Ok we went up there today and figured the problem out, minor bug in the code. look out for the next storm, updating our status now.
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I believe that the concern I mentioned about the temperatures being too high because of the lack of ventilation and color of the case is actually happening.
Just checked the wunderground report and the temperature it is showing (73) is 9 degrees warmer the weather.com is showing for Carroltonā¦
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Thanks @wandrson! The great thing about this project is that if you see there needs to be a change such as this you have the authority to fix it. We will be having a presentation about our project soon which will layout all the groundwork for others to get involved.
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It does seem to be warmer than most of the other PWSs in the area (the 74Ā° near Farmers Branch is the Dallas Makerspace PWS)ā¦ Itās interesting to see the range of the stations!
Spray painting the box white has some merit. FWIW the temp/humidity sensor is outside the box under a 3d printed, ventilated radiant heat shield.
Looks like this one:
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Looks like we registered 9" of rain in a short period of time this early morning. Thatās a pretty torrential storm. The PWS near my house received 1".
Yes we were actually testing out our rain sensor last night. We can now read rainfall, but the question remains if itās emptying physically or does the code need to update how fast it resets.
Once it dries up we will go on the roof to run more tests. If youād like to join the best I can offer right now is letting yāall know 5 minutes before on Talk. But more than likely Wed or Thurs is when weāll go back up.
We havenāt released the code because weāre still working out this last issue. Thanks for watching and your patience.
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I donāt think the solution to the rain sensor is in software this time. I think itās due to wind gusts flexing the pole with enough acceleration to flip the rain bucket. If true, this would be electrically indistinguishable from legitimate rain and so canāt easily be resolved in software. Iāve released the code already in a previous post. I just havenāt posted it on github yet, but Iāll do that as soon as I get some time.
I believe weāre going to need a physical modification in order to fix the false rain issue. Either stiffen the pole, or add guy wires, or move the rain sensor lower on the pole, or something else. Basically, the top of the pole (where the rain sensor is) is whipping around violently enough to cause the rain bucket inside to move. Each time it moves far enough to trip its sensor is equivalent to ~0.3mm of rain filling and tipping the bucket, and the software is interpreting it as such.
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I allowed for the possibility of guy wirea in the design. We can also shorten the mast back down to 6ā. That will reduce flex by about half.
We can add eyebolts to the corners of the base and the top of the mast, then use piano wire/picture frame wire with turnbuckles to tighten the guy wires and add rigidity to the mast.
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This seems like an adequate solution to me, just based on visual observation of the mast during common daytime wind conditions (15 km/h; 30 km/h gusts). I suspect we need fairly minimal stiffening, but this is of course not remotely empirical, and Iād enjoy seeing more considered input. I regret that I donāt have a video to post showing the mast motion, but anyone can go on the roof at any time to observe it.
Tonight I modified the sensor script to report rain in negative magnitude in order to prevent propagation to wunderground (negative values are considered invalid by weewx), and added a logfile on the pi at /root/rpiweather.log so we can still see whether and when the rain sensor is activating. Running cat /root/rpiweather.log | grep -v "\-0.000 mm" on the pi will print a timestamped line for each occasion where the rain sensor bucket tipped, including false positives due to mast motion. This can be used to verify whether rain is indeed being reported during clear skies.
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Delightfully, the negative rain still shows up in the charts at http://dallas.ms/weather even though it isnāt reaching wunderground. It does look to me like thereās a correlation between wind and false rain. The magic wind speed seems to be about 40 km/h gusts.
another:
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Upcoming Meeting
When: Thursday, 3/9
Time: 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Where: Interactive Classroom
We will finish up with the documentation, how others get involved. We will also discuss updating the website.
@HankCowdog
@benemorius
@LisaSelk
@sciborg
@brianbterry
@Gimli
All others are welcomed.
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contacting wunderground to get our station back up. we will have to hold off on our documentation set up until then.
Took down the weather station. The box will be located in Science on the black shelf named Weather Station.
- Raspberry PI 3
- OurWeather Plus board
- Temperature Sensors
- Rain Sensor
So from what Iāve gathered the servers went down two days ago. Around this time our station stopped reporting data all together. You cant access our page going through the Weather link. Possibly a corrupt SD card?
Iāll be working on it the next couple of days Iāll be up here, all day Sunday if anyone wants to join in.
3-20-17 Update
Thanks @benemorius making a script to restart Weewx. He found that because the servers went down including our, virtual server, that prevented the pi from serving up data to our website and wunderground.
Thank you @wandrson for your suggestion of using a white box to house our electronics. @MrPink suggested that we try spray painting it white. We did and just by looking at todayās results it seems that we were able to be in range with other personal weather stations(pws) by about Ā±5 degrees.
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3-26-17 Update
Ok Iāve updated our github and wiki project page with documentation of how to get involved. My part of the project is done.If anybody sees something in the documentation that needs updating or clarifying, please do so or notify this log. Itās expected that people read our build log, visit our wiki page and/or read weewx documentation for installation help.
Weather Station Wiki
DMS Weather Github
Weewx.com
Possible Projects:
- Place the rain sensor in a secure place where the wind will not activate it.
- Redesign the weather station website so it is useful to outside users. Web Developer for DMS Weather
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Hey guys we have a Science Committee Meeting Monday, April 24, 7 p.m. - 8 p.m. Purple Classroom. Since we are being funded by Science we need a representative to inform the committee of what the project is and know the guidelines that will effect our funding. Afterwards please post what guidelines are required discussed at the meeting on this thread.
This can be a great way to start in on this project, you donāt have to be apart of this project to represent us, I can fill you in on all the details. If youāre interested PM me.
@HankCowdog
@David_Steele
@sciborg
@benemorius
@Gimli
@bscharff
@brianbterry
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