First off let me say that I don’t really know that this is a Rachio issue directly but I can say that they could make things considerably more “usable” for this particular scenario.
I have a PWS (HLFRISCOTX) that is using Raspberry Pi-based MeteoHub as the recording / reporting device. Unfortunately this software has the behavior of not resetting the accumulated rainfall counter exactly at midnight so typically after a day’s worth of rain, the following day’s first or second reports include the non-zero accumulated rainfall counter from the previous day.
For example, yesterday (10 Apr. 2017) the recorded accumulated rainfall was 1.47" and the last PWSWeather reporting looks like:
11:57 PM 65.5°F 63.7°F 94% 4.5 mph NE 5.4 mph 30.07 in - 0.00 in 1.47 in
Today’s (11 Apr. 2017) reporting looks like (it was still lightly raining over the midnight boundary):
12:02 AM 65.5°F 63.7°F 94% 4.0 mph NE 2.0 mph 30.07 in - 0.04 in 1.47 in
12:07 AM 65.5°F 63.7°F 94% 2.7 mph N 4.3 mph 30.08 in - 0.04 in 0.08 in
12:12 AM 65.3°F 63.5°F 94% 4.7 mph NE 4.3 mph 30.07 in - 0.04 in 0.12 in
In this case once we roll forward to tomorrow (12 Apr. 2017), Rachio will officially record the “high water mark” precipitation for the 11th as 1.47" – so effectively it record the same fainfall across two different days (10th and 11th).
This seems to me to be a fairly common data pattern that could exist due to clock differences, etc. so simply taking the “maximal” value for the day seems to be an overly simplistic way to view this data point.
With hot-weather coming on soon, I would like to not have to deal with manually adjusting things to work around the double water credit being applied to my landscape.
Let me know if this is not clear or if you need additional data to review.
In reviewing the results from last evening’s Rachio recording for my zones, it appears that it did work correctly when there is a rain event actually recorded during the new day (seems like this is a very infrequent condition in my area over the past several years since I’ve had this issue so never really noticed it).
What I though was a consistent behavior does not look that way now so I’m not sure how that accumulated rainfall is being processed but the “following day zero-rain” scenario incorrectly produces double water credits (at least up through April 3rd).
Looks like the problem was found and corrected! This response is from Aeris our weather provider. They have fantastic customer support.
Franz,
The team was able to review this in more detail and did find an issue with the stations carry over of the previous day’s maximum. They have created a hotfix, updated / reran tests and all is passing. The hotfix has been applied and the data for this station updated.
The team is also running an update against all other PWS stations in case this issue may have occurred.
Let me know if you notice any further issues with this.
@franz - good to hear! I was having the same problem with the PWS that I use – I really hated to contact the owner of the PWS because it appeared to be recording correctly – and I never had this problem last year! Hopefully, we will have rain on Monday, so I will be able to see if this has been fixed for me.
