PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Personnal Weather Station (PWS) support
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nico
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PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by nico »

Hi developers and users,

I think most of us PWS people will have problems in filling in those values in the SKY-tag.

<precipitation><mode>
we can only manually adapt this option as all stations are measuring rain, or melted snow/hail.

<precipitation><intensity>
we all have a rainintensity (rainrate) measurement, eg 5 mm/hour, but mostly no indication as
to light/heavy


May I suggest to change the intensity tag into a value taking the mm/hour value, if updated every 5min
it would make a good indication.
YoWindow would then generate the necessary data based on;
If this value is zero then there is no rain and if bigger then zero we have rain. The rainrate could be translated
by YoWindow into a light/regular/heavy value by checking the amount, eg 20mm/hr = heavy

The <mode> tag would be automatic switch from "no rain/rain" unless overrided by the xml-value like snow/hail.

Hope this is understandable, what do you think??

rgds
Nico
best regards
Nico
http://www.wsMaurik.nl/
gemini06720

Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by gemini06720 »

Nico, this is what I am trying to accomplish using Jim's (jmcmurry) PHP script. I want to use the rainfall and the rain rate values of my weather station and assign them words (such as light rain, regular? rain, heavy rain) depending on the collected values.

I do not want to use (nor force) YoWindow to assign those words - the weather station script must assign/produce those words and create the required XML file - we cannot expect Pavel to change YoWindow just to please us... ;)
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par
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Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by par »

Nico, I want YoWindow to tell rain from snow using PWS output only, without PHP.
Can you tell me what kind of information your PWS provides about rain and snow?
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nico
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Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by nico »

Sorry about the late reply Pasha, unfortunately we can not measure the difference between rain/sleet/hail or snow.
It's all precipitation from our point of view.

Off course it's linked to temperature, wind, humidity and will check for any formulae if they excist.
A lot of programs will allow input of a manual value for snowheight.
best regards
Nico
http://www.wsMaurik.nl/
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par
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Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by par »

Well, that sucks :(

So it is impossible for most PWS to tell YoWindow whether it's rain or snow.
That means YoWindow may display rain instead of snow and vice-versa.

Guys, what do you think.
How we are going to solve this problem.
Maybe YoWindow will display snow if the temperature i below zero and rain otherwise?
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Acki-W

Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by Acki-W »

Hi Pavel,

that´s a bit difficult to answer:
Every kind of precipitation < 1.0° C should be interpreted as "snow".
The problem is, that it is automatically calculated by the pws and not by human beings reporting the reality.
I think, we could life with such small mistakes.
And, don´t forget: Only few of PWS provide a heating pad to change snow to rain.
It´s similar to what I´ve wrote in a pn concerning snow and snow rests.
Let´s define a value, eg. Air temp. > 2.0° C = Rain, Air temp. <2.0-1.1°C = A Mix of snow and rain, <= 1.0°=Snow



Bye
Andreas
http://www.acknet.de
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par
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Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by par »

Right now I want any logic inside YoWindow to be simple.
Otherwise the process of PWS adoption will last for eternity.

If the station cannot tell whether it's rain or snow, maybe it's better to take the information from METAR?
Different people want to detect rain/snow differently.
I'm afraid to receive a lot of bug reports telling me that YoWindow detects snow-fall wrong.

So, guys, how do you want YoWindow to tell snow from rain?

1. By temperature as proposed by Andreas.
Air temp. > 2.0° C = Rain, Air temp. <2.0-1.1°C = A Mix of snow and rain, <= 1.0°=Snow

2. By snow-level. If snow-level > 0 it's snowing.

3. Do not detect.
METAR will provide precipitation if the station cannot detect correctly.

4. Your variant.

Please choose one of these variants within 3 days.
I will do it and the question will be over.
I want to finish with PWS support by the end of the week.

Please do not propose any user-options.
I don't want PWS support feature to be complex.
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Acki-W

Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by Acki-W »

Hi,

there are a lot of reasons using php as Ray suggested.
I only can talk about WsWin, but the "rainrate" that is edited, displays rain value which falled in the last 60 min (!).
So if you look at this output only, it doesn´t say much. But I think it´s better then nothing.
Using php, it would be easier to publish correct values as light or heavy rain etc.

But, and that is -sorry, Ray- a very important argument by Pavel: Only few people know it and ...use it !
So, I think we should accept what Pavel is proposing.
And: the guys who know how to work with php would have no problems to work out a site which combines "best of both worlds", sorry again !

Next problem: How to seperate snow from rain ?

Imho, a combination of all topics 1.-3 would be optimal.
If nothing is detected or manually selected by the user -> by METAR
if temperatur and rain is published > by temperature
if the user(additonally) publishes the snow-level -> only by snow-level
For the 3rd case, some days ago, I suggested to define a value like this: snowlevel > 1,0 cm = unbroken snow surface
snowlevel < 1,0 cm = broken snow surface

So, there should be a additional button under "options/advanced" like that: manual snowlevel input (abbrev. msi :lol: )

Andreas
www.acknet.de
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nico
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Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by nico »

par wrote: 1. By temperature as proposed by Andreas.
Air temp. > 2.0° C = Rain, Air temp. <2.0-1.1°C = A Mix of snow and rain, <= 1.0°=Snow

2. By snow-level. If snow-level > 0 it's snowing.

3. Do not detect.
METAR will provide precipitation if the station cannot detect correctly.

4. Your variant.
1) is a valid option and could be used, temperature levels could be adjusted if needed
2) snow-level does not indicate that it is snowing, just that there is snow at the station,
nobody will be updating pws-data every hour to check for snow/rain
3) logical
4) too complex for yowindow purposes unless somebody has a clever idea

I think the combination of 1) and 3) are the best solutions!
Standard behaviour should be to use the temperature/rainrate as already supplied in the yowindow-xml.
There should be a tag to overrule this and use the metar information, eg <snow> <value="metar">, so each PWS can choose how this would be use.
What do you think?
best regards
Nico
http://www.wsMaurik.nl/
Acki-W

Re: PWS xml-format - sky-rain tag

Post by Acki-W »

Hi Nico,

my suggestion "snow-height" was born from my "WsWin"-Experience: There are alot of users publishing the snow-data manually.

But I think, in general, there are no big differences in our thoughts.

Pavel wants to produce a commercial software.
Realizing that is hard -and he should be happy to have a forum supporting him this way- :) .

Andreas
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