WX.txt 7.5a USING APRS IN WEATHER AND SKYWARN APPLICATIONS New in 7.5a: Added WX-DISP-wx and WX-SHOW-temp commands which tell your APRS to display WX stations on the map with current WX condx instead of callsigns. OVERVIEW: The Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) is an ideal tool for reporting weather conditions via packet. The system is compatible with both human entry as well as automatic weather station entry of weather conditions. With the optional $9 WX registration, APRS will accept serial data from the ULTIMETER-II home weather station. With this connection, your wind conditions, temperature and optionally rain information are all automatically inserted into your position/weather report packet. You can even mount an Ultimeter-II remotely with only a TNC and Radio, and have it periodically report the remote weather conditions. Using APRS, current conditions at any station and the station's position are broadcast to all stations on the net in a periodic fashion. There are several capabilities of APRS that are directly applicable to SKYWARN: MAP DISPLAY - Shows the location of all reporting stations, their wind speed and direction. Can also show the location of other objects, such as reports of TStorms, Hail, Tornados, etc. You can also mark large areas with either a rectangle, circle, triangle, or lines. Use the OBJECTS-AREA symbol. Typically, use blue for thunderstorms, and red for tornados. WEATHER ONLY - The JUST-WX command will cause only WX stations to be shown on the map or P-List. New in version 75a, this feature toggles on or off. The APRS NEXT command cycles through each WX station in turn and displays its weather conditions in a box on top of the screen. The location of the displayed station is highlighted with a blue circle. Whenever a new report comes in from the selected station, the weather window is automatically updated. REPORT BROADCASTS - The individual station weather conditions can be manually entered with the WX-ENTER command or automatically using the optional APRS registration to enable the ULTIMETER-II serial interface. These reports are typically broadcast every 9 minutes. The report is also available at anytime if an APRS user sends the WX station an APRS Query, or the all-call WX query. STORM/HURRICANE TRACKING - Any station may place a storm or other object on his map, and it will be transmitted to all other stations. If the object is given a course and speed of advance, then it will be automatically dead-reckoned on all screens until the next update. Any station can update the location of an object. The updating station will overwrite all posits in the net and will become the new reporting station. This prevents duplicate reporting and eliminates dependency on the original posting station. For Huricanes and tropical storms/depressions a special COMMENT format will cause APRS to color huricanes red, tropical storms yellow and depressions blue. It will also show the radius of the winds with colored circles. DDHHMM/LAT/LONG@CSE/SPD/TS/www^GGG/ppp>RRR&rrr | | | | | * - - Radius of TS wnds | | | | * - - - - Radius of HC wnds | | | * - - - - - - Cenral Pressure | | * - - - - - - - - Gusts | * - - - - - - - - - - Sustained winds * - - - - - - - - - - - - HC, TS, or TD NOTE: APRS dead-reckons moving objects in time, so the symbol on the map is presented where it SHOULD be, but NOT where it was when first reported. To hook one of these objects on the map, you must hook the little gray circle which marks the position of the actual report, and not the symbol itself. After two hours with no update, the symbol fades to dark gray. NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DISPLAY - Suggested by KD4UYR in FLorida, this feature parses NWS hourly bulletins (SA's) and plots the WX data on the map. NWS sites now have a different symbol from home WX sites. AUTO-HURICANE TRACKING - At the suggestion of KR4US i wrote NWSPARSE.bas which will parse incomming NWS bulletins on one COM port, and output APRS storm symbols and tracks via a TNC on the other COM port. Using an old PC, this system can automatically inject WX storms into APRS nets! It needs more work on additional parsing. ON-MAP-WX DISPLAY - New in version 7.5a, you may select to have the WX conditions displayed by each WX station instead of the callsign. There are two formats. One is activated by the WX-DISP-wx command shows the TIME, Barometric Pressure, sustained wind and peak wind, The other is activated by the WX-SHOW-TEMPS command. It substitutes Temperature for the TIME: 1420z976/36/45 Time,1420. Pressure 976. Wind 36 gusts 45 076'F876/36/45 Temperature of 76 degrees Faranheit OPERATOR MESSAGES - The Point-to-point message capability can be used for operator to operator messages and alerts. COMMENTS - Transmitted along with each position report, there is a short comment field which can be used to report weather conditions, station status, intentions or other broadcast type information. In addition to weather data included in position reports, the station Beacon Text is also available for broadcasting additional amplifying info. These beacons can be reviewed on the LATEST display. The APRS BULLETIN feature is very powerful as an alerting mechanism to all stations on the net. Even non-packet voice stations making a weather report can be placed on the map (like an object) by another APRS packet operator. His station will appear similar to any other APRS weather station, except that his report will include a marker indicating that he was manually placed on the map by another operator. NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HOURLY BULLETINS Based on work by KD4UYR in Clearwater FL, this feature first uses the Add-NWS-to-PList command to search the NWSposns.DAT file for all NWS stations within the boundaries of the current APRS map display (up to a maximum of 250 miles). The database is only accurate to the nearest minute (mile). All NWS sites are given a unique WX symbol (Blue dot with a circle) and added to the PList. To avoid cluttering up your PList, you can use the SHOW-NWS-SITES command to temporarily display the stations... The LOAD-WX-DATA command is used for loading the NWS data if available on your PC in a text file containing the downloaded NWS hourly reports. This file can be obtained from most of the commercial data servers or some BBS's. On the internet, use GOPHER to wx.atmos.uiuc.edu to obtain the data. APRS will then scan through the NWS bulletin file looking for each station that you have on your APRS P-LIST. If it finds a matching NWS bulletin, it will parse out the Wind speed/direction, the temperature and dew point and the barometric pressure and place these on the P-list. THen it will take the remainder of the report and place it in the L-list so that you can see the raw data which includes other notes about cloud cover and special conditions. In both cases, the time of the entry in the P and L-list will be the time of the NWS report (in local time). The date is assumed to be the current date. Unfortunately, these reports were designed for human reading and are also generated by hand at all the NWS sites. There are frequently errors or inproperly formatted reports. If APRS can not make sense out of the report, it indicates with "garbled report" on the P-list. Once you have the display you like, you can select stations on the P-list for uplink to the net as desired. Be considerate, though, and not overload the channel. Once everyone on the net sees the reports, the uplinking station should consider Quitting the uplink in order to reduce QRM, and then Killing them when they are no longer valid. See details on the KILL command in HELP.txt. DEMONSTRATION: To see how APRS works in a SKYWARN or other reporting net, load the backup file SKYWARN.BK using the FILES-LOAD command. To demonstrate the NWS capability, center your map on FLorida at the 128 mile range enter the WX-GET_NWS_SITES command. Once all the NWS stations appear on the map, then enter the WX-LOAD_WX_FILE command to load the sample NWS data file provided by KD4UYR. Look at the P and L-lists to see what is going on... KPH and CELSIUS: You may select wind speed in KPH and temperature in Celsius by doing a manual WX report entry and answer with EITHER K for KPH or C for Celsius. From then on, the WX display at the top of the screen will display in those units. You can make this permanent, by saving a CONFIG file. The on-air APRS WX protocols, however, still will be in MPH and F. Also, the ALARMS are compared to MPH and F values. WX ALARMS: If a WX report comes in that exceeds your alarm values, the station is plotted in RED and an ALARM sounds. The alarms are WIND, TEMP, and RAIN. These settings can be used to warn of the passing of a warm or a cold front. Use APRS and these alarms to make an almost un-attended SKYWARN network! Install an APRS computer at the NWS site, and let the NWS operators set the alarm levels. Then without transmitting a single packet (there is rarely a licensed HAM on the premises) the APRS screen will show SKYWARN data and where the alarm conditions are! CLEARING ALARMS: When an alarm occurs, the station is drawn in RED and the map is re-drawn to center on that station. Also, the station is marked on the P-list with the ALARM marker. TO clear the alarm, simply hook the station on the map, and then UNhook it (hit ENTER twice), or use the WX-ALARMS-CLEAR command. To clear the A on the P-list, hook the station and hit the A key. Normally, the ALARM on the P-list will only sound if that station MOVES. Since a WX station should not move, there is really no problem in leaving the A on the Plist until convenient to remove it. WEATHER WARNINGS AND WATCH BOXES: You can use the OBJ-AREA-LINE command to draw a box plus-or-minus X miles from a line between points A and B. The line and width are perfect for WATCH and WARNING boxes. If baseline lengths longer than 400 miles are needed you must combine two or more boxes. Use the normal OBJ-AREA-LINE command and indicate the +/- offset of the sidelines in a 3 digit number of Miles enclosed in braces {075} anywhere in the COMMENTS field. ULTIMETER-II INTERFACE: With the optional $9 WX registration, APRS inserts the ULTIMETER-II conditions in your position report automatically for unattended weather reporting. Ultimeter data that begins with a * output wind in MPH and those with a # in KPH. APRS detects the difference and does the conversion. Also APRS averages the wind value over the last 4 samples. Thats why the display UPDATE period is set to 15 seconds, so that the resulting wind speed transmitted represents a 1 minute average. RAIN VALUES: In the Ultimeter-II, two rain count accumulators are incremented every time the rain gage clicks (0.1 inch unless special ordered for 0.01). APRS asks you which gage you have and converts both to 0.01 inches on the air. Since the raw U-II rain values have no meaning without knowing when they were last reset, APRS only transmits the difference in rain for the last 60 minutes (/Rxxx) and the last 24 hours (/Pxxx). A reading of /R120 means 1.2 inches fell in the last hour, R123 means 1.23 inches. After 60 minutes, this value will return to zero. A reading of /P164 means 1.64 inches have fallen since the same hour yesterday. For a REMOTE U-2000, this P value means rain since MIDNIGHT. Also since there is no RAIN per hour value, that field is replaced with the /Cxxx change in Barometric pressure. For a REMOTE U-II, the Raw rain count is displayed as #nnnn and there is no P value. There are four possible formats for an ULTIMETER depending on whether it is local or remote: (also see PROTOCOL.txt) .../LAT/LONG_CSE/SPD/Txxx/Rxxx/Pxxx/U-IIauto Original U-II w APRS CSE/SPD/Txxx#xxxx/P.../U-IIrmte Original U-II remote CSE/SPD/Txxx/Rxxx/Pxxx/Bxxx/Hxxx/U2a U-2000 with APRS CSE/SPD/Txxx/Cxxx/Pxxx/Bxxx/Hxxx/U2r U-2000 remote R... B.../H... devices not connected With the WX interface enabled, the normal APRS decaying of position/wx reports still holds as long as nothing changes (except the wind). This way, redundant WX reports do not cloud the channel. If any value, Position, temperature, rain, barometric pressure, or comments change, then the periodicity is reset to the value set in the alt-SETUP-POSrate command. Since the wind is the most changing parameter, the WX-WIND command can be used to set a Wind threshold. Whenever the wind is above that threshold, the reporting period is also reset to the POSrate value. Nominally, you might want to set the POSrate value to about 4 minutes or so. This way, during changing WX conditions, or wind above your threshold, the WX is reported every 4 minutes. Otherwise, the period rapidly decays back to the maximum APRS delay period (default is 20 minutes). For a weather station, you might want to change this MaxPeriod to maybe 10 minutes or so. Use a text editor to change this value in your CFIGxxx.APR file. There it is expressed in seconds. Of course, a WX/position report will be transmitted by the APRS station at anytime, in response to an APRS or WX query. SERIAL INTERFACE CABLE: Peet Bros sells a serial interface cable with a DB-25 connector to RJ-11. (Note, this is a DB-25, not a DB-9). Since the U-II has no negative supply, a 5 K pulldown resistor is added to the DB-25 connector between Pins 2 and 3. This uses the -5 or -12 volts on your TXD line to bias the RXD line. When I plugged in a standard phone line connector to the U-II serial data output (unmarked connector on their junction box, or side of the Display unit), I found the data output on the green while using the black wire as ground. If your connector was crimped on backwards, red is data and yellow is ground. The Peet Bros cable includes transient protection and RF filtering to protect your computer as well as providing the bias resistor. Remember, the annemometer is like an antenna, high in the air. It can radiate RFI and take lightening charges... The U-2000 is directly RS-232 and needs no pull down resistor. SAVE A COMM PORT! You can use a simple 89 cent switch to allow other devices to share a single COMM port with the Ultimeter? Since the U-II cable only uses ONE pin and GROUND, simply add it to your MODEM cable with a simple SPDT switch as follows: ULTIMETER-II >---------*--------* sw1 | <----*--------------> RXD MODEM } >------------------* or } | other } *-----/\/\/\/\-------* serial } 5.6k | device } <------------------------------*-------< TXD } * * * -----------------------------* * * other pins } *--------------------------------------* GND Actually, you can wire this to any serial device that you do NOT use while running APRS. I chose my MODEM that is on COM2. Note the series resistor as mentioned in the text to provide the -V pull-down for the U-II output. REMOTE ULTIMETER-II OPERATION: There are two ways to build a remote WX reporting station. With the ULTIMETER-II, you use the new GPS feature in most TNCs to do the timing for periodically transmiting a WX report. With the new U-2000, you simply put the U-2000 into packet mode and put the TNC into CONVERSE mode. Here's how: For the U-II: Program the TNC GPStext parameter to recognize the * or # character instead of the usual GPS formats. Then set the timing for each transmission to be about once every 5 minutes. Be sure to SET ECHO off! This is because the U-II uses a 10k resistor on the TXD line to bias the RXD line. If the TNC is echoing the U-II data, then total garbage results! (KD4GOE figured that one out!). U-2000 and RECENT TNC: Do NOT program the GPS functions, but put the U-2000 into packet mode and put the TNC in "UIMODE", or PMode-CONV or whatever command sets the TNC to power up in UNPROTO CONVERSE. Once every 5 minutes, the U-2000 will generate a packet. You must set LFIgnore to ON. Since the Kantronics TNC's do not have LFIGNORE, you must set SENDPAC to $10 (linefeed) and set CR off! If there are dozens of REMOTE U-2000's, hopefully their clocks are staggered enough that they wont all transmit at EXACTLY the same time. WX POSITION: In both cases, you must put the unit's POSIT in the BText using the "_" WX symbol. What is transmitted by the TNC then is a BText WX posit with no WX data, and raw WX data with no posit! APRS cannot display the WX on the map until it has received a WX posit beacon. So, set the beacon to go about once every 10 minutes. Since the remote site can also be a WIDE-RELAY digipeater, it should show the WX circle symbol, but it will be GREEN to indicate it is also running with the ALIASes of WIDE and RELAY. This will not happen until a POSIT beacon comes in AFTER a WX report. DATA LOGGING: The POSITION FILTER normally causes APRS to NOT save duplicate position reports that are within 80 yards of a previous report. If you toggle this filter OFF, it reduces this filter range to 20 yards AND enables all WXstation logging. In this mode, all WEATHER station reports are saved in a track history file. All over-the-air reports are only received once every 10 minutes, but your own report will be saved at the rate set by the Set-Pos-Rate command. AUTOWX.EXE: This is a program written by Les, N5KOA to also interface the U-II to a TNC with a PC. It allows direct connections for WX info, it does WX beacons in APRS format, and allows continuous logging of WX data to a binary file just like the U-II ULTIITSR program. I have not used nor tried this program. Do not send disks, but about $5.00 to cover disk & postage to: Les Blalock, N5KOA, 1711 Pagewood, Odessa, TX 79761 (915) 332-7112 day, 332-1942 fax, 367-0408 eve Packet: N5KOA @ N5RKN.#WTX (Odessa, TX). FINAL NOTES: Since the WXstation option is always updating your outgoing position report, this makes it impossible for a WX station to report a beam heading during a Direction Finding evolution. If you use the BEAMHEADING command to enter a beam heading on a Fox or Jammer, then your WX station is disabled. To restore your WX station, restart the program. $$$ The ULTIMETER-II is available from PEET Bros 1-800-USA-PEET (872-7338) for $179 plus $20 for their Serial interface cable and $60 for the optional rain guage (self emptying, 0.1 inches) plus shipping of $8.25. (For APRS, you don't need their $40 software but it is a good package for doing the usual home WX logging and analysis) See ads in QST, CQ, Popular Mechanics, etc... (these were 1993 prices) The ULTIMETER-2000 is also available for about $200 MORE and includes RAIN, Humidity, and Barometric pressure.