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archive interval

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ncpilot:
Something I hadn't thought about until recently--but want to make sure I'm understanding it all correctly...

The archive interval, among other things, determines how fast the archive memory will fill up.

Currently I have mine set to 1 minute, which will fill the memory in about 43 hours.

If I had a power outage longer than that time period, without the ability to download, then new data would eventually overwrite old, and I would lose it. Right?

I haven't read anything convincing re: how to set the interval, but in the event of a power outage, it seems it would make sense to reset the interval to something like 5 minutes (good for 8.8 days), while my computer is still running on an UPS?

Is 1 minute intervals useless data? Maybe I should just set it to 5 minutes anyway?

ncpilot:
One thought, I could install weatherlink on my laptop, and then use that to download data if I had a long power outage.

Is there a way to merge data, say a few days of data from the laptop to the full database on the desktop?

Anole:

--- Quote from: "ncpilot" ---Something I hadn't thought about until recently--but want to make sure I'm understanding it all correctly...

The archive interval, among other things, determines how fast the archive memory will fill up.

Currently I have mine set to 1 minute, which will fill the memory in about 43 hours.

If I had a power outage longer than that time period, without the ability to download, then new data would eventually overwrite old, and I would lose it. Right?

I haven't read anything convincing re: how to set the interval, but in the event of a power outage, it seems it would make sense to reset the interval to something like 5 minutes (good for 8.8 days), while my computer is still running on an UPS?

Is 1 minute intervals useless data? Maybe I should just set it to 5 minutes anyway?
--- End quote ---


You are correct. With the archive interval set to 1 minute you will overwrite the data fairly quickly. 1 minute intervals aren't  "useless" though. They provide a higher resolution of your data. But the trade off is the datalogger only holds so many records. You already seem to have a firm grasp on that concept so I won't go into the details/math.

As with most things, it's a compromise. how "fine" do you want your data vs. how much data do you need to be able to store. I personally feel that the 5-minute archive interval represents the best compromise between data "granularity" and storage capacity.

EDIT: One other thing to consider is that a 1 minute archive interval will make your databases (regardless of which program you use) HUGE! Worth considering if you ever need to edit them.

Mark / Ohio:
I have mine set to 15 minutes.  I'm only uploading every 30 min. to CWOP and on the hour for everything else anyway (single phone line, dialup connection).  I believe you still get your absolute highs and lows no matter the archive setting.  Less samples would mainly effect the averages accuracy and visual quality of your graphs.  I started out at 1 hour archive when I bought WeatherLink.  Made the graphs for short time periods look pretty jagged.

I think there are some programs for editing Weatherlink files but I'm not sure if you could merge data with them.

ncpilot:
Yeah, that's what I tell the women, I have a HUGE database.... :lol:

With disk storage so cheap now per Gig, database size isn't a concern... I did once use my raw data to graph some stuff in Excel, and it definitely has a lot of observation points with a 1 minute interval...

Plus, you can always delete excess data, but it's much more difficult to fill in the gaps--same philosophy in digital photography, start with as much resolution as you can, you can always get rid of it later...

As an aside question, do you ever clear out archive memory? The help file makes it sound like downloads could take longer if the memory is full and you're only downloading the most recent n records for the last time period--because the program has to figure out which are the most recent records... there is no way to automatically clear memory after a download on the Pro model (the option is grayed out on the station setup screen).

I have been thinking of a standby generator--that would solve the power problem... :)

Marc

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