WD not reading my Vaisala WXT520 rainfall -> Microserver

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1

I have it up and running temporary and it reads everything except rainfall.

I have it hooked through a Columbia weather systems Microserver and interface card, and when I connect to the microserver over IP it is reading the rainfall correctly and matching my rainfall gauge.

I have the microserver forwarding the wxt520 information as a pass through. So in theory it should be identical information but I am not completely sure.

My knowledge of WD consists of about 5 days of playing around with it so if anyone could help me out that would be great.

Thanks,
David

EDIT: I’m running the latest build of WD

2

note that WD stores its rain totals separatly from the station
when rain occurs, then WD should increase its total
yes?

3

No, the total does not come into WD. All rainfall measurements are at 0.000.
The microserver is outputing Rain Today, Rain this week, Rain this month, Rain this year, Rain Intensity and Rain Duration.

The microserver is taking in the rain intensity and calculating its own rain totals also, but the rain intensity should be forwarding the intensity to WD just like the WXT520 would do if the microserver wasn’t in line. The micro server is my back up data logger.

I will disable all but the rain intensity output on the server and go hit the weather station with a garden hose.

EDIT: Tested it, microserver was reading about a inch of rain, but nothing to weather display.

Might have to give columbia weather systems an email and see what they have to say. They recommended WD as a third party program to use with there orion setup.

4

ah, so your not using a standard setup?

note that WD expects to find

Rc=

in the data for rain data (mm expected unless you have set that its inches in the data, in the weather station type setup)

is that in the data stream?
also you can set WD into debug mode:
go to setup advanced/misc, then tick, log the raw data
then under view, WS2010/WS2500 data setup, you should see info about the raw rain data WD finds

5

The micro server is not sending the Rc= so it makes sense. I am going to send it out for a firmware update and see if that help anything, or gives me a little more customization on the server.

Thanks,
David

6

what is it sending for rainfall?

7

I’ll have to get back with you. I sent it out today for a firmware upgrade. Should have it back in a week or so.

8

Ok, here is the log and it is sending the Rc into WD. I also saw it coming in over a serial packet sniffer I have. When raining it sends data every 10 seconds just like the WXT520.

0r3,Rc=0.010I,Rd=0000s,Ri=0.00I,Hc=0I,Hd=0s,Hi=0IMB@
raw 0.010I

Then after this log my micro sever shows a full .7 inches of rain.
I’m sure I cannot give a good rain measurement with a garden hose due to the way the wxt520 reads rain, but the 3 thunder storms did comes in and read about .5 inches over 3 days. I will attach the log of when I was hitting it with the hose.

wdlogger.txt (103 KB)

9

Also here is the packet sniffer log. I turned off everything but the Rc to see if that was the cause.

sierallogger1.txt (36 KB)

10

the problem is, the RC=0.01I (i.e inches)
is not increasing
WD adds rain to itsl totals when that value increased

the log you posted of the raw data did not have that value increase…even when you added rain to the station …yes?

11

No, it is not increasing when trying it with a water hose (as its not a normal rain gage, it takes the impact of the individual rain drops, which is supposedly directly proportional to the volume of the rain drop… so doing it with a water hose is real difficult due to the misting effect)
It only sends the rain signal if it has been seeing steady rain for 10 seconds.

I will keep the logger running and hopefully catch a rainstorm tonight or tomorrow and see what it is doing.