Author Topic: Some more info for your AcuRite driver  (Read 10056 times)

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Offline jonkjon

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #25 on: September 14, 2015, 05:25:33 PM »
I know that my rain glitches haven't been caused by another sensor as I only have one. I did spend early afternoon taking the 5 in 1 down and cleaning and removing spiders and such. It's possible that a spider may have been causing errant tips but I won't know for sure for a couple of days I guess. Not sure if this is helpful to you or not but thought I should mention it.

--Jon

Offline aweatherguy

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #26 on: September 15, 2015, 04:37:39 PM »
Actually, I was thinking that your rain glitches might be coming from someone else's sensor -- a close neighbor who might have a 5n1.

You may have already explained this but I'm wondering about the glitches -- when they occur does the rain reading switch to a fairly constant value -- or is the "wrong" rain value all over the place?

I think if you were getting interference from another 5n1 sensor the rain might change to the reading from the other sensor -- a constant number (unless it's raining). But that's only a guess.

Either way if you have not tried changing channels then please try it. Change the switches on both console AND 5n1 to a different setting (same setting on both) and then reset both console and 5n1. If the problem is interference from someone else's sensor that would most likely fix it.

I have been streaming data from a 01035 console now for many days and have seen no rain glitches.


Offline jonkjon

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #27 on: September 15, 2015, 05:41:43 PM »
Quote
Actually, I was thinking that your rain glitches might be coming from someone else's sensor -- a close neighbor who might have a 5n1

Aha....good point :oops: If another sensor was causing the issue, wouldn't it most likely ( at least occasionally) show up on the console itself? Anyway, I have changed the channels to "b" and we'll see how it goes. I hope you're right. This has been a most annoying issue.
As far as the "wrong" rain value, it is not constant. Each time it happens, it's something completely different. I usually see three or four successive rain rate values in the database and one rain value. The rain value is usually beside the first rain rate value. The other rain rate values aren't accompanied by a rain value. If it happens again, i'll post up a screen of the weewx.db.

I am also using usb mode 4.....

--Jon
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 07:42:56 PM by jonkjon »

Offline aweatherguy

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #28 on: September 17, 2015, 07:15:03 PM »
Will be interested to see the results of channel switch. Yeah, I would have thought a bad rain value from different sensor would show up on console...but who knows?

Offline jonkjon

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #29 on: September 20, 2015, 10:57:25 AM »
Well, I am officially going to go ahead and jinx myself. I have seen no rain glitches since cleaning the 5 in 1 on the 14th and changing the channel on the 15th. I would tend towards believing the channel switch was the solution. I think errant tips of the rain bucket by spiders/insects would have registered on the console. I have a lot of server and automation equipment in the environment and I am thinking that a stray radio signal might have been causing the bogus rain messages. We'll see I suppose but for now, no rainfall glitches for 6 days is the best error free run I've had....

--Jon

Offline jonkjon

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #30 on: September 21, 2015, 10:47:12 AM »
....and the jinx has reared it's ugly head! Bogus rain data again this morning.....here's a screen of the db:



Offline mwall

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #31 on: September 21, 2015, 10:53:28 AM »
....and the jinx has reared it's ugly head! Bogus rain data again this morning.....here's a screen of the db:

it would be helpful if you could post the associated log entries for the rain event.  if that was not actually 0.95 inches of rainfall in a single archive interval, then there should be log entries about 'rain counter increment ignored' around the time of the rain event.  if this is the root cause, then the 'rain event' is, in fact, just the counter flipping back to its previous state, and you will see a counter increment log message just before the rain event.

m

Offline jonkjon

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #32 on: September 21, 2015, 11:48:24 AM »
Indeed, there is this "decrement" message in the log @ 3:37 AM:

"acurite: rain counter decrement ignored: new: 0.0 old: 2.4384"


--Jon



Offline mwall

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #33 on: September 21, 2015, 12:08:32 PM »
Indeed, there is this "decrement" message in the log @ 3:37 AM:

"acurite: rain counter decrement ignored: new: 0.0 old: 2.4384"

the rain counter did a spurious decrement.  when it bounced back to its previous value, that looks no different than a rain event.  in this case, the delta was 2.4384 cm, which corresponds to the 0.96 inch value you see in your database.

it is easy to detect counter decrements.

it is easy and fairly reliable to detect spurious counter decrements - they will be less than the hardware-defined maximum counter size.

it is impossible to detect spurious counter increments, unless we have some additional information.

what could we do?

option 1: if the increment is larger than any sane amount of rainfall, we could ignore it.  the risk is that you lose data - for example, a corner case for this is if you lose contact with the sensors for 4 hours during a heavy rain, the 4 hour total would be thrown away even though it is correct.

option 2: if the increment happens within a certain amount of time of a counter decrement and that amount matches the previously-cached decrement amount, then we could assume it is a bounce-back event, not a rain event.  the risk is that a real rainfall event happens between spurious decrement and bounce-back, so that the bounce-back amount does not match exactly the decrement.

option 3: similar to option 2, but use fuzzy matching instead of exact match for the delta.

other options?

m

Offline jonkjon

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #34 on: September 21, 2015, 02:31:21 PM »
Thanks for the explanation and the description of the options.....

As an aside, I have been considering using my HobbyBoards rain gauge in lieu of the Acurite gauge. I have OWFS setup and reading my sensors already. Can I use something like this in the conf to gather rain from my HB gauge and keep the Acurite as the sensor for the other data:

[OWFS]
    [[sensor_map]]
        rain= /1D.E9C40D000000/counters.B
    [[sensor_type]]
        rain= counter

[Engine]
    [[Services]]
        data_services = user.owfs.OWFSService

Thanks again.....

--Jon

Offline mwall

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #35 on: September 21, 2015, 02:42:23 PM »
that is the basic idea.  since rainwise just returns a counter, you will also need a calibration to convert the counter to mm/cm/in.  also, if you use 'rain' as the keyword, then the rainwise data will overwrite whatever 'rain' data is reported by the acurite.  if you want to track both acurite observations and rainwise observations in the same database, you should extend the schema with a unique name such as rain_rainwise, or hijack an existing database field such as 'hail'.  post to the weewx-user group for details on these issues.

Offline jonkjon

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Re: Some more info for your AcuRite driver
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2015, 02:50:07 PM »
Thanks.....didn't mean to hijack the thread.

--Jon