[OZAPRS] Updates to WXSVR-AU

[Geoff Gatward]

Folks,

Over the past year the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have been
upgrading their online offerings, and now provide warnings for just over
50% of the country (NSW / VIC / TAS / SA) in XML format, with the remainder
to be migrated over the next couple of months. The new XML format also
FINALLY standardizes the warning formats, and introduces the BoM's own
shapefile sets for use with these new products.

The current WXSVR-AU takes pretty much free-form text versions of the
warnings and sends out APRS messages that mirror EXACTLY the format used by
the US WXSVR for the NWS alerts, and the shapefiles used here were
re-compiled to contain the same structure as the NWS issued files, in order
that existing APRS clients could easily use the AU data.

With the publication by BoM of "official" shapefiles, with their own
structure, the time has come to make some changes.

I have already performed a lot of code changes on WXSVR-AU to convert the
XML data into APRS strings, and I have kept the packet structure the same,
however the data contained within is now different enough from the NWS data
that existing client implementations won't work.

I have posted this info as well as some more detailed protocol information
on the APRS-Sig list, which is where the authors of several major clients
(Xastir, Findu, JavAPRS, APRSICE) tend to congregate. I am hoping that the
new BoM protocol can be integrated into these client applications so that
they can work with our new system and be available by the time QLD, WA and
NT come online with XML data from BoM.

The new strings are being sent out by the server in parallel to the
'legacy' strings, so if anyone feels like working on a new plugin for
UI-View please feel free to contact me off-list for details on the new
shapefiles and the updated WXSVR-AU protocol.

Regards,
Geoff  VK2XJG / VK8GG
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