API questions re: rain measurements

@wfsupport - need some help understanding what your API(s) are reporting for rain…

In the Tempest API Websocket Reference:

index 12 = rain accumulated
index 19 = Rain Accumulated Final (Rain Check)
index 20 = Local Daily Rain Accumulation Final (Rain Check)
index 21 = Precipitation Analysis Type
    0 = none
    1 = Rain Check with user display on
    2 = Rain Check with user display off

In the REST API:

12 - Rain Accumulation (mm)
18 - Local Day Rain Accumulation (mm)
19 - NC Rain Accumulation (mm)
20 - Local Day NC Rain Accumulation (mm)
21 - Precipitation Aanalysis Type (0 = none, 1 = Rain Check with user display on, 2 = Rain Check with user display off)

My reading is that index 12 is rain in that reporting period (one obs_st period from the hub).

Index 19 (Websocket) and 18 (REST) seem to be rain for that date in total - correct ?

What is the difference between items 19/20 (Websocket) or between items 18/19 (REST) ?

What does item 21 indicate ? Does it alter any/all of the rain readings the API returns ? Which one(s) ?

[…background - I’m comparing my local UDP rain measurements/totals with your server-side data, both with/without NC enabled, to compare with my reference known-good Davis VP2 and CoCoRAHS manual gauge data…]

Based on my understanding and experience:

Correct

Not quite. This is the same as index 12 but after NearCast calibrations have been applied

20 (websocket) is the post-NearCast corrected total daily rain accumulation. Same with 18 (REST)

Rain in the API is currently sub-optimal, however. There is no way to access raw values that haven’t been NearCast corrected. See Changes to precipitation API - Developers - The Tempest Weather Community

Thanks. I’d suggest their wording and (lack of) documentation is quite a bit sub-optimal as well.

Good thing you added that UDP support to wfpiconsole a while back so folks could display unaltered rain values !

Is there a way to change the code to pull values from the udp instead of api for the wfpiconsole? Thanks.

Sure - Pete added it last year.

I forget the menu structure in the actual gui but the setting is the [System] section at the bottom of the .ini file the gui generates.

Connection = UDP sets it to use local broadcasts for readings
Connection = Websocket uses WF servers (used to be the default)

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im going to suspect to change websocket to udp

I just said that. It was (I think) settable via the gui menus but I don’t have a piconsole setup currently to check that.

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Thank you for your help. :slight_smile: