I have installed an RG-11 rain sensor on my Weather Radio weather station (using mode 1, rain detection) and I am not sure which mode (0 or 1) is the best for rain detection, as the "Event count" in the indi Weather Radio driver doesn't relate to the rainfall intensity or duration. In other words, in mode 1 "Event count" gets incremented when it rains but I don't see a rain warning or danger being flagged, and the count does not reset to 0 when the rain has stopped for some time.

Would mode 0, tipping bucket, be more appropriate to indicate a warning or danger, so that my observatory could park and shut itself down?

Thanks for any enlightenment.

Gilles

Hi Gilles,
I would recommend use event counting for rain warnings. Tipping bucket will inform you, that your equipment is already wet, since it is simply too slow.

Weather radio measures events/min, i.e. the counter is 0 if there aren't rain drops in the air.

HTH
Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,

Thanks for the clarification. How does the event counter reset to zero after the rain has stopped for a certain time? We had a good rainfall earlier this week and the event counter incremented but did not reset to zero more than an hour after the rain had stopped. So the system can't tell if it is still raining or not.

On another issue, have you considered adding an external (555 timer based) heartbeat watchdog in case the Weather Radio would not respond and needed to be reset, for whatever reason? I have thought of adding one as I had at least two instances when the Weather Radio would not connect anymore. Any suggestions? I can make one and modify the Weather Radio firmware to test it if you feel it could be useful.

Thanks,

Gilles

Hi Gilles,
there is a variable in config.h of the weather radio firmware called RG11_MODE. If you set it to 1, counting is events per minute. If it is set to 0, it simply counts events.

Regarding a watchdog: Initially I had problems, but meanwhile the firmware is running stable for months. But feel free to implement one.

My problem is a different one. From time to time the connection to my weather station drops leading to the situation that the INDI client hangs and I have to restart it.

Cheers
Wolfgang