"RAIN" in system status

[Dick Berg]

Nikos,

The SkyAlert sensor generates a Boltwood-style one-line of text every 20 seconds. If the System Status displays "Rain" in the Observatory/Weather line, then that means rain (or some degree of wetness, depending on your settings) triggered the alarm.

The sensor does not trigger on dew or humidity. It only triggers on the Alert bit - the last of the six digits at the end of the one-line data (see image). The Alert is triggered depending on your settings for clouds, wind, "wet" and light. (Looking at SkyAlert Program Settings, it may also test other data limits ["unsafe warming"?] that will trigger an alarm.) The one-line data file includes measures of dew point, humidity, etc, so the SkyAlert program (and ACP's CloudSensorII and Weather tiddlers) can read, interpret and display those values.

You can always open the weather data file archives and look at the collected one-line data to see, from the first through fourth of the six number at the end, what specifically triggered the alarm at the time you got it.

Regarding km/h, it looks to me like it's knots, and can't be km/h. This is probably a natural choice based on Bob's lifetime association with flying. SkyAkert reporting in km/h or mph is converted to knots.