Trixology
WeatherCat => WeatherCat General Discussion => Topic started by: tthompson on December 25, 2012, 03:26:34 AM
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It was great to find another choice in Mac weather software so I thought I would give WeatherCat a try. I am having the issue at startup that has been mentioned but suggestions haven't worked. I get the rain gauge set to 0.1mm notice which isn't true. The station works fine on Weatherlink and Weather Display but not on WeatherCat. I have the latest usb driver installed but can't go anywhere once the rain gauge popup saying I need to change the setting. appears (It's already set to 0.01") Any further help is appreciated.
Tom
imac with OSX 10.6.8, Davis Vantage Pro2 USB, latest WeatherCat.
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Dear Tom and WeatherCat fans,
I have a faint recollection of someone else having a similar problem and that it was resolved somehow. Alas, that isn't going to be enough to locate the thread. You might try some searches of this forum using words like rain gauge and see if you get lucky.
Otherwise, the WeatherCat development team are taking a well-deserved holiday break. If you can be patient, they'll certainly get back to you after Christmas.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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I have downloaded the older PowerPC version onto my old laptop and I get the same notice. It also works fine with weatherlink and weather display. Just thought I would add that.
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Hmm, we get this when connecting through VirtualVP (and there's a work around in the WeatherLink IP station driver detailed in the manual), but I've never seen it in a USB or serial connected Vantage.
Can you do me a favour and check what the rain gauge is set to in the setup screen on your Vantage? (Press DONE and the '-' buttons together to get at the setup screens).
If it isn't 0.1mm it must be some weird firmware issue I haven't seen before.
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[bounce] Yeah! That was it. Didn't even think of looking there since the other software worked.
Thank you very much. On to evaluation.
Tom
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Good :)
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I have a "Digitech" ( WH1080 ) USB connected weather station. Everything works fine except the rain gauge recording.
Its pouring rain at the moment and i see rain has been recorded on the base station unit but nothing is recorded in weather station.
Also i'm getting weird RAW Rain figures showing in weather cat ( ie 3,670.04 ) but "0" in Daily Rain and Rain/h.
Any suggestions please.
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Hi Blight,
Do you have a link to your station? It's possibly a WH3080, which has a different record format to the 1080/2080 to account for the UV and lux. Unfortunately Fine Offset use the same ID's for most of their hardware so it isn't possible to differentiate.
[Edit: If it has solar and UV then it's a 3080. If it isn't, open the Live Data View from the Tools menu in WeatherCat and check what the rain channels are doing there].
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The receiver unit is a XC0348 model in the 433.9 ghz range . ( http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=XC0348 )
The windows software provided with the unit i have works fine on my wife's laptop, just no rain guage working on the Mac.
The live view shows no rain gauge channel at all.
cheer's
stu blight
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Thanks Blight - looks like a 1080 - I assume it doesn't have solar or UV on the display?
Give me a bit and I'll post a test build for you that'll show us the rain as being decoded by the station - it'll probably be tomorrow now - in the Live Data View (Tools menu) is it showing invalid for the rain and rain rate?
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No rain gauge stuff mentioned anywhere
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There should be rain and rain rate channels listed there. Might be an installation issue - can you uninstall everything?
Go to:
http://wiki.trixology.com/index.php/Installation_And_Requirements
and remove all the files and folders listed under 'Moving WeatherCat from one machine to another' then download the latest WeatherCat and give it another go.
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Sorry.
my evaluation period has expired. I have deleted and reinstalled everything but no data now.
I didn't notice the rain issue because its been 8 - 10 days above 39'C here and then we had a thunderstorm a couple of days ago when i noticed no rain recordings.
Cheers
stu
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Hmm interesting. I also have a WH1080 but hadn't set up the rain guage yet as it had been too wet to get out to do it! When looking at Live Data View, I see exactly the same channels as Blight - i.e. no rain guage channels. Wind indicator isn't connected either at the moment but those channels do show. I'll get it connected when I get home from work this evening and see what happens, but looks like I could have the smame problem. Will let you know.
Neil
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Decided this needed testing before I headed off for work so connected the sensors to the device in the garage and triggered the rain gauge to see what happens and I think it's working OK. In Live Data View there are channels called "Precipitation per hour" and "Precipitation total" and one of these is now registering and am getting figures in the main WC view and on the base station.
Presume these are the "rain" and "rain rate channels" referred to, which were there all along! In Stu's case there's and entry of 792.72 for "Precipitation total" and "valid" for both entries.
Not expecting any more data collection today as it's in the garage - but hopefully I'll actually get everything set up properly at the weekend - so long as we don't get the snow that's forecast [snow]
Neil
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yes neil i saw the precipitation channels as well.
When its raining though i didnt get any reading on the hourly rain rate and the total of 700 + ml for the Total is way over the top.
My base unit says we have had 3-5 ml. Total. ( its only rained once for about 15 min so far this year )
I've actually poured some water through it now to test it and it shows on the base unit but not in Weathercat.
cheers
stu
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I'll have another play when I get home tonight as apart from seeing that numbers were being recorded - I didn't take much notice about whether they were all in agreement as I'd just triggered it by rocking back and forth a couple of times. Rain is something we've certainly not been short of so far this year in the UK (nor last year). No doubt we'll have a drought as soon as I get fully set up though!!
Neil
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Hi stu,
The station driver outputs two values to WeatherCat - the first is a running total of all the rain seen by your station since it was powered up and the other is the current rain rate per hour. The total rain will start at 0 when the console is first powered up and increment over time to 9999. When it gets there it'll reset to 0 (this is Precipitation Total in the Live Data view).
From the total rain all other rain values are calculated - for example if at the start of the day the total rain was 100mm and at the end of the day the total rain is 110mm, then the daily rain is 10mm.
I've uploaded a test build which will dump the raw rain reading it's seeing to the console log:
http://resources.trixology.com/downloads/WeatherCat113B114.zip (http://resources.trixology.com/downloads/WeatherCat113B114.zip)
I would suggest first powering down your console and remove the batteries, then remove the batteries from the external thermo/hygro unit and unplug the rain bucket cable, check the connector is clean and the cable is undamaged, then plug it back in. Put the batteries back in the thermo/hygro unit and the console and make sure all the sensors are being received correctly by the console.
Download the test build as above and get it running. With WeatherCat running, set it's sampling rate to 1 minute (Preferences->Misc 2). Put some water into the rain bucket so it tips two or three times, then wait a minute or two and check WeatherCat's daily rain gauge and rain rate. If they are reading, then all is good.
If they are showing 0, go to Applications->Utilities->Console.app, select 'All Messages' and look for a message from WeatherCat that looks something like:
11/01/2013 16:58:51.704 WeatherCat[47027]: WH1080 rain: 491.4
This is the raw rain as received from your station - it's output about once every 30 seconds - does it look sensible and consistent?
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What is 'raw rain' a measurement of?
Neil
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OK pulled the batteries out. ( wondered why lights were still on, on the base station - USB delivers power to these units. didn't know that ) Left for 10 minutes.
installed software. ran through the setup etc and immediately Daily Rain and Raw Rain registered 10.62
within 10 minutes this had risen to 35.4 on both.
20 minutes later daily rain jumped to 60.18 but raw rain stayed at 35.4
the weather cat controller says we have had 49.6mm and the Mac console log shows 35.4
The base station shows 0 and it has NOT rained.
I squirted the rain bucket with a hose (its 10 m up a pole ) briefly.
The Base station gauge now shows 0.6mm
Daily rain is now showing 60.78 Raw rain 36.0 and the weather controller says we have now had 50.2mm
So at least the 0.6 mm was added to all the records.
Can a button be added to reset the rain recordings to zero or do i have to manually edit all the data in the Editor ?
How do i reset the all the records in the Raw Rain area back to 0 easily ?
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Your station seems to be putting out variable rain data. Can you try removing the batteries and unplugging it from USB - we need it to be powered down to reset it. If the rain in the console log isn't sitting at 0 after that (with no rain through the bucket), there isn't much more that can be done.
The quickest way of editing a lot of records is with a good text editor - something like TextWrangler (see WeatherCat and Data in the manual), alternatively you can start a new data set with the 'Delete Data' button in the Location/Colours pane of the preferences.
Neil, the raw rain is the total rain seen by the station in mm's - nearly all stations can output this, but some like Davis stations can output total, daily, monthly and annual.
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I have done that.
I have completely deleted everything ( in Library, Program, Preferences etc etc ).. Reinstalled and started again
This time on startup ( 10 min ago ) i got 1.42 in the Raw rain and 1.42 in the Daily rain.
The console is showing 36.0
The Digitech console shows ZERO for rain.
All the data on the software supplied by the manufacturers on the PC version is working correctly.
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So if you leave it run now, we need to see everything stay as it is (assuming no rain). Leave it run for a few hours then check how the figures look.
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All appears to be working ok now.
I think the original value was a cached value from the console somewhere. We had about 1mm of rain this morning and it added it ok.
The test will be in 2 or so days. WE have a cat 4 cyclone bearing down on us. Probably won't have a weather station left if we get a direct hit ...LOL
cheers
Stu
Western Australia