Instrument Panel...adjusting the annual rain figures

[baggins]

I have not found a way of adjusting the annual rain figure on the Instrument Panel. Currently mine is showing the same figure as the monthly figure. The true value for the annual at the moment is 234.8mm. How do I adjust the panel figure? https://www.meteoplug.com/cgi-bin/meteo ... f5ebf6e2fb

Thanks,

baggins

[skyewright]

I have not found a way of adjusting the annual rain figure on the Instrument Panel. Currently mine is showing the same figure as the monthly figure.

Meteoplug is a "logger" so it only knows about weather it has "seen", i.e. it can't make use of your weather station's own historical data like "rain this year".

A "trick" way would be to set up a text file containing a few readings for earlier in the year in the correct format (one record for January 1st to set the baseline, then one for the last day of each month might be enough?) then use Meteoplug's import facility to read in the file.

I don't know if anyone has done that with Meteoplug before now but I believe it has been done with Meteohub where the same general logic applies.

Does that make sense?

[baggins]

I have not found a way of adjusting the annual rain figure on the Instrument Panel. Currently mine is showing the same figure as the monthly figure.

Meteoplug is a "logger" so it only knows about weather it has "seen", i.e. it can't make use of your weather station's own historical data like "rain this year".

A "trick" way would be to set up a text file containing a few readings for earlier in the year in the correct format (one record for January 1st to set the baseline, then one for the last day of each month might be enough?) then use Meteoplug's import facility to read in the file.

I don't know if anyone has done that with Meteoplug before now but I believe it has been done with Meteohub where the same general logic applies.

Does that make sense?

Yes, That does make a lot of sense and I had surmised that that would be a way of somehow doing it. However, like a lot of things Wx programme wise, it can seem simple at first, but then one can make a complete mess of things for later on.

I will obviously have a think about this before leaping in, but at the moment I just do not have the confidence to successfully achieve what at first seems a small input.

I have my new webpage all ready and waiting for publication, but without the correct value for "annual rain" it will remain hidden (ish).. http://www.elginweather.co.uk/indexmeteochart.html

Not knowing how the Davis VP2 data logger and Console plus Meteoplug work as a whole I was even wondering if at the end of the month that maybe the "annual rain figure" would get updated via the meteoplug data anyway?....mmmmmmm....hey ho!

[skyewright]

Not knowing how the Davis VP2 data logger and Console plus Meteoplug work as a whole I was even wondering if at the end of the month that maybe the "annual rain figure" would get updated via the meteoplug data anyway?....mmmmmmm....hey ho!

No.
Meteoplug is just seeing "current" data, which for a rain gauge is three values (one of which is just a dummy!):

rain rain# rain rate [mm/h] (or 1/10 mm/h when number has leading 0)
rain fall yesterday [mm] ** not supported **
rain fall total [1/10 mm] (since beginning of recording)

In an importable raw format, an indivudual record looks like this:

Code: Select all

20100713093737 rain0 0 0 4312

That line means a reading from around 09:37 on 13th July 2010, at which point it wasn't raining (rate is zero) and the bucket total was 431.2mm

Meteoplug "sees" rainfall when there is a change in the bucket total (though if there is a very big increase it is assumed to be a 'reset' of the total rather than an impossibly big downpour).

With a VP2 I think the bucket total is the year to date total (it certainly seems to be so with my VP2). So what I had in mind was a file something like:

Code: Select all

20100101000000 rain0 0 0 0
20100131235959 rain0 0 0 1000
20100228235959 rain0 0 0 2000

and so on. I believe that file would give 100mm rainfall in both January and February 2010.

Perhaps Boris could comment on that?

[baggins]

I presume that I am not the only one to have run into this initial instrumentation problem and that there is indeed a way to overcome it....over to Boris!

[admin]

When I get it right you are asking for a way to manually add data.

What David suggests is to use the existing data import feature of Meteoplug, which can upload data in Meteohub or WSWIN format. On the down side you will have to understand the data format of Meteohub raw data, have to build a "fake" raw data file with your editor and have to import this. This really gives you flexibility to insert any data you like, but you don't have a nice user interface for that. Data format is described in the Meteohub documentation.

Please understand that Meteoplug builds aggregated data, like rain of a day/month/year from what it can see as raw data. This is the only way to keep all aggregation levels consistent, which is important in many aspects. Just to fake a value on the aggregation level of a year is not making much sense, when the rain of the months do not sum up to that, as an example. You will start having inconsistencies everywhere you look to.

So Davids suggestion, to import weather data of the missing time periods as raw data is the only way to go, from my point of view. Or, even better, accept that you can't report data you have not logged.

[baggins]

.
So Davids suggestion, to import weather data of the missing time periods as raw data is the only way to go, from my point of view. Or, even better, accept that you can't report data you have not logged.

Yes, I can understand not wishing to "frig" the figures in a database....particularly as I had considerable difficulties with outcomes after doing just such a process with another well known wx programme.

Bearing the above in mind, perhaps another solution would be to just NOT DISPLAY the annual rain figure on the instrument panel. It would be neccessary to re-introduce the instrument back into the panel on the 1st January next, but that would be OK for my website. Can this be done?