Figures (31x24) button on the toolbar (4th from left). The original calculation screen will appear. This was originally the main screen of the program. You will see the figures for EVERY READING in the box on the left, with the results of various calculations on the right. You can enter values in the Higher than and Lower than boxes, and click Calculate to discover the results. The list boxes show the occurences of values which match the Hi/Lo criteria. They are shown in terms of reading number. Close this box. Click the View Day Figures button. The same calculation box will appear, but this time the left hand box contains values based on the totals of each days figures. The list boxes now show the occurences of values which match the Hi/Lo criteria as before, but they are shown in terms of Date of reading. The View 9am Only button is similar to the View Day Figures, except that it only calculates values based on one reading per day at 9am. The View Wind Statistics button shows the Wind Direction. There is no need to set the Header of The Grid to Red on the wind column, as the program knows which column from the settings. This was how it used to work. It still has that functionality, but then the COL bit was bolted on. The way the program actually works out the COL data is to go through each column of data, adding it to the calculation box, calulate it using pre set criteria, and fill in the COL form. In effect, the COL form uses the calculator in the same way that a user would have used the calulator, but behind the scenes, and automatically. Use the calculator View Figure button if you need to. It will not affect the way the COL data is calculated. But beware! Viewing Rainfall using the Day Figures button is fine, as it totals up each daily reading. But if you used the Day Figures button with other figures, ie any temperature, or wind speed, then you would get funny results. For example, imagine that for every reading on 1st of the month the windspeed was 10mph. using the Day Figures would give a total wind speed of 240mph! So be thoughtful when extracting data using the calulator, although you can have amusing results, such as a max temp on the 2nd being 480 C. Although this part of the program is at the core of the program in terms of how it works, it is not really part of the program in terms of The User. It was just left visible should anybody need it. So if it causes you pain/frustration, don't sue us. We will respond to any criticism/queries regarding the Calculator part, but at the end of the day the COL bit is the main bit of the application. (C) Mike Overton FeedBack Software April 2002.