[Weather] Difference between wunderground updates and rapidfire updates

[David Dean]

Hi
On Thursday 10 May 2007 16:41, Corey Touchet wrote:
> I've been watching oww and it appears to upload pretty consistently every
> 10 seconds.  So is there a difference between the formats of a normal
> update and a rapidfire one. 
Yes. But not much. Two paramaters are added to the upload url to tell 
wunderground servers rapidfire mode is to be used- "rtupdate=1" tells the 
server to use rapidfire, and "rtfreq=[update interval in seconds, 2.5 is the 
minimum and default]".
> Does wunderground have a page describing this? 
yes. http://wiki.wunderground.com/index.php/PWS_-_Upload_Protocol
>  I only see one that describes normal weather posting.
Toward the bottom of the page it describes "real time" updates.

What it does:

Setting rapidfire "on" does two things as far as I can tell. It changes the 
link text to a stations history page from "normal mode" to "rapidfire" and 
includes the flash display on the history page at wunderground.
Setting the update interval tells the flash display how often to update.

What it does not do:

Does not speed anything up. 

As to Oww, it does not send the dailyrainin parameter. Wundergrounds flash 
display uses that to do the rain.  Without dailyrainin it will 
display "Rain -999 in".

So, only if you are cheep and lazy (like me) and want to use the free flash 
display from wunderground on your own web page would you need rapidfire.
Otherwise, who cares. Well, actually you don't need rapidfire at all, but you 
do need dailyrainin. Rapidfire being "on" only sets the flash update interval 
to the same as the upload interval, whatever you have that be.

Sending dailyrainin could be helpfull in the event power fails or the network 
(internet access) goes down during a rain storm. If your only rain parameter 
being sent is rainin, which is the hourly rate "inches per hour", your total 
for the day will be off at wunderground.  If you can send dailyrainin before 
midnight, that will be used instead.

AFAIKT, thats the difference.

later
deano