Smartphone skin oddities

[Nate Bargmann]

I'll admit that I rarely, if ever, check the Smartphone skin even though
I have it enabled. Today I was checking it (I'm staring at the WeeWX
pages a lot recently because of an odd Davis ISS issue) and saw there
was no radar image. The variables in the associated skin.conf were
commented out so I added the links for the Topeka, KS NWS radar:

[Extras]
# Set this URL to display a radar image
#radar_img = http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/lite/N0R/RTX_loop.gif
radar_img = https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/KTWX_loop.gif
# Set this URL for the radar image link
#radar_url = http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/radar.php?product=NCR&rid=RTX&loop=yes
radar_url = https://radar.weather.gov/station/ktwx/standard

Even though those links work without issue in the Seasons and Standard
skins, all I get from the generated Web page is, "Sorry, no radar image."

I've attached a screenshot.

Secondly, looking at the rain page I see that it is showing, "Max rate:
655.35 in/h at 10:40:59 AM". Wow! That value looks rather suspicious
as being the max integer of a 16 bit variable. I've attached a
screenshot of that as well.

Until today I never attempted any customization of the Smartphone skin
and other than adding the radar URLs, I did nothing else. For those
curious the URL is:

https://www.n0nb.us/weather/smartphone/index.html

If these issues aren't worth resolving I'll just disable the skin. This
is with version 4.10.2.

- Nate

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[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2023 21 Nov 18:35 -0600, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> Secondly, looking at the rain page I see that it is showing, "Max rate:
> 655.35 in/h at 10:40:59 AM". Wow! That value looks rather suspicious
> as being the max integer of a 16 bit variable. I've attached a
> screenshot of that as well.

My station ISS has been having transmitter outages going offline for
various periods of time. I see that erroneous value showing in the
Standard skin as well so probably a bogus value that snuck into the
database, so I don't think I can blame that on the skin.

The radar issue remains and comparing files to the Git checkout, it
seems nothing has changed, so I'm curious when this last showed a radar
image.

[Tom Keffer]

1. That radar URL has not worked for a few years. It should be updated with what the Seasons skin uses.

2. I tried the Smartphone skin on my own station and got reasonable numbers for rain rate. As you note, the problem is probably an erroneous value sent by your Vantage. First fix your ISS, then see the wiki article Cleaning up old 'bad' data for how to get rid of it.

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[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2023 25 Nov 14:47 -0600, Tom Keffer wrote:
> 1. That radar URL has not worked for a few years. It should be updated with
> what the Seasons skin uses.

The radar image URL I set:

radar_img = https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/KTWX_loop.gif

is working in the Standard and Seasons skins and has been active from
NWS for some time. Other NWS radar sites should likewise be available.
Besides Topeka, KS, I know that Omaha and Hastings, NE sites have a
similar GIF available.

> 2. I tried the Smartphone skin on my own station and got reasonable numbers
> for rain rate. As you note, the problem is probably an erroneous value sent

> by your Vantage. First fix your ISS, then see the wiki article *Cleaning up
> old 'bad' data
> <https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/Cleaning-up-old-'bad'-data>* for how

> to get rid of it.

I have identified it and will take care of it when I make the cutover to
the new ISS.

Thanks, Tom.

[Nate Bargmann]

Well, it turns out the problem was the loose nut between the keyboard
and the chair!

I was focusing on the wrong smartphone configuration. As I generate the
old Standard report, which I've heavily customized since long ago, the
smartphone report I am getting is a sub-report of it. As I had changed
the variable names to display more than one NWS radar plot in the
Standard report, that left the smartphone skin with no variable to use.
I have corrected the variable names and all is working well.

The erroneous rain rate was coming from a failing ISS transmitter, at
least that is what I think was the source. I have replaced the
transmitter and put a QC check into weewx.conf. The Davis manual
specifies the maximum rain rate to be 30 inches/hour for the VP2 ISS,
so that is the limit I set.

Thanks again for a fine software project.