[OZAPRS] Tamworth IGate & WX

Tue Aug 4 10:56:15 EST 2009

Mark,

Tamworth up and running with updates called from crontab at 17 and 47 
minutes past each hour. If you want more frequent updates just let me 
know. For now they appear to come from VK2WET via vk2tv-4 but when I get 
the vk2wet machine installed they'll be via vk2wet which is the Tank FM 
ARC. Tank FM's official callsign is 2WET.

The streaming audio was a great deal arranged by the brother of one of 
our members who is the IT guy for a large finance company. He's also our 
webmaster and is hosting our website at a very modest cost on his own 
server in Brisbane. The internet service is from Internode who provided 
two ADSL services plus the streaming as a contra-deal for some 
sponsorship. They cost us nothing. The first time I have to speak to a 
help desk in Shri Lanka I'll be changing from Exetel to Internode!

At our end we have a dedicated Dell Optiplex Small Form Factor machine 
running WinXP Pro with SP2. It takes a convenient unbalanced spare feed 
from the output of the station's limiter. I was going to run Linux and, 
even managed to compile the necessaries and make them work but changed 
my mind because I'm the only Linux savvy person in the place.

The vk2wet machine is running Linux (Debian 4.08) and will provide:
network time server to two non-routeable networks
router between those two networks
firewall for the second network
fbb bbs (local 2m port and a 70cm 9k6 link to here)
fpacnode (ax25, Rose & netron routing)
xastir for aprs

The vk2wet machine is still here at the moment due to a heart 
transplant. The Dell (Dimension 4600) we were going to use in the studio 
for music playback from the digital library had rather severe and 
unsolvable latency issues that caused severe chopping of the audio. The 
vk2wet Dell (Dimension 4500) machine was fine so I performed two heart 
transplants yesterday. The vk2wet machine is running again but minus the 
network card I had to steal. You should see vk2wet with the icon H2O on 
the map.

I'll copy those files and send them in a P email.

Ray vk2tv

Mark austin wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
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