Precipitation Rate is sent to WU, but Precipitation Accumulated isn't

[Bryce Barbato]

I just installed fowsr on a Raspberry Pi by downloading the source and compiling.  The only hitch I had was that I was missing libusb, but a quick download of libusb-1.0-0-dev or something like that did the trick.  I have it connected to my WS-2080A and reporting to Weather Underground:

http://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KFLPALMB58

I just had a good rain storm and the hourly rain seems to be reporting accurately (at least the data sent to Weather Underground matches the base station throughout the day).  The weird thing is that the accumulated rain is sending a 0.  When I check the log, this is what I get:

dateutc=2014-06-29+21%3A30%3A00&winddir=180.0&windspeedmph=0.0&windgustmph=0.7&humidity=97.0&tempf=73.9&rainin=0.012&dailyrainin=0.000&baromin=29.84308&dewptf=73.0

which makes sense for all values except for dailyrainin.

Has anybody run into this problem?  I did have my base station set to record every 30 minutes (the default) and just changed it to 5 minutes for just in case reasons but that doesn't seem to have made any difference.  It looks like fowsr.c grabs the daily rain and is supposed to send it out.  Did I find a bug?  Any help would be most appreciated.

- Bryce

[Bryce Barbato]

I just realized that my log only ever has one entry in it.  Should the data be appended whenever read?  It looks like it may be being overwritten.  Could this explain the reason for the lack of accumulated rainfall?

- Bryce

[Bryce Barbato]

I also realized that I had cron set to update every minute while the base station was writing to memory every 5 minutes.  Would this cause a problem?  How does fowsr calculate the 24hr rain variable?

[Bryce Barbato]

I originally reset the base unit (just by removing the batteries) and I got the correct accumulated rainfall for exactly one data point.  Then it went back to 0.  My wunderground.log file shows 1, 2, or 3 entries now at any one time.  Also, the time is recorded as about 2 minutes in the future.  Whatever is in the log seems to get sent to wunderground.com.  The one data point that was correct was sent as such.

I then did a factory reset by holding the up arrow, reset the date on the base unit and then rebooted the Rasp Pi.  Things seem to be working better, but the date stamp in the log is still ahead by 2 minutes and I get only two records in the log.

[Bryce Barbato]

It just rained again and I'm still not getting accumulated rain.  Any suggestions?

- Bryce

[Uffe Vedenbrant]

Check for spiders...

On Jun 30, 2014 9:05 PM, "Bryce Barbato" <bryce....@gmail.com> wrote:

It just rained again and I'm still not getting accumulated rain.  Any suggestions?

- Bryce

--
Du har mottatt denne meldingen fordi du abonnerer på Google-gruppen «fowsr».
Hvis du vil avslutte abonnementet på denne gruppen og slutte å motta e-post fra den, kan du sende en e-post til fowsr+un...@googlegroups.com.
Gå til https://groups.google.com/d/optout for å se flere alternativer.

[Bryce Barbato]

:)  This is a new system, no spiders yet.  It has to do with the RaspPi.  I knew I had seen a setup guide before, but couldn't find it before.  I will follow Josch's guide and see if that fixes my problems.  I suspect I have a permissions problem somewhere.

- Bryce

[Uffe Vedenbrant]

Try with wwsr and see if there is a diff. Note that rain is a flip flop for each 0.3 mm rain..

On Jun 30, 2014 9:15 PM, "Bryce Barbato" <bryce....@gmail.com> wrote:

:)  This is a new system, no spiders yet.  It has to do with the RaspPi.  I knew I had seen a setup guide before, but couldn't find it before.  I will follow Josch's guide and see if that fixes my problems.  I suspect I have a permissions problem somewhere.

- Bryce

--

[Uffe Vedenbrant]

Have u tested with a water pistol.. I.e. testing with some small water amount to see if it counts something..

On Jun 30, 2014 9:15 PM, "Bryce Barbato" <bryce....@gmail.com> wrote:

:)  This is a new system, no spiders yet.  It has to do with the RaspPi.  I knew I had seen a setup guide before, but couldn't find it before.  I will follow Josch's guide and see if that fixes my problems.  I suspect I have a permissions problem somewhere.

- Bryce

--

[Bryce Barbato]

I get rainfall over the hour (wunderground calls it rate) but fowsr either doesn't report or calculate the dailyrainin (24 hour rain) value appropriately.  It just returns a 0.  Take a look at my weather station for today.  You'll see what I mean.  The sensor itself it working great.  I've tested its calibration and a volume that should report 1" gave me 1.02".  This could be variances in my test itself or my area calculations even.  However, the point is the measurement it being made just fine and the base station calculates it correctly.

- Bryce

[Bryce Barbato]

I followed the Rasp Pi tutorial, but I ended up with the same result.  It looked like it worked for a short period of time but then the dailyrainin went back to 0.

[Bryce Barbato]

Ok.  It looks like it takes exactly 24 hours after either rebooting the RasPi or the base station (not sure which) but then the accumulated rain starts working.  Unfortunately, it isn't in the format that Weather Underground wants.  WU is looking the the rain to zero out at midnight local time for a weather station, but fowsr currently uses a sliding window and reports the last 24 hours.  If anyone has this same issue, I suggest just waiting 24 hours to see if it works itself out.  I suspect fowsr needs 24 hours worth of records to calculate it correctly for whatever reason.  I guess I would consider this one closed.

- Bryce

[Bert Huijben]

Yes, I see this same issue. I wish the weather underground documentation was clearer about this and its other values.

There is also a different problem: Weather underground doesn't really want the rain in the last hour... it wants the current rain as calculated per hour.

The values fowsr calculates are valid as far as I can see (after enough data is captured), but there is a mismatch with the information wunderground wants to report. This makes it hard to compare the information with other weather stations... and probably in general for wunderground to combine the information with other sources.

    Bert

On Monday, July 7, 2014 11:52:23 PM UTC+2, Bryce Barbato wrote:

[Rocco Adduci]

Hi guys, I open this topic to find a solution to the bug that plagues FOWSR rain.

After various tests and nights lost in sleep I can understand the motivation that keeps fowsr to NOT transmit data of the rain in the wunderground.log (rainin + dailyrain).

So I can confirm: when the machine linux (router or raspberry) then restarts the fowsr no longer able to transmit data to wunderground.log rainin. Rainin begins again to work well only when  the next day arrive ; when you restart wait 24 h after restarting the router . Why is this happening bug, it is possible to fix this bug on the source code of fowsr ???

Being a very common situation bug (wrapped electricity go away, wrapped please reset the console and the router) would be very useful to find a solution and fix this bug.

I ask developers to fowsr a possible solution on the source code.

Thank you

Rocco Adduci

[Rocco Adduci]

But there is someone in this forum (developers FOWSR) ???**

It 's amazing, it seems deserted Total.