How does the API determine if it is really raining?

Developers
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Hi, all, and @iladyman :wink: I recently created a Home and Weather console / monitor, which uses the UDP data from the tempest. The issue is, the API calculates and adjusts to correct the rain rate and rainfall for the day, somehow; but the UDP data doesn’t. Even in winds over about 15 mph (24.14 km/h), it varies extremely:

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So, are the calculations that tempest performs available? And does anyone know a reliable way to get the current minute’s rain rate without the unreliable UDP?
(The API only goes up to hourly).

Thanks in advance!

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Hi @Best_codes ,
Search this forum for ‘raincheck’ which is available if you live in USA.
I dont live in USA so I do not have raincheck available.
For me I have to create a mount with no vibrations, to learn more search for ‘false rain’ or vibrations.
Many of us have posted pictures of our mounts and solutions for vibrations.
And weatherflow can adjust the sensitivity of your Tempest to rain and calibrate it to your mount because different mounts create different problems. Search ‘rain calibration’
It is impossible to get accurate rain if it is mounted with vibrations, like a wire flapping against the pole or a loose pole in its mount.
After you have played with all that then you probably like the developer approach to solving the problem. For my graphs I dabbled with creating my own parameter to ignore rain when the wind is above a certain amount. It creates a rough solution to my presentation which is ok for me. I have lots of vibrations on my pole and experiment with lots of different solutions.
It comes down to if you do not have your Tempest on a vibration free mount that it will be very difficult to solve.
I believe you can get the raincheck value for the previous day but I believe that you can not get it live today from anywhere. I am no expert on raincheck because I can not use it.
I use the API to get one minute data in 24 hour periods including the latest minute values. That is what I use to create my graphs which display current values including rain.
Cheers Ian :slight_smile:

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Hi @iladyman I looked around a lot and still couldn’t find anything. Anyone else?