Rain Rate Always Zero

[Banana Bob]

I think that this can be traced back to the update of 4.5.1 but I am not sure.

My Rain Rate is always 0.0 mm/h in both Seasons and the old style web page.

Is there a way to fix this?

It has been raining very heavily here in New Zealand so I know there is a problem somewhere. The  Rain Today show a positive value.

[Karen K]

Difficult to say. You may want to provide more information about your configuration and system. First question: Is the rain rate in your case provided by the hardware or calculated by WeeWX? 

[gjr80]

Posting a wee_debug report would be a good start, just make sure you check the report for sensitive info such as user names,  passwords, api keys etc before posting. wee_debug should obfuscate such info but it’s not perfect.

Gary

[Banana Bob]

Here is a wee_debug report

As for if Weewx generates the rain rate or the device does, I have no idea. I always suspected it was Weewx as rain rate does not appear on the device screen.

[gjr80]

You are using the FineOffset driver which has no concept of rainRate so WeeWX should be calculating rainRate from your rain data. Your statement:

> I think that this can be traced back to the update of 4.5.1 but I am not sure.

implies that rainRate was correctly calculated at some stage. Is this correct? If so do you know what WeeWX version you upgraded from or what version rainRate last worked under? There have been some changes to the WeeWX StdWXCalculate service recently (the StdWXCalculate service calculates derived observations such as rainRate) though from a quick look the current rainRate calculation code has been in place since v4.2.0. Looking at your wee_debug output everything appears to be correctly configured for rainRate to be calculated. 

You say 'Rain Today show a positive value', which I assume means that rainfall data is being correctly recorded and displayed on the pages concerned? The FineOffset driver (fousb) does accept some debug settings that enable debugging of rain processing code in the driver, but on the basis of your rainfall data appearing to be correct there is probably not much point in turning this setting on and debugging the driver. There is not too much in the way of StdWXCalculate debug output in WeeWX, but its probably worth setting debug = 1. Probably also worthwhile running WeeWX directly to see what rain/rainRate data is being provided. Suggest you:

1. edit weewx.conf, set debug = 1, save weewx.conf

2. when it is raining stop WeeWX if it is running and then run WeeWX directly. This will cause WeeWX to display loop packets (lines starting with LOOP:) and archive records (lines starting with REC:) on the console. Let WeeWX run for a few archive periods (we need to see 2-3 REC: lines) and take a screen capture of the output. Post the captured text back here.

3. take an extract of the WeeWX log from when you just started running WeeWX directly. Make sure you capture the full startup sequence as well as 2-3 archive periods. Post the log extract here, there should be nothing sensitive in the log extract but check anyway.

Gary

[Banana Bob]

Gary

Here is a screenshot that identifies that RainRate was working earlier this year

Here are extracts from my dkpg.log which shows when I updated.

2021-04-10 19:22:52 upgrade weewx:all 4.4.0-1 4.5.1-1
2021-04-10 19:22:52 status half-configured weewx:all 4.4.0-1
2021-04-10 19:22:56 status unpacked weewx:all 4.4.0-1

So I assume that RainRate was working until the update on 10 April 2021 as the screenshot shows a recording for March 11

I will try to get round to debugging as you suggest the next time it rains and I am able to. Please hang around and wait for me.

Thanks for your help it is much appreciated.

James

[Banana Bob]

Gary

For some reason after I restarted weewx I can now see RainRate. Maybe I needed to restart after the update from 4.4 to 4.5?

Anyway attached are the logs you requested, and here is a screenshot showing it working.

Thanks for all your help

James

[gjr80]

James,

That looks as it should. When you upgraded from 4.4 to 4.5 WeeWX would need to be restarted for 4.5 to be used otherwise 4.4 would continue to run quite happily. You have a package install so that restart should happened automatically for you as part of the upgrade (this is not the case for setup.py installs, you need to do the restart manually).

No matter, it appears to be working now. I can’t explain why it would have stopped working. I would give it the benefit of the doubt this time round but keep an eye on it.

Gary