Rain offset for when importing data

I have a Ventus 831 Weather station and currently use the supplied Weather Capture software. Both have done me well for the past years, but I’ve decided I need software that gives me more scope and also supports the Davis Vantage Pro2 should I decide to upgrade the Ventus for something different.

I’m currently trying out WD (downloaded a couple of days ago) and it would seem to fit the bill nicely, but I’m still getting to grips with it.

I set up the Ventus as the Honeywell TE923 station and ticked the Use direct … box.
The Ventus reads rainfall in 0.7mm increments, so I assume that it has a 0,7mm tip.

One problem that I have is that WD shows the rainfall percentage one decimal point too high (e.g. 1.4mm from the Ventus is shown as 14mm on WD).
Searching the forum, I found a post that suggested an offset of 0.1%. However, as WD wouldn’t accept 0.1, I tried -1% as the offset and that appeared to work with tests I did.

However, that only works with live readings - i.e. if WD is running when the rain tips occur.
if there have been any tips since WD was turned off, when the data logger picks up the missing data at switch on, the rain level is shown without the offset adjustment (i.e. if there has been one 0.7mm tip, WD will show this as 7mm).

I’ve looked, but can’t find a way to make the -1% offset apply to imported rain data.

My rain offset is -1% and 1.0 modified rain gauge …

any help appreciated, thanks
Roger

WD should not need a rain offset from the data from this station
something else is going on here I suggest

one thing is that WD keeps its own rain records, separate from the staton
(you can set the starting rain records in WD though)

I could add some debug code to see what is going on for the live rain data from your station too

Thanks

Anything that will help.

I am going to uninstall / reinstall WD to ensure that everything is back to the default settings.
I’ll then set the Ventus back up as the Honeywell … station, but not change any other setting or set any offsets.

I’ll then run the data logger to import any data from the Ventus and see what that shows for today’s rain total so far (2.2mm on the Ventus at the moment - 20:39 Tuesday)

I did the reinstall.

The datalogger was set to pick up from the beginning of the 15th and the results showed 2.2mm rain for today, which matched the Ventus.

I then did a test tip of 0.7mm

The time is currently 22:00
The Ventus shows:
past 24 hours: 3.5mm
Yesterday (i.e. 15th): 12mm
The Ventus 24 hour reading was 0.0 at 01:00 today,

WD shows:
Today: 2.9mm
Yesterday 34.6mm

34.6mm for yesterday on the WD is nearly three times higher than the corresponding Ventus 12mm for the same period. This may just be a glitch.

I’ll give it another 24 hours with a couple more tip tests tomorrow and check to see if it’s OK now.

OK, good, yes, let me know

The problem is still there and appears to only occur when collecting data from the Ventus when WD is opened up. Live data is picked up correctly.
An example is today:
Ventus rain total today (from around 05:00) 2.2mm. WD opened and imported data showed around 38mm for today. WD was then closed. Opened WD 10 minutes ago, after a further 0.7mm rain.
Ventus daily total 2.9mm. WD daily total now 74.2mm

Weather Capture Advance shows the rain totals correctly.

The only think that I haven’t checked is the USB connection between the Ventus and the PC.
Because of the distance between the Ventus and PC, I’ve had to use a long USB cable run.
The total cable length is about 11 - 12m and includes 2 x 5m in-line amplified USB cables.
This arrangement has always worked fine, (with the Ventus and other USB equipment) but I will try connecting the Ventus to the PC with a short USB cable and do a download just to confirm if the problem still occurs when using WD.

I now have a Vantage Pro2 which I am trying out with WD on a separate PC, however the Ventus may find a home elsewhere with a separate copy of WD if I can get it sorted out.

OK, so live data is OK , its just the history data
I will check my code

try this update
http://www.weather-display.com/downloadfiles/weatherdisplaytest.zip
and I have added some debug info about the rain that WD gets for the history data under view, debug info

Thanks

I wasn’t sure whether I had to uninstall the existing WD, so I did and also deleted the wdisplay folder.
I ran the test file in and got the message “The program can’t start because PAKBUSDLL.DLL is missing from your computer”

I then installed WD (in case the test file should have been installed over WD) and tried to run the test file again, but got the same error message.

Is something missing?

for test file, read update file :slight_smile:

I’ve given up on this for now. The rain gauge has now decided it doesn’t want to transmit any tips (the gauge is detected, so the batteries should be OK).! As the rain was the the thing that was giving me the problems in WD, it means that I can no longer try to sort the problem out.

I’m going to concentrate on trying out WD with the Vantage Pro and will probably not bother with the Ventus as an outdoor PWS any more.

Thanks for the help.

there was no need to delete or un install
you just needed to simply unzip/copy the test version to where you have WD installed already and run from there

Thanks

I’ve now unzipped and copied the files into the wdisplay folder.

When I get time, I’ll have a look at the rain gauge and see if I can get it working again and then I’ll test it out with importing the history to WD and see what happens