Removing Dummy/Placeholder block

I’m making good progress with setting up PWS Dashboard for my new high-up site and have a couple of queries. The site is at - Mermaid Inn, Peak District, UK Home Weather Station (ecoLcl version) (weather-watch.com)

Firstly, I’m using a 4 block wide display but only have 11 useful blocks of data to display so I’ve left the 12th block as ‘Select later’. That gives me a dummy placeholder block but I can’t find a way to get rid of this. Either an empty space or a blank block would be OK rather than a dummy block. Is there a way to remove the block without hacking code?

Secondly, I’ve tried to set PWS up to upload my data to pwsweather.com. I’ve registered on the site, modified PWS_upload_to_others.php to turn on PWS Weather uploads and entered my station ID and PWS Weather password. When I run the station cron I get -

success files loaded + data appended to day file + history was already valid + need upload to others + 1 uploads + no roll-over needed

I think the ‘1 uploads’ suggests that data has been sent, but after a couple of hours of 5 minute uploads the PWS Weather dashboard is still showing my station as inactive with no observations uploaded.

Is there something else I need to do to get this working or does it usually take more than a couple of hours before PWS Weather acknowledges that uploads are arriving? I can imaging they might now want to publish the site until it’s been online for a little longer, but I’d have thought they would have acknowledged that uploads were working much sooner?

I’ve just noticed another problem. It’s raining there at the moment according to the Ecowitt app, 1.3mm in the last hour. PWS isn’t showing this though. I’ve looked at the raw data coming in and it’s got values in the rain fields so it looks like PWS isn’t recognising the rain values for some reason.

This may be one that Wim has to look at though because I’m running some test code to grab the data using a method that isn’t normally possible.

Unfortunately I can not help you I do not have Ecowitt and especially little experienced. But nice site congratulations. A bit cold there. How do you feel with that Ecowitt system? I’m curious. For example, with high temperatures and no ventilation, how does this station behave?

It’s too soon for me to say. The station has only been outside for 48 hours and the temperature has only got up to 13C so far. The site is pretty high up for the UK (1475ft) so at this time of the year its unlikely to get too hot. I suspect that even when it does get hotter there’s usually a bit of breeze up that high on the moors so there will probably always be some airflow past the sensors which should help to avoid stagnant air around the sensors.

Can’t remember the solution to the blocks, but PWSWeather can certainly take quite a while to declare a new station active.

You will also find that they graph data that you don’t upload (e.g. sky cover, solar radiation) and don’t graph some that you do (e.g., in my case, UV - but I have yet to check that WD actually includes UV in the upload). See Weather for EH107BN - a Personal Weather Station in Edinburgh, United Kingdom | PWSWeather

I was just looking at the blocks again and the 4th and 5th rows have ‘Do not use’ options where the first three rows only have ‘Select later’. I’ve not tried it but I think that might mean you can have fewer blocks on rows 4 and 5. If that’s true then I guess I could have 4 rows (3 with 3 blocks and 1 with 2 blocks). Given the usual aspect ratio of screens 4h3v would look better than 3h4v.

You should never have to hack code.
If there is no setting for something multiple users need, it will be in the scripts shortly.
Please test this version.
EasyweatherSetup - > Tab Tiles now should have a “do not use this” for the third row also.
PWS_easyweathersetup.php.zip (34.9 KB)

Correct, it is uploaded but you can be sure that it takes multiple days before the data shows, even longer than WU. needs.
What is the link to your dashboard, similar to mine https://www.pwsweather.com/station/pws/leuven

AFAICS there is a problem in my beta-test script ecco_api.arr data has only piezo rain.
It should generate “old type” rain also if there is no “old type” rain sensor.
Have to adapt the script tomorrow.

Wim

There seems to be something odd going on with the units. I cannot get full metric. Nor can I get UK (as I understand it) mph, hPa, mm, C

Metric = km/h, hPa, mm, F (!!)
Clicking the icon to change to C, does give C, but everything else then displays in imperial?

I wouldn’t do that. I was just trying to avoid people giving me solutions that required code hacking. I’ve just tested the new setup version. My third row only has 3 blocks now and looks very nice. Thank you for the very quick fix :smiley:

My PWSweather dashboard link is like yours - https://www.pwsweather.com/station/pws/MERMAID01 although the station ID is upper case (I entered it lower case). The dashboard doesn’t exist though because it says the station doesn’t exist or hasn’t uploaded any data yet. I’ll keep watching out for it coming to life.

I looked at the script and saw references to piezo rain which is what seemed to be in the raw downloaded data. I wasn’t aware there was an old type for rain. I’ll await the fix…no rush. I know you’ve got plenty of other things going on!

The timing of API data downloads seems quite intermittent. It’s not every minute, or even every 5 minutes that you thought it might be. I can see the timestamp on the ecco_api.arr being updated by the cron job every minute so I know the cron is working. The data doesn’t update every time though, so it’s not a 1 minute update interval. However, I’m seeing odd jumps, like new data at 19:57 followed by 20:01, 20:07, 20:14 and 20:19. So 4 minutes then 6, minutes then 7 minutes. Seems strange why the updates seem to come at random intervals. I doubt that anything can be done about that though but at least I have some relatively real time data for the next few months until I can re-configure things.

It is

I will check the times also from my station, there are different “time-values” in the api-data.

Wim

I just tried reading data from the API just by sending the correct URL with the two keys and MAC in it using the browser. Doing that I see new data (changed timestamps and updated data values) once per minute. So there is one minute data available somehow.

It’s woken up for me now too. I did change from using my account password to the API key for the station after seeing another interface that said to use the API key so perhaps that’s what made it wake up?