Help getting hourly, daily, weekly etc. rainfall data out of instantaneous precipitation sensor

[rocky osprey]

Hi folks,

Am using the Lacrosse View integration to measure rainfall. The sensor looks like the first picture. It seems to report rainfall since its last report.

I am trying to get hourly, daily, weekly rainfall information from adding up this sensor's measurements over time.

When I use a statistic card, I don't see options for sum. Similarly sum is greyed out when I use a statistics graph card.

I feel like I am missing something basic about the way sensors work that is not letting me sum this data over arbitrary time periods.

I've had a google around and haven't been able to see any folks with the same issue, so would appreciate your help.

Thanks!

when i graph the sensor it looks like this:

the two levels in that rainfall graph equate to the bucket size of the physical sensor

[rocky osprey]

this page: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/sensor/#device-class

defines the precipitation device class as: Accumulated precipitation in cm, in or mm

but sensor.rain_sensor_precipitation doesn't seem to be reporting an accumulated amount

i wonder if i could change that to volume?

tried looking in my configuration.yaml but it looks like this:

[rocky osprey]

hmm this doesn't make sense

[rocky osprey]

okay, i got this working (somewhat) with a statistic helper in sum mode

however, it doesn't add consecutive same values, so is underreporting compared to the source data

how do i get the statistics helper to "see" the consecutive same values?

so i got to here: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/improved-handling-of-repeated-sensor-values-which-are-presently-ignored/637736

[rocky osprey]

now i'm trying to use a riemann sum to get the total but it ends up at zero

i am stumped.

[quartz smelt]

I use a Utility meter with a daily cycle, with the periodically_resetting set to true. Also have hourly Utility meter and a 'Since 9am' to match what gets reported in Australia. For this I have an automation that calls reset on the Utility meter at 9am.

[rocky osprey]

interesting. i had a play with utility meter, but couldn't get sense out of it. will try again

[rocky osprey]

I set this up and it still underreports the rainfall compared to the weather station hardware. what hardware are you using?

[quartz smelt]

I am using a Lufft R2S UMB (Microwave based rain sensor) with custom driver software to combine data from other sensors which then gets into HA via MQTT. Your weather station hardware may be applying an offset from any raw data. My sensor has the offset builtin to the data .

[rocky osprey]

thanks for your help. this hardware has other issues so i might just bite the bullet and build a custom solution. cheers 🙂

[quartz smelt]

Sounds like a plan. I recommend using mqtt and get familiar with mqtt discovery with Home Assistant. I use AppDaemon with some custom code to make this all a breeze. I even have a method to do 10 minute wind average from instantaneous wind speed. If you are interested I will see if I can cut my code down to a gist to get you started.