Raincheck Feature

Tempest Owners
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1

I have had my station for about a month and have had the raincheck feature on. With a small and unscientific sample size I’d say the raw tempest readings are underdone somewhat. Not terrible. I have a COCORAHS gage about a 100 yards away. Not a perfect comparison in the convective season, but close enough to see a difference.

I have some bird issues for my rain and appreciate the raincheck feature to null these out. I have my bird deterrent ready to install (got it yesterday). However, I had some heavy rain three days ago (1.38 inches. Rain gauge 1.63. The raincheck changed it to well over 3 inches. There is no way that occurred. Just turned the raincheck feature off for now.

A feature I’d like to see, and maybe there is already, is to be able to apply raincheck to certain days or hours. When I put the bird deterrent on today, I will likely have a false rain. Is there an easy way to manually null this out?

2

how would you know for which days or hours you want to turn raincheck off?

Anyway, what you might consider doing is to turn it off and use this form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScIVy0zwUhQfMAN48_N-VZwzyQDx5QB-VXtnmGmlOKW2KbEXA/viewform te enter your measured data. Given enought data, the system might at some point decide to adjust the calibration parameters of the haptic rain sensor.

If you have raincheck on, it might possibly correct for the false rain cause by the installation of the bird deterrent.

3

Unplug your hub just before you take down your Tempest. Turn the Tempest off while installing the BDA. Just before mounting the Tempest turn it back on and mount it quickly. If you are fast enough you will not get any false rain or very little. Remember to plug the hub back in.

4

Thanks. Yes always a little worried when I turn things on and off!.

5

I haven’t had any issues following that protocol. I have used it with the field test units and the ones I use for my RV for when I move it and have not had any problems.

6

Well, the day the rain check gave me 3.17 inches when it only registered 1.38 and the manual gage was 1.63 would be a good example of a day where I would have turned it off! Okay, turning off for certain hours is probably not a good idea, but in this case there was an obvious problem with raincheck.

Actually, I don’t find the raw data readings to be too bad. Just think it would be nice to be able to have that manual quality control to get rid of the obvious bird poops or some other false reading. The raincheck has qc’ed correctly for those odd 0.01 that occured for me. But that 3+ inch amount the other day was a surprise, around double of what occurred. Not sure where it came from.

Thanks for the Google form. I need to install a manual rain gage just a little closer at some point. My unit is in a pasture and a fair distance from the manual gage I have now.

7

I believe you. I also believe in my ability to foul up simple instructions! It makes sense and my install is simple and easy (quick). Thanks for the tip.