Hello everyone.
Some of you may remembered several years ago I worked out a system where my
Windows system running Weather Message and a EMWIN satellite receiver was
married with a little daemon to pqinsert the products in a "EXP" feed that I
called prefixed the header with "EMWIN" thru a shared directory. That's
worked well for those of you who used it, and it's still available for those
what would want to run it all the time by request.
Catch is, for backup in a pinch for those not taking the feed 24/7 it was
not a simple hostname swap for end sites in their ldmd.conf to get back up
and running with important/critical data potentially lifesaving information.
I got discussing this with Gilbert about the system he setup for everyone
quickly earlier this week which "cloned" an imported version EMWIN from FTP
--- but called it DDPLUS|IDS instead --- so all you had to do was point your
LDM server to his and you had data again without reinventing pqact files.
Yes, it's not a true feed of the product source, and it's just a fraction of
the full volume on NoaaPort, but it filled in a need for those text
products. But being FTP based, it had even more delays, so I started
thinking about how I could help out here and get this up to real time speed
since no other options seemed to be available.
After our discussion, I decided to fire up another VM on my network, for a
completely isolated copy of LDM to run on. This system now has the same
-real time- satellite downlinked EMWIN data as my EXP feed on my main LDM
server. But on this host - it's product name is DDPLUS|IDS with headers set
out of the "box" to run as said product with no modifications to your pqact
files. Hopefully it can help out during the next outage.
Here's what happens. My EMWIN system is the new EMWIN downlink system.
It's 19.2kbps on GOES-13 (n) with the new more inclusive and faster dataset
called "EMWIN-N". Weather Message software running on 08 server ingests
the file, uses FEC to make sure it's not corrupt, and then writes it to a
directory. The VM running the "isolated" copy of LDM is using Samba to
mount that shared directory. Again, the little daemon wrote parses the
files every second, and pqinserts them - but on this system - as DDPLUS|IDS
and no extra headers.
After setting this up this evening, Gilbert was gracious enough to do some
remote testing for me to make sure it's working as planned, and indeed it
is.
During the test, another light bulb went off. Weather Message runs as a
service, so after - 6 years of running it - I forgot that I had setup with
Weather Wire's basic Internet Feed to run it as well (the 64kb/sec basic
text dataset) as another source of redundant data. Here in Tampa, via
APRSFL.net, I support a group of Skywarn Spotters and many enthusiasts in
our local AMS chapter with real time data. Weather Message has a
lightweight taskbar app that uses push to send custom alerts for users to
their PC's or PDA's and SMS alerts, so EMWIN and WW were the primary feeds
to power that system and do a great job for that application for warning
folks. (and I also use DDPLUS|IDS via LDM as a third source doing the
opposite I am doing for the EMWIN feed to allow the LDM system to feed
Weather Message's ingest directory with yet a third feed).
At any rate, not to get too far off point, it dawned on me that the same way
I am getting EMWIN data to LDM - a "second" ingest directory in the WxEmwin
app - I can also do with the Weather Wire 2000 Ingest App... So not only am
I able to push satellite delivered EMWIN-N text products, but Weather Wire
text products as well to this feed. LDM does a great job with duplicate
detection, and I haven't seen it cause any problems (any of the brain trust
who feel this may cause problems, please, I'm open to any input!!!), but for
now I am leaving it in place.
So bottom line. I am now offering the Unidata LDM community this dual
sourced - real time - data feed to substitute DDPLUS|IDS during the fades.
Just point to emwin.aprsfl.net - and request DDPLUS|IDS to start getting the
feed when you need it. I'm working with several others to get this
carried on other larger feed sites as well, more info on those hosts to
come.
I hope this helps out. I know it's not a full fill in - but it's better
than nothing - and still relatively fast time delay from a product issuance
perspective.
Questions? Suggestions? Comments? Just drop me a line.
Kind Regards,
Dave Anderson, KG4YZY
http://www.aprsfl.net
