Ecowitt app vs. Cumulus

[hucknz]

I've just replaced my old Fine Offset clone with an Ecowitt system and I have to say I'm pretty impressed. The GW1100 was super easy to setup (and tiny!) and pairing up the station and sensors was simple as could be. The Ecowitt app and ecowitt.net website are great too, it's worlds away from my old black and white console.

That brings me to my question: Why should I continue to use Cumulus MX?

I don't mean this to be a criticism of Cumulus MX by any means, I think the system is great and appreciate all the hard work that goes into it, but given how good the Ecowitt app is I'm wondering what, if anything, I'm missing when it comes to software to use with this station.

Apart from the obvious things like storing the data myself, are the charts better? Does it support more internet services (WoW, etc.)? Do you use Ecowitt for daily checking and Cumulus for long term data? Are there some other benefits I'm not seeing?

I am genuinely curious to know. I'm not planning on dropping CMX at this point but I'd like to know where each is better and where each falls down. Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere too (or is in the wrong sub-forum). I had a search around and couldn't find anything that clearly outlines the pros and cons.

[ConligWX]

I use CumulusMX for two main reasons.

1. uploading to 8 or so 3rd Party Weather Sites, and 2, running my own Weather Station Website.

[HansR]

1. Be in control of my own data wrt accuracy and logging frequency, especially for long series and being able to transfer that series to a successor.
2. Being able to experiment with the data series in whichever way I choose without being dependent on an external database which can change any time. I don't know any commercial external supplier which will exist 'eternally'. Especially the internet outside our 'western influence' has to be regarded as volatile.
3. Serve my website.
4. Being able to switch station brand any time without losing or interrupting my data series (within the limits of CMX served devises).

No doubt there will be more reasons but this is my top 4.

I believe Ecowitt also has a payed subscription but I can't get that info back. Not sure what that offers.

[broadstairs]

I agree with Hans' and his top 4.

Stuart

[SamiS]

Hans has a good list from my perspective also. Of course it depends on what are your individual needs. If you don’t need anything but a decent view to current conditions, then ecowitt’s own website and application are probably enough. Actually, I like their graphs a lot more than cumulus.

But if you want something more, things to consider:

- You never know when some corporate decides to shut down their cloud services or changes to a paid subscription model, so having the history data yourself is a must if you are not ready to lose all history.

- When hosting the website yourself, you can tweak the appearance for whatever you need. Small displays, large displays, tablets, cell phone etc., and you can translate it to your native language.

- Cumulus has ability to send alerts for station malfunction or the received data (too cold, too warm etc).

- With Cumulus you can use PWS Watcher on Android to bring your own weather data to a widget on home screen. This application is quite old and based on realtime.txt contents, but does just enough.

—
Sami

[hucknz]

Thanks everyone, some great points in there.

From the various features you've all described (and my playing around over the last week) there doesn't really appear to be a significant difference between the two systems. Ecowitt offers decent charts, alerts, public website, sharing to internet services (not as extensive though), mobile app and API. Obviously that all comes with a risk (like any free cloud software) of being switched off so that's always a consideration.

I hadn't considered the continuity of data angle though. Being able to replace stations over time and keep an ongoing record of data certainly seems like a good reason to keep running CMX, so thank you for that idea.

At this stage I think I'm going to keep running Ecowitt as my day-to-day checking for rainfall, etc. and keep CMX running for the longer term view and data retention. I know I can get CMX working on mobile but the Ecowitt app is pretty good and it means one less thing to get setup (and fix when it breaks).

Thanks for all the help!