Topic: Ambient CSV file question

[Troglodyte]

Greetings all,

First day here and first post.  I might as well jump on in. 

I just bought a WS-5000 and while I'm waiting for it to be delivered I thought I'd try to figure out some formulas in Excel. 

I have a small, very small, market farm.  I have a small, but expanding, orchard.  One thing that would be very helpful is the ability to track chill hours.  The easiest(?) way I figure is to copy the CSV file off the display every week or two and import the CSV data into a spreadsheet.  Once the spreadsheet is built it should be easy enough and not take any time. 

My question is, exactly is the date/time written in the CSV file?  Or maybe more specific, how does the date/time show up when it is dropped into an Excel spreadsheet?  I'm trying to mock up a spreadsheet and see if the calculations work the way I need them to.  The screenshots I can find show the date/time on the display as mm/dd/yy AM 12:00.  I'm not sure how to get a formula to work with that format in Excel.  I'm hoping the CSV has the date/time in a more usable format.   

I know enough about Excel to get me into trouble but I can usually figure things out with enough Google-foo. 

Lots of very smart people on here.  I hope to learn a lot from y'all and hope you tolerate my learning curve. 

[box]

Hello there

I am pretty sure some free software called cumulusmx will do this for you

https://cumuluswiki.org/a/Heat/cold_degree_days_and_Chill_hours#Chill_Hours_and.2For_Air_Frost

The software author and some more knowledgeable posters on CumulusMx than me will be along shortly I expect!

All you need is a device to run CumulusMx on and a feed to it

I expect there are other solutions too

[davidefa]

I'm ecowitt owner so can't say about ambient export format ( ecowitt export directly in xlsx format ).
But if ambient exports in csv format you shouldn't have any problem, when importing you can specify the date format ( YMD,MDY... ).

As Box said, there are software that can do this for you ( or can be expanded to do this ).
I'm used to meteotemplate ( you can see an example in my signature ) which has a number of analysis plugins, a few for agricultural specific use ( see growing degrees days and evapotranspiration, I have lastly added the capability to record in the database daily evapotranspiration )
If I'm not wrong meteotemplate does not have a plugin to calculate chill hours ( but I can do it )
I see there are different definitions for chill hours ( when T < 45°F, when 34°F<T<45°F, the Utah model... ) I think these can be easely added ( even others you may be interested in )

P.S.
I think degrees days and chill hours, box referred to, have a different usage, to calculate warming/cooling costs

[MatsJ]

My question is, exactly is the date/time written in the CSV file?  Or maybe more specific, how does the date/time show up when it is dropped into an Excel spreadsheet?  I'm trying to mock up a spreadsheet and see if the calculations work the way I need them to.  The screenshots I can find show the date/time on the display as mm/dd/yy AM 12:00.  I'm not sure how to get a formula to work with that format in Excel.  I'm hoping the CSV has the date/time in a more usable format.

The CSV-files - written to the SD-card - from my HP2550 console (clone called ProTech) do indeed have that kind of beginning dates on each line... But since I'm Swedish I've chosen another "Date Format" on the "Setup" screen (DD-MM-YYYY) which somehow gets translated to eg "2021/9/30 14:15,22.4,55,11etcetcetc" in the CSV-file (not even a leading zero on the month).

But I would follow the other posters advice and use an external source/software to get the data. It is extremely easy to misalign the SD-card in the slot - and thus lose the card inside of the console. Furthermore, having normal sized fingers one almost have to use tweezers to extract the card. There is such a small lip to pull on.

Mvh,
Mats

[davidefa]

If anybody is interested in 'chill hours' calculation, I've added a plugin for meteotemplate ( see meteotemplate forum )

[Gyvate]

My question is, exactly is the date/time written in the CSV file?  Or maybe more specific, how does the date/time show up when it is dropped into an Excel spreadsheet?  I'm trying to mock up a spreadsheet and see if the calculations work the way I need them to.  The screenshots I can find show the date/time on the display as mm/dd/yy AM 12:00.  I'm not sure how to get a formula to work with that format in Excel.  I'm hoping the CSV has the date/time in a more usable format.

The CSV-files - written to the SD-card - from my HP2550 console (clone called ProTech) do indeed have that kind of beginning dates on each line... But since I'm Swedish I've chosen another "Date Format" on the "Setup" screen (DD-MM-YYYY) which somehow gets translated to eg "2021/9/30 14:15,22.4,55,11etcetcetc" in the CSV-file (not even a leading zero on the month).

But I would follow the other posters advice and use an external source/software to get the data. It is extremely easy to misalign the SD-card in the slot - and thus lose the card inside of the console. Furthermore, having normal sized fingers one almost have to use tweezers to extract the card. There is such a small lip to pull on.

Mvh,
Mats

As already mentioned earlier, you could use the free CumulusMX software. It can read from your WS-5000 console via the custom server option of the console. It can save the data in its database (= CSV files !!) in a chosen interval (>= 1 minute).
It will depend on the locale of your computer on which you run CMX (Windows, Linux derivte, MacOS) which format of the date will be used, but, date and time will be  separate "field" (data item) so you can easily convert in MS Excel if you want.
Like this you avoid the tricky microSD card slot of the console and having to use a 2nd SD card while the one you took out from the console is being processed. It's worth having a look into CMX. And it can handle the Ambient format of your WS-5000 console (as well as the Ecowitt format of the rest-of-the-Fine-Offset-clone-world).
example DE locale:
01.03.22;00:00;3,5;54;-,9;5,42;15,12;172;0,0;0,0;1027,5;234,2;17,6;44;0,00;2,2;3,5;0,0;0;0,00;16,73;-,2;0;0,0;340;0,0;0,0;2,2;3,5
the US locale would be "." instead of "," and "," instead of ";" and "/" instead of "." in the date
01/03/22,00:00,3.5,54,-.9,5.4,15.1,263,0.0,0.0,1027.2,234.3,17.3,47,0.0,2.2,3.5,0.0,0,0.00,22.46,-.2,0,10.3,225,0.0,0.0,2.2,3.5
the description (header line) of the CSV are avilable for the files in the installation (US locale)
Date (dd/mm/yy),Time,Temperature,Humidity,Dew point,Wind speed,Recent high gust,Average wind bearing,Rainfall rate,Rainfall so far,Sea level pressure,Rainfall counter,Inside temperature,Inside humidity,Current gust,Wind chill,Heat Index,UV Index,Solar Radiation,Evapotranspiration,Annual Evapotranspiration,Apparent temperature,Max Solar radiation,Hours of sunshine,Wind bearing,RG-11 Rain,Rain Since Midnight,Feels Like,Humidex