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#1
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For those that are interested a very well written piece of Open Source
software for decoding METARs is called PHPWeather and is available at http://phpweather.sourceforge.net/. PHP is a script language that runs on a web server and outputs HTML to your browser. As computer languages go, it is not very intimidating to anyone with basic programming skills. For an example of its output here is the translations for the following METAR from Reid Hillview Airport: KRHV 230149Z 20008KT 10SM SCT045 SCT065 BKN150 15/07 A2990 "This is a report for San Jose / Reid / Hillv, United States. The report was made one hour and 3 minutes ago, at 01:49 UTC. The wind was blowing at a speed of 4.1 meters per second (9.2 miles per hour) from south/southwest (200°). The temperature was 15 °C (59 °F), with a dew-point at 7 °C (45 °F). The atmospheric pressure was 1013 hPa (29.90 inHg). The relative humidity was 58.7%. There were scattered clouds at a height of 1372 meter (4500 feet), scattered clouds at a height of 1981 meter (6500 feet), and broken clouds at a height of 4572 meter (15000 feet). The overall visibility was 16.1 kilometers (10.0 miles). " I have had a lot of fun with this software. An early version of an application that uses it, that I am working on can be seen on my webpage(http://www.brenorbrophy.com/). It is called Micro Wx - it outputs a small (both screen image and bytes) current weather summary suitable for a web capable cell phone. Before anyone chimes in with how this has been done before - I know, but it hasn't been done exactly the way I want it and my version has. Funnily enough, I would have originally agreed strongly with the OP - why the hell do we still work with these abbreviations invented for the bandwidth of a telex machine in the era of the Internet. Well now it appears your typical wireless cellphone connection (and tiny screen) has taken us back to telex style. -Brenor "Nathan Young" wrote in message ... On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 14:35:52 -0400, Peter Clark wrote: On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 12:37:54 -0500, wrote: KHSV 221553Z 19009KT 6SM BR FEW020 BKN035 OVC100 19/18 A2986 RMK AO2 TSE00RAE11 SLP104 TS MOV NE P0000 T01890178= I know, and I can read it. And someone is going to say that they prefer it that way. I can just see an ASR-33 Teletype machine jumping up and down and saying that 10 characters per second is what God made for us. How about FDL uplinks? I think they're only around 30K/s. I'd rather see that used uploading the Nexrad info rather than English form METAR. The translation of the raw data is trivial to do in the client end of the system (a-la the Bendix KDR510/810, or the XM weather in the G1000, it shows both decoded and raw-data TAF and raw-data METAR if available for the reporting stations). It is not as trivial as it should be. METAR decoder software is difficult to write because of the special weather statements that can be included in a METAR entry (things like RVR, multiple precip types, etc). Simple parsers can grab winds, date, time, and cloud conditions. But to be all-encompassing requires a bit more. I found a package (via NOAA?) that would do METAR decodes, and it included approximately 30KB of source code, which seemed like a lot for the extra bit of functionality it provided. |
#2
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On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 03:02:23 GMT, "Brenor Brophy"
wrote: For those that are interested a very well written piece of Open Source software for decoding METARs is called PHPWeather and is available at http://phpweather.sourceforge.net/. PHP is a script language that runs on a web server and outputs HTML to your browser. As computer languages go, it is not very intimidating to anyone with basic programming skills. A buddy of mine wrote a simple PHP script that does the same thing except it creates an image file for the output on the web site. I now use it on my web site for my students to show the current METAR for COS and PUB. The biggest difference between his and PHPweather (except for the HTML/Image difference) is PHPWeather is about 2.8 megs large, where the one I use is only 2KB and the image that it creates is about 500 bytes. Since I don't care about weather clear on the other side of the world this works fine and all I have to do is pull up my web site and its there. I don't have to select what airport I want. Scott D To email remove spamcatcher |
#3
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Agreed, PHPWeather does everything - so it is usually a lot more than anyone
needs. It is really made as a set of programming tools (classes really) that you can pick and choose from to create your own weather application. For example, I just use it to fetch the METAR and parse it into a form my own code can easily use to determine if the conditions are VFR/MVFR/IFR/LIFR and then color code the airport name and weather graphic I display on a radar map. The 2.8M doesn't get downloaded - it stays on the web server (so the size of teh script really doesn't matter - web hosting companies are not that stingy on space anymore - at least they shouldn't be). The only thing that gets downloaded is whatever the output of the script is - and this can be very compact indeed. -Brenor Scott D. wrote in message ... On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 03:02:23 GMT, "Brenor Brophy" wrote: For those that are interested a very well written piece of Open Source software for decoding METARs is called PHPWeather and is available at http://phpweather.sourceforge.net/. PHP is a script language that runs on a web server and outputs HTML to your browser. As computer languages go, it is not very intimidating to anyone with basic programming skills. A buddy of mine wrote a simple PHP script that does the same thing except it creates an image file for the output on the web site. I now use it on my web site for my students to show the current METAR for COS and PUB. The biggest difference between his and PHPweather (except for the HTML/Image difference) is PHPWeather is about 2.8 megs large, where the one I use is only 2KB and the image that it creates is about 500 bytes. Since I don't care about weather clear on the other side of the world this works fine and all I have to do is pull up my web site and its there. I don't have to select what airport I want. Scott D To email remove spamcatcher |
#4
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On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 19:55:22 GMT, Nathan Young
wrote: It is not as trivial as it should be. METAR decoder software is difficult to write because of the special weather statements that can be included in a METAR entry (things like RVR, multiple precip types, etc). Simple parsers can grab winds, date, time, and cloud conditions. But to be all-encompassing requires a bit more. I found a package (via NOAA?) that would do METAR decodes, and it included approximately 30KB of source code, which seemed like a lot for the extra bit of functionality it provided. My memory was hazy. I found the original link from which I grabbed the source code. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/metardcd.shtml The link is broken, but it lists the source code as 49k compressed or 413k uncompressed source code. Either way, that's a ton of code! |
#5
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"Nathan Young" wrote in message .. . On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 19:55:22 GMT, Nathan Young wrote: It is not as trivial as it should be. METAR decoder software is difficult to write because of the special weather statements that can be included in a METAR entry (things like RVR, multiple precip types, etc). Simple parsers can grab winds, date, time, and cloud conditions. But to be all-encompassing requires a bit more. I found a package (via NOAA?) that would do METAR decodes, and it included approximately 30KB of source code, which seemed like a lot for the extra bit of functionality it provided. My memory was hazy. I found the original link from which I grabbed the source code. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/metardcd.shtml The link is broken, but it lists the source code as 49k compressed or 413k uncompressed source code. I did a quick search and came up with: http://nws.noaa.gov/tg/software.html This link works and the METAR source files are near the bottom of the page. One link I found describes the source code as having some issues. I'm of the opinion that there is a smaller better way. |
#6
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Peter Clark wrote:
Should be trivial to write for those who know how to do such things. If I could have a dollar for every time a client said that... Of course, that line is usually followed by something like "why do we need requirements?" -- John T http://tknowlogy.com/TknoFlyer http://www.pocketgear.com/products_s...veloperid=4415 ____________________ |
#7
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Hey, don't malign the ASR-33. It was the only input and output device on
the Nova II I had in grad school. Paper tape input will make a man of you. Of course I hated it, but don't be unkind. :-) -- Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways) wrote in message news:1114190529.b66f5cddb1aec1ba47dfaf0f4432d36e@o nlynews... KHSV 221553Z 19009KT 6SM BR FEW020 BKN035 OVC100 19/18 A2986 RMK AO2 TSE00RAE11 SLP104 TS MOV NE P0000 T01890178= I know, and I can read it. And someone is going to say that they prefer it that way. I can just see an ASR-33 Teletype machine jumping up and down and saying that 10 characters per second is what God made for us. Kind of like the farmers here who said that we were messing with God's time when we went to daylight savings time. Rant still on, Mike Weller |
#8
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"Bob Chilcoat" wrote in message ... Hey, don't malign the ASR-33. It was the only input and output device on the Nova II I had in grad school. Paper tape input will make a man of you. Of course I hated it, but don't be unkind. :-) ASR33? That's 8-level ASCII!!! REAL men used 5-level baudot paper tapes with the shift-up-shift-down characters for numbers-letters. Your aviation weather report (SA, fore-runner of today's METAR) had to be decoded from something like this: QWEXQTXUXEYQOXOOW whenever the local machine failed to execute the appropriate shift-up-to-numbers. |
#9
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"Bob Chilcoat" wrote in message ... Hey, don't malign the ASR-33. It was the only input and output device on the Nova II I had in grad school. Paper tape input will make a man of you. Of course I hated it, but don't be unkind. :-) -- Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways) Yeah, who you foolin', ...you got your first reports off the telegraph!! |
#10
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On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 12:37:54 -0500, wrote:
Kind of like the farmers here who said that we were messing with God's time when we went to daylight savings time. Are you suggesting that they were wrong? Or can your cows read a clock? -- all the best, Dan Ford email (put Cubdriver in subject line) Warbird's Forum: www.warbirdforum.com Piper Cub Forum: www.pipercubforum.com the blog: www.danford.net In Search of Lost Time: www.readingproust.com |
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