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Rain Rate

Discussion specific to Fine Offset and similar rebadged weather stations
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Morelo
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu 18 Dec 2008 5:23 pm
Weather Station: 265 NE
Location: Pyrgos,Greece

Rain Rate

Post by Morelo »

Hello everyone,I have the National Geographic 265NE weather station,and after searching for a good software for my WS (since easy weather pretty sucks)i found cumulus.Its pretty pretty coool!!!I like it,even more than great davis weatherlink.So i downloaded some mins ago the 1.8.3 version of cumulus,and i faced a little problem with rain rate..The problem is that rain rate doesnt work properly,i mean that it was raining alot some mins ago,and the rain rate was as much as the last hours rain.For example lasthours rain:0.6,rain rate:0.6 and so on..Dont know alot about cumulus software,maybe im doing something wrong..Idownloaded the latest version 1.8.4 build 589 and reinstall cumulus.On station option i chose fineoffeset/watchon/etc and all the others,do i need to stick xap settings enabled? cuz actually i dont really know what this think does :P,also is there any need to set something in easyweather interval box and easy weather.datfile?I also pressed the debuglog,i dont know what this thing does though.Its gonna rain now,and i hope rainfall rate works fine....If someone can help me with this..
Thanks in advance and gratz for the good work :)
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steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26672
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Rain Rate

Post by steve »

Morelo wrote:the rain rate was as much as the last hours rain.
Yes, that's working as designed. The Fine Offset stations don't provide a rain rate so Cumulus has to work one out, which isn't straightforward. The simple algorithm used in 1.8.3 was to use the rain in the last hour as the rain rate, as a rough approximation. Version 1.8.4 has a slightly more sophisticated algorithm (it uses the rain in the last 5 minutes). I tried to do something clever like the Davis stations do (allowing the rate to fall away gradually), but I couldn't get it to work in all situations. The 5-minute method gives a reasonable indication of how heavily it's been raining.
do i need to stick xap settings enabled? cuz actually i dont really know what this think does
It's for home automation integration.
also is there any need to set something in easyweather interval box and easy weather.datfile?
No.
I also pressed the debuglog,i dont know what this thing does though.
It's for debugging. As it says (in bold) in the help: Please do not turn this on unless requested, and do not leave it turned on once the required diagnostics have been obtained.

Steve
Morelo
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu 18 Dec 2008 5:23 pm
Weather Station: 265 NE
Location: Pyrgos,Greece

Re: Rain Rate

Post by Morelo »

Its working!!Wow Thanks Steve its raining right now,rain rates working pretty good!Its getting back to zero pretty fast when the rain stops...cool great work steve :) and thanks again
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beteljuice
Posts: 3292
Joined: Tue 09 Dec 2008 1:37 pm
Weather Station: None !
Operating System: W10 - Threadripper 16core, etc
Location: Dudley, West Midlands, UK

Re: Rain Rate

Post by beteljuice »

Whaaa .......

Now I'm confused :cry:

I've been using rainrate (realtime.txt) as rain last hour.

So Isn't there an instance of 'Rain last hour' available in realtime.txt

.. if not could you make one (pretty please)

Then I can re-write my code (again)
Image
......................Imagine, what you will KNOW tomorrow !
User avatar
steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26672
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Rain Rate

Post by steve »

Rain rate was only ever the same as rain last hour for Fine Offset stations. For other stations rain rate was the rain rate as supplied by the station. I hadn't noticed that there was no 'rain last hour' in realtime.txt, I'll remedy that.

Steve
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