[OZAPRS] Tamworth IGate & WX

Mon Aug 3 20:27:05 EST 2009

Ray,
Thanks for the links, offer and info! I lived in Kempsey for a few
years followed by Port and Wauchope so I know the "Tank" well.

I'll take you up on the copy of the scrips, and the interim Tamworth
object if its easy to add? (conscious of the 24/7 problem :~) ). I've
got the current Tamworth WX running on UIview at work, but the real
Igate at my QTH is the Linux variety. Combining them is a work in
progress.

The streaming audio on the Tank website is a nice touch, well done on
whoever negotiated that!!! Conversations with my "Monster in law" who
still lives in Kempsey might not be such a task now I can catch up on
some local content! I've been using your Kempsey WX as a conversation
starter for a while!

Regards,
Mark

vk2jma(at)gmail.com

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Ray Wells<vk2tv at exemail.com.au> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> A great project to help the community. Good one. There's a fair amount of
> data on home built weather stations and their environment on the web. Have a
> look at the CWOP page for links. One page even has a homebrew solar shield
> for the thermometer.
>
> My "project" is a result of me being involved with the local community radio
> station where we get weather and temperature forecasts twice a day but no
> current temperature except from my homebrew studio thermometer. Being that
> the studio is on a 35m hill and inside a 40' diameter water reservior (we
> wear goggles and a snorkle) (http://www.tankfm.org/default.asp?iId=JMHLJ),
> the morning temperature in winter is often many degrees higher than typical
> valley temperature (when I was there at 5.30am Friday it was 9° vs 1.5°, a
> significant difference).
>
> Whilst watching some cyclones last year I noticed the Darwin airport
> automatic weather station on the APRS map and that got the wheels rolling to
> figure out how the heck it was done. That information is uploaded by a US
> station who ignored my email for information so I proceeded on my own and
> learned a lot of new Linux tools for processing text.
>
> One day I'll do the lot with Perl scripts but because my Perl knowledge is a
> bit ordinary, for now I'm using a combination of shell scripting and Perl
> script in Linux. The shell script processes the text side of things and Perl
> handles the mathematics.
> In the shell script I:
> get the html info as text from the BoM using Lynx (a text only browser)
> use a combination of egrep, cat, sed and cut to search the text for the
> first line of weather data and extract the values for each field of
> interest.
> use case to convert text based compass point wind direction to numeric
> values.
>
> Then I call the perl script to:
> convert kph to mph, Celsius to Fahrenheit, and format each reading to the
> appropriate format for aprs, including rounding up/down for temperature.
> the various fields are then combined into the aprs object format and
> combined with some leading text to create the sentence that is sent to aprs.
>
> Next, I return to the shell script to send the sentence to the server port
> on my xastir system for uploading to internet.
>
> Perl is cross-platform so it should be possible to produce a Perl script to
> do all this in Windoze, if you don't run Linux. I guess UIView is capable of
> sending the object sentence but since I don't use Windoze for aprs I'm just
> guessing.
>
> The five stations I upload are the five that are of interest here at the
> radio station, being that they're in the local "region". However, if you
> like, as an interim arrangement, I'm happy to include Tamworth. I could even
> have it appear to come from your callsign. Or, I'm even happy to mind my own
> business :-)
>
> Tamworth raw data is here
> http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDN60801/IDN60801.95762.shtml
>
> You're welcome to a copy of my scripts.
>
> The airport data is updated half-hourly at most airports although some
> (Taree, e.g.) are updated hourly. Occasionally, if a significant change has
> taken place additional updates can be observed. The updates generally take
> place approximately ten minutes after the event. i.e. an 0800 update is
> available at 0810. I have crontab entries to run my scripts at 13/43, 14/44,
> 15/45 & 16/46 minutes past the hour for the four non-local ariports, and at
> 02, 12, 22, 32, 42, 52 for the local airport, with "current' local
> information being most significant for our needs.
>
> When I can find a 25 hour day in an 8 day week I'll also include rainfall
> since 9.00am and hourly rainfall. Unfortunately, the standard elsewhere
> seems to be to record rain since midnight so I'll have to manipulate some
> figures to make "ours" fit "theirs".
>
> Ray vk2tv
>
>
>
> Mark austin wrote:
>
> Ray,
> The station is on top of the Tamworth Hospital with the temp sensor in
> an air intake grill, I suspect it suffers from the western sun and is
> also out of calibration. It was put in to provide the Westpac
> helicopter with local wind direction info. I've been going to have a
> look for a while, but free time at work's been a bit hard to find! Now
> I know someone is looking at it I'll get it look at!
>
> I'd be interested to know how you’re picking up and placing the data
> for Armidale etc?
> Regards,
> Mark
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Ray Wells<vk2tv at exemail.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> Mark,
>
> I note that your temperature is consistently much higher than the automatic
> station at the airport (20 vs 15.9 at 1525). Is it a location specific thing
> with your sensor? Just curious.
>
> Ray vk2tv
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ozaprs mailing list
> Ozaprs at aprs.net.au
> http://aprs.net.au/mailman/listinfo/ozaprs
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ozaprs mailing list
> Ozaprs at aprs.net.au
> http://aprs.net.au/mailman/listinfo/ozaprs
>
_______________________________________________
Ozaprs mailing list
Ozaprs at aprs.net.au
http://aprs.net.au/mailman/listinfo/ozaprs