Precipitation Data not accurate? maybe?
So it didn't always use to be incorrect as i remember looking at the weather station and within a few hours noticed the same amount on both the rainmachine and weatherstation. However lately i have tweaked some settings and now i don't see it being the same. So my question is that it may just not be working properly and/or a setting i made changed the data that is being displayed.
So Here is what i am seeing.
Rainmachine, showing '0.00 rainfail for 'today'.
PWS 400ft from me at neighbors house which is what i am linked up to on the rainmachine through wunderground. This is showing 0.34". Wunderground is also showing 0.34".
So the PWS and Wunderground are showing the same rainfall amount. This rainfall was earlier in the day so it had plenty of time to 'sync' by itself, but i manually refreshed the data on rainmachine now, almost 11:30pm at night, and then went back to the home screen and it said 'hold while refresh or redraw the graphs'. Afterwards still showing 0.00 precipitation for Saturday (today).
Now the settings i have for rainmachine i recently changed because i don't like that the forecast is so off... i agree with another poster a while back that the % Chance of the rain needs to be added to teh algorithm as sometimes the chance is like 30% of 0.25" and it never pans out and affects it. anyway, not the reason for this post.
So i changed the 'Rain Sensitivity' from 100% to 40%.
I am not sure if changing this setting now changes the actual 'rain amount' showing in the graphs of the rainmachine, but it doesn't seem like that would be accurate anyway but i don't know the algorithm. i am presuming that precipitation should be the actual precipitation and the only thing rain sensititvy changes is the calculation of how much watering.
anyway, i have screenshots if needed, but that is pretty much it. I am only connected to the one Wunderground Station, i do not have NOAA enabled... so the data should only be from this station and not averaged.
thoughts? anyone else seeing this?
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OK, then maybe this is a feature thing but i think it is a bug.
1) On the dashboard, it shows 'yesterday, today, and then 5 days in future.
2) It is 7am Monday now, and on Sunday it rained 0.10 inches. The rainmachine for 'sunday' still shows 0.0 inches. I do have the option to update past data or whatnot and refreshed the weather setting so it updated the graphs. still shows 0.0.
3) IN my opinion, if it is raining and during the day, say the afternoon it ALREADY has rained 0.50 inches, then at some point during the day when it 'syncs' the weather data it should reflect at Minumum 0.50 inches since that is 'known' accurate data. Again later in the day well after it has already rained, it still shows 'below' that. This isn't the forecast data at that point. Again even if there is still time left in the day, the algorithm should reflect the 'known' data. Again this isn't happening... and as shown in my point above, it is now the next day and still showing 0.0 even though it rained 0.10 yesterday.
4) I 'only' have 1 wunderground station syncing, i do not have NOAA enabled, so it shouldn't be averaging anything.
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I have only '1' service, my PWS through wunderground. There is definitely something wrong with something as the rain does 'NOT' match what wunderground says. I understand for 'future' it still does some calculation to forecast, however the chart shows 'yesterday, today, and then a few days in future'. So i would think that the 'yesterday' data would be exactly what the wunderground data shows. this is not what is happening. So right there i know something is wrong. Yes i have 'refreshed' the data, it isn't accurate, it is always 'under' what the actual is for 'yesterday'. Now again for 'today', if it is later in the day and it has 'already rained 1", it is still now accurate. again i would presume that the data would always be 'at lealst' what it has already rained, but it is not. There is something going on as the data is all over the place.
i still love the rainmachine but hopefully by next season this can be resolved.
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Are you using Web UI > Settings > Weather > RAIN tab to compare yesterday RainMachine data with WUnderground page or Dashboard ? The RAIN tab should be close to what WUnderground reported last time it was queried by RainMachine. Is your RainMachine using the latest beta update or you are on stable ?
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OK, so i didn't realize there was a 'rain (forecast) and rain (observed) chart. i will have to now check to see if that is matching up.
correct, i was looking at the dashboard which shows the 'forecast' readings i guess... my point being that the 'prior day' should be the 'observed' not the old forecast. i would think.
The dashboard i would think should also for the ' today ' reading, if later in the day should be at least what the observed has reported up to that point. it shouldn't be below.
so if it is 5pm and already recieved 1" of rain, but the forecast is/was for 0.5", it seems like the dashboard at 5pm should be atleast 1", not below 1" because of a bad forecast.
i am using the latest beta.
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We have discussed the possibility of having observed data for today, but it does add some issues for us with the current interval for data retrieval. Yesterday is easy to manage as you can get it once and will not change, for today you must make sure you get it often so you don't miss rain events. What we are aiming is to improve the weather services so instead of going to WUnderground (for which we get a lot of complains of bad data) go directly (if possible) to weather station of to weather station own reporting service (like WeatherLink, ambientweather.net, weatherflow etc).
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I definitely think for the 'yesterday' on the dashboard you should display the 'actual' data if available. Also, maybe on the 'dashboard it should show when the last weather data was received, the actual date/time, so you can get an idea of when your data is from. I do like the idea of getting data directly from ambientweather which is what the PWS is i am using. Either way something needs to be done as it is frustrating. also if there is ever a question on whether you should do something or not, my advice is to always add an 'option' in the settings if there is a 'choice between two or more methods'. let the end user decide how they want to handle.
thanks, again love the rainmachine.
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