Well looking into the rainrate/rainRate issue has been most interesting.
First up rainrate has been used in skin.conf for the rain rate plot as
follows since the SteelSeries Weather Gauges first directly supported WeeWX:
[[images]]
x_label_format = %H:%M
show_daynight = true
[[[daybarometer]]]
[[[[barometer]]]]
[[[dayrain]]]
yscale = None, None, 0.02
plot_type = bar
[[[[rain]]]]
aggregate_type = sum
aggregate_interval = 3600
label = Rain (hourly total)
[[[dayrainrate]]]
[[[[rainrate]]]]
But why has this never caused a problem or been noticed before? I think the
way in which plot data is obtained and the introduction of xtypes holds the
answer. Before WeeWX v4 plot data was obtained via a call to
manager.getSqlVectors() which itself is encapsulated in a try...finally
statement. The result being that any error (for example a non-existant obs
type) was effectively swallowed and no data returned by
manager.getSqlVectors(). The image generator would then plot this non-data
which resulted in a plot devoid of data. Given that rain rate plots are
seldom looked at, quite often show no data, and also as this plot was only
used as a mouseover on the SteelSeries rain rate gauge, it is not
surprising it's lack of data was never noticed. Now consider the new xtypes
regime, plot data now comes from xtypes and if my xtypes understanding is
correct, the xtypes are searched until one is found that can return the
required data. In this case no xtype can return data for field rainrate
which results in a weewx.UnknownType error which is highlighted in the log
and painfully obvious to the user.
Of course the fix is simple, replace rainrate with the correct field
rainRate. This then got me wondering about the $hour.rain.sum.raw issue. I
am still convinced this is tied to an underlying lack of rain data for at
least one full hour in the day. My testing yesterday showed the
gauge-data.txt template would handle such a lack of rain data without
problem, which is counter to Phil's experience. But I was running under
WeeWX 3.9.2 which does not use xtypes, I am now thinking there is a subtle
difference in the data returned by xtypes in some corner cases. So far my
understanding of xtypes has been fairly limited to just what I have needed
to bget by in working on WeeWX 4.0 (which has not been much). Clearly I
have a bit more reading to do (@tkeffer - warning there will be some xtypes
questions inbound) and I will spend some time today seeing if I can
replicate the issue.
Gary
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