Updated KWiXS NCEP Viewer

// April 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Development, Forecasting, KWiXS, NCEP Viewer, Weather

I’ve gone ahead and removed the unused model that was discontinued last year and added the GEFS and SREF models. I’ve also discovered why some of the valid dates will not stay the same when you hold down ‘shift’ when changing model runs. I’ll have to create a new property for the model that holds how far apart the model runs are from one another, rather than simply using the next hour in the run.

As always, you can check out the latest version at http://www.kwixs.net/ncep/

BrainStorm: Storm Chasing Tool for Linux

// December 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Storm Chasing, Weather

Adam Boggs has release version 0.9 of the BrainStorm, a storm chasing tool for the linux platform. The new platform integrates web-based maps, such as Google Maps, radar and warning polygon data, and gps data pulled from an attached device.

The software is released under the GPLv2 license and as source code, so you’ll have to build it and install it yourself. While this is helped along by the use of autogen, there are dependencies that are not listed. The following had to be installed on my Ubuntu 9.04 system:

libtool
libsoap-dev

After installing these two I was able to run autogen, which will have a default prefix of /usr/local/ . A third library came up as not loadable when I went to run the binary, libosmgpsmap, a quick install of libosmgpsmap0 resolved this.

I was not able to test the GPS capabilities since I didn’t have mine handy enough. I’ll test that out at a later date.

As for the radar and severe overlay…

It only comes with radar sites in the ‘alley’ and are hardcoded, making the software somewhat useless in this respect for those outside of the radar coverage area. The warning polygons are actually overlayed images from the NWS site so they do appear pixelated. It seems this is how the software mainly works, by overlaying images upon the map, rather than creating shapes from polygon coordinate sets.

For the radars that it does offer, you can view various types of radar data that are available on the NWS site, including 1 hour precipitation and both velocity types. Only one type of radar can be viewed for all visible radar sites at a time. You’re also not given a choice of elevation angles so I’m assuming it is defaulted to the lowest.

The key here is that it can show your position in relation to a storm and give an idea of what is warned and not, on linux. For that, it does a good job… if you’re in the radar umbrella. What really needs to be improved is the ability to change more properties, such as radar types and sites to show, and even what is shown on the screen.

I look forward to where the software goes from here and so is Adam from the sound of it. It’s written in C/GTK+ and Adam states that anyone is more than welcome to help out.

Interview: HamBrief.TV #47

// September 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Amateur Radio, Development, Random Stuff, Skywarn

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Chris Matthieu, N7ICE, for HamBrief #47. We talk about my involvement with Wayne County’s Skywarn program, emergency communications, and other assorted rag chewing.

Thank again to Chris for the opportunity to talk about one of my hobbies!

You can find more information at:

weather.gov
skywarn.org
Central Region NOAA Ham Radio Page

Skywarn Recognition Day Logger

// September 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // Amateur Radio, Development, Weather

For the last couple of years at the SRD event at DTX (NWS in White Lake) we’ve used a logger I’ve built using Ruby on Rails. Last year I did a complete rewrite only days before the event, but this year I’m building on the existing codebase. One of the features I’ve added since last year is an Ajax dupe checker. It’s pretty simple but goes pretty far in saving us having to hit the Submit button.

Right now I’m looking for ways to improve the function and feature-set and in November begin trying to spruce up the interface. I’d like more of it to be Ajax, but degrade extremely well as it is with the ham community that they tend to use older hardware.

Eventually this will build out to be an event logger that can be extended to work for any sort of event, with a focus on amateur radio oriented activities. From Skywarn nets, to disaster events, I want to make the logger that can easily manage and display what happened.

I’m seeking thoughts and ideas on the SRD Logger right now, but I’ll be thinking of how to abstract its parts out. If you have an interest in using it this year, or want to help beta test the existing software, just shoot me a line.

NCEP Viewer Version 0.8

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Development, KWiXS, NCEP Viewer, Weather

I’ve gone ahead and updated the code to support templated image URLs. This makes for supporting a wider range of image sources much easier. This also means that it will be supporting more than just NCEP images, so the name and location will be changing soon. I may leave the NCEP version up just for those images on NCEP.

Because of the possible sources for images, I’ll be creating a new interface so you can add/remove any source you want from the viewer. I doubt those in the Plains will really want the DTX WRF runs.

And that’s the other addition to this version, the DTX WRF Hemispheric resolution runs are now available. Currently it only supports the latest run, so there’s no way to look at the previous run and the current, but new version are being worked on by DTX so stay tuned on that front. I may also incorporate some sort of archiving locally so I can support this feature even if DTX does not.

As always, let me know if there are any bugs or additions you’d like to see.

Stormchasing Preparations

// March 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // APRS, Amateur Radio, Storm Chasing, Weather

Yesterday I tested out the key addition to my storm chasing arsenal, streaming video.

ChaserTV.com is my new home for streaming all of my storm chases this year. I chose them not only because I favor their choice in technology, Flash Media Encoder with a cloud-based infrastructure, but because of their open support for the chaser. Other services require non-compete and exclusivity agreements, something I’m not really about. Might work for some people, but I’m just a leasurely chaser who isn’t out to make a buck, but won’t mind if a few float my way.

The primary concern was my switch last year from Sprint to AT&T for cellular serivce. I was able to use Sprint’s EVDO Rev.A last year to pull down radar data without a problem, even while chatting it up amongst other chasers. There’s no doubt the EVDO blows the socks off of 3G (they’re both technically 3G but I’ll just use their industry designation) in terms of download, but can be fairly equal in the upload. For downloading, AT&T is quite behind but so long as I can get the data I need, when I need it, then I’ve not much to complain about.

So with my father, grandfather, and several other chasers/watchers, watching, I set out to stream my drive home from work. The first issue was that I failed to set my bitrate… 3G doesn’t like it when you try to upload at 650kbps apparently. After pulling over and going down to 100kbps I was able to stream with little to no stuttering or stalling. Success!

The next step is going to be testing the uploading of video while downloading radar content and maintaining chat via SpotterChat. Perhaps I’ll give that a go this weekend on my trip up to the Nation Weather Service for a SkyWarn meeting.

The one problem that presented itself was the lack of SpotterNetwork updates. While I did have the client open, and was even able to manually send an update, it failed to send automatic regular updates of my position. The client looks kind of janky in my opinion, like something you’d see the AOL skriptkiddies in the mid 90s using. I toy with thoughts of writing my own client in Ruby and Shoes, perhaps if the Earth’s rotation slows and we get some more hours in a day.

This past weekend I installed two NMO mounts into my trunk lid and currently have a 1/4 wave and 5/8 wave dual band antennas. One will be used for my Kenwood TM-733A while the other for APRS and listening to other frequencies. Eventually I’ll have two 1/4 wave dual-band antennas on there so the wind won’t bother the thin aluminum they used for the trunk lid.

Once the APRS is up and running full time in my vehicle I’ll not have to worry about sending SpotterNetwork updates directly as it will just pick up my APRS updates. I’m looking at ways to integrate SpotterNetwork, APRS, and Twitter and I’m currently working on the Twitter implementation of that.

The last peice to all of this is getting my wife involved. Next month I’ll be taking her with me to the SkyWarn training in Garden City so she can get familiar with the cloud structures, radar signatures, and what it’s all about. This is also so she won’t be as clueless should I be gone on a chase when severe weather heads for the area. After that I’ll teach her some basics on radar imagery so she can help navigate when we go out on a few chases this year. I’m really excited to bring her along so she can see that I’m not actually driving INTO the tornado, as has been previously thought.

Brilliant!

// February 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Random Stuff, Storm Chasing, Weather

Storm chasing in 3D! Why not have two cams right next to each other and have the video interlaced so that you can use 3D or polarized glasses to watch storm chasing! Talk about getting immersed!

More NCEP Viewer Updates

// February 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Development, Forecasting, KWiXS, NCEP Viewer, Weather

I’ve gone ahead and added support for image links so you can share the images more easily. An idea is to allow the user to cache the image to the server so that they can get it later and will last longer than 24 hours, when the next day’s run is done.

I’ve also made the menu smaller so that more image fits on the screen. I may change this back but for now it works.

I’m also looking into making the script aware of the model runs’ start and stop times. I’m not sure if I want to do this for each image, assume an integral of time for each image to finish or simply wait until the whole run is complete (which would still be an assumption). The benefit to this is allowing the user to change model runs that are a day behind and still keep the valid date the same. Right now this only works with runs of the same day where if you do this to a run of the previous day you will be behind 24 hours.

Of course, if I start using the server-side for this then all is moot since I’ll be able to check the modified-date on the image itself. This would also be a good time to start thinking about caching the images to relieve the strain on the NCEP servers.

TweatherWatch.com

// February 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Development, Weather

After nabbing some code from Gabe Ortiz I set up http://www.tweatherwatch.com/.

All you need to do is add #wx to your Twitter status update and the site will show it.

I have some pretty cool ideas for this sort of thing so we’ll have to see how it all works out. If you have any suggestions feel free to let me know!

Updates to the NCEP viewer

// February 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Forecasting, KWiXS, NCEP Viewer, Weather

It came to my attention that the viewer was not working in IE7. From what I can tell, the options property of SELECT elements, does not mean all the OPTION tags below the SELECT. Instead, it’s a collection of that SELECTS properties.

In any case, I changed how I was getting the collection of OPTION tags and all was well. IE7 is now working.