Testing the new EMWIN Internet Feed

My EMWIN byte blaster server is participating in a test of the new EMWIN Internet Feed.  It has been serving the new data stream for 18 hours now.  Everything looks good with no problems encountered.

Each connected client should consume about 19kb of bandwidth.  Some clients (ingest programs) can received compressed packets which reduces the bandwidth requirements.  Right now with 40 clients connected, the average bandwidth used is around 510kb.  That averages out to 13kb per connected client.

I have been submitting routine reports to the EMWIN Team.  I hope they find the test successful and begin moving all servers to the new EMWIN feed.

GOES-12 (East) has transitioned to GOES-13 (East)

At 15:35 UTC, the GOES-12 EMWIN feed transitioned to GOES-13.  GOES-13 is now transmitting EMWIN data at 19200 baud using QPSK modulation.

This was a big undertaking that has been planned for many years.  Thanks goes to all the people involved.  A special thanks to the EMWIN Team at NWS HQ who have been kind enough to answer my numerious inquiries.

Converting Werner Labs 3 foot dish to 6 foot

Tom Moore sent me some pictures showing his conversion of a Werner Labs 3 foot dish to his 6 foot dish.  He said it increased the signal strength and reduced his error rate.

Here is a picture of the original Werner dish.

Tom removed the antenna and moved it to the 6 foot dish.  Here is a picture of it installed on the big dish.

Here is a close up of the antenna mount.

Using Weather Message to update your Facebook status

Weather Message 3.6 Beta C allows users to update their Facebook status.  To send status updates to Facebook, you will need do do the following.  (Make sure you have version 3.6 Beta C installed)

1. Go to Facebook and click on Mobile at the bottom of the page.
2. Look for Upload via Email.  You need your upload email address.  (I had to click on an option at the top of the page that opened a window with the email address.  My next visit to the mobile page showed the email address on the main page.)
3. Setup a Facebook email group.
4. Set the Style for this group to Short.
5. Set the Subject Style to Full.
6. In the Subject Override line enter $Message$ (this causes the message to appear in the subject line)
7. Enter your Facebook upload email address in the email address box.
8. Save the Facebook group.
9. Associate this group with the alarms that you want sent to Facebook.

GOES East Transition still scheduled for April 26

The NWS issued a Public Information Statement today reminding EMWIN users of the pending GOES East satellite transition.  Here is an excerpt from the PNS.

THE NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITE DATA AND INFORMATION SERVICE RECENTLY SET THE DATE FOR GOES 13 SATELLITE TO REPLACE GOES 12 /EAST/ SATELLITE AS ON OR ABOUT APRIL 26 2010. DUE TO CHANGES IN THE SATELLITE CONFIGURATION THAT PROVIDE THE EMERGENCY MANAGERS WEATHER INFORMATION NETWORK /EMWIN/ BROADCAST... EMWIN USERS MUST TAKE ACTION TO ENSURE CONTINUED RECEPTION OF THIS DATA SERVICE.

ON OR BEFORE APRIL 26 2010 USERS WITH LEGACY EMWIN SYSTEMS WILL NEED TO REPOINT TO GOES WEST OR UPGRADE TO AN EMWIN-N CAPABLE SYSTEM. LEGACY USERS SHOULD TRY REPOINTING TO GOES WEST AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE IF THEY WILL BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE SIGNAL FROM THEIR LOCATION.

Website - T1 upgrade

The Weather Message website got a speed increase yesterday.  The Internet connection went from 1.5mb to 6mb.  This should make downloads much faster.  It now has 4 bonded T1's.

Weather Message Version 3.6 Beta A(10) posted

Weather Message Version 3.6 Beta A(10) has been posted to the website.  This beta contains a few changes to address some reported issues and add a couple of new features.  We are nearing the end of the 3.6 beta process.  I hope that version 3.6 can be released in a couple of weeks.

With each beta, the Weather Message beta testers load the betas and report their results.  I install each one on my production computer for a full evaluation.  If you are testing this beta, let me know if you encounter any issues.

Lightning - Probably time to upgrade to Windows 7

My network took a lightning strike this morning at 5:35.  I was already up and moving around when I heard that "pop" coming from the computer/radio room.

I lost two wireless routers, an on board lan card in the development computer.  I don't have any phone service.  The ham repeater will talk but not listen.  I am sure there are other devices down, but will not know until I start restoring some of the things.

Good news is the internet satellite did not die, EMWIN receiver is good, and NOAAPort is working great.  Some people build great equipment and charge a little extra for lightning protection in their equipment.    I don't think the parts in the LinkSys with stood the test...

I am now considering a new development computer.   Lightning -- yes time to consider upgrading.

Autauga County Monthly Test

I traveled to Autauga County yesterday to participate their monthly siren test using WxSiren Controller.  Everything worked as planned.

Weather Message 3.6 Beta 9

I have posted Weather Message 3.6 Beta 9 to the Weather Message website.  If you are a beta tester give this version a try.  I am thinking that this will be the last beta before the 3.6 public release.

WxByte/WxIngest/WxEmwin will not decode - Regional and Language Options

A user was having a difficult time trying to get WxEmwin to decode data.  It had worked, but stopped decoding the EMWIN stream.  The program was reporting 100% bad packets with header errors.

I got the user to run WxEmwin with the LOG option and reviewed the results.  The program was failing to decode the date in the EMWIN packet header.  The date looked ok to me.  I got the user to check their Regional and Language Options and discovered they were set to English(Australia).  The user was in the southern hemisphere.  That setting changes the internal date routines to expect the date in DD/MM/YYYY order.  The EMWIN header is in MM/DD/YYYY order.

I got the user to change their Regional and Language Options to English(United States) and WxEmwin started decoding data.  Previously, it worked for sometime at the beginning of the month, but failed after the 12th day. 

This issue affects all version 3.x releases of Weather Message.   It may also affect the version 2 programs - I did not test them for this problem.

I have made changes for the next release that will address this problem.  I reviewed all of the programs that validate dates.  If they are expecting the date in MM/DD/YYYY order, they will now use the culture settings for the United States to make those validations.

Thanks to Colin for his help in identifying this problem.

Integer Overflow Checks

I disabled integer overflow checks in Weather Message 3.6 Beta 8.  I don't recall seeing an integer overflow in the programs.  This change will reduce the cpu consumption for all programs to some degree.

With integer overflow checks enabled, the internal routines would check to see if an integer overflow occurred for each math operation on an integer.  That is simply not necessary in Weather Message.  There are lots of loops that use integers in Weather Message.  Checking for an overflow in those well behaved loops is not necessary.

EMWIN - Dual Ingesting (Serial and Internet) - Duplicate Graphic Files

I have several users that dual ingest.  They have the EMWIN serial ingest and internet ingest enabled at the same time.  One of those users noticed that they were getting duplicate graphic products.  After some research I discovered that the duplicate binary file routine was using local time instead of UTC.  That issue is now corrected.

The latest beta contains the fix for this problem.  Users that do not dual ingest may notice a decrease in the number of graphic files.  The EMWIN stream does output some duplicate graphics.

Introducing Grant Dark - Weather Message Sales

I want to introduce my associate Grant Dark.  Grant is the primary contact for sales and support for WxSiren Controller and emPager Pro.  He will also be helping Weather Message users.

I have worked with Grant for over 7 years.  He has a degree from Auburn University in agronomy.  How he became an acomplished computer technician, trainer and marketing person is another story.  He is married and lives on Lake Martin. 

Please join me in welcoming Grant to Weather Message Software.  If you are interested in WxSiren Controller or emPager Pro, email Grant directly at grant at wxmesg.com (replace the at with @).

WxSiren Controller Installed at Autauga County EMA

WxSiren Controller was installed Thursday February 18 at Autauga County EMA.  WxSiren will now be responsible for activating polygons based on polygons.  We performed tests to insure that the program operated properly.  We will run it through another round of tests in March.

Here is a link to the first Montgomery Advertiser article announcing the new system.  http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010100217040

Alarm Tab changes for Wind Speed

As part of the changes for setting wind speed and hail size, I made a couple of changes to make the Alarm tab cleaner and more informative.  The program will now use colors to indicate if a product as certain features.  Light-gray indicates that the feature is not available, a white background indicates it is available, while a light-green background indicates that the feature has been enabled.

Severe Thunderstorm - Wind Speed and Hail Size

The next beta release of Weather Message will support decoding the Wind Speed and Hail Size line in Severe Thunderstorm and Severe Weather Statements.  Forecast offices in the Central Region will start testing the "WIND...HAIL" line in SVR and SVS messages on March 1, 2010.

Only SVR and SVS products issued by Central Region forecast offices will contain the "WIND...HAIL" line.  If your forecast office is in the Central Region, you can use this option.  For other forecast offices, using this option will cause your alarm to not work.

Wind Speed will range from 60 miles-per-hour to 100 miles per hour.  Hail Size will range from .75 inches to 4.00 inches.  The alarm option will check for a match or greater speed.  (We could add variables for short messages if needed.)

This is a great addition.  I hope it will be implemented by all NWS forecast offices in 2011.

Note:  For everyone else, if you need this capability, you can use a regular expression to match wind speed embedded in the text.

WxEmwin - Pauses between packets - Revisited

Well sometimes you have to backup, punt and admit that you were wrong.  The explanation for pauses between some EMWIN Internet packets was a good definition.  It does happen as I explained in the previous post. 

The user that asked the question later sent me an example that I could not explain.  In his case, he was using WxEmwin to ingest an intermittent data stream create on a private network using WxRetran.  He setup WxRetran so that the stream was not sending data constantly like a regular EMWIN stream.  There was no fill file to make the stream constant.

After some research I found a problem in the buffering routines in WxEmwin.  When WxEmwin received a version 2 (compressed) packet, it kept that packet in the buffer until the next packet arrived or enough packets arrived to exceed the buffer processing point.  Once I saw it happen, I knew exactly what was causing the problem.

This issue would not really be noticed by regular EMWIN users.  When I added the option to disable/enable the version 2 (compressed) packet option to the program, the user changed the setting and noticed that the program no longer held packets in the buffer.  He just had to convince me that there was a problem.

So --- there was a good post about pauses between packets -- which lead to a real problem that was resolved in the last beta.

Tigertronics - ESP-96

A couple of my users have been communicating with Tigertronics about the upcoming EMWIN transition. They have been asking Tigertronics if they plan to provide a new receiver that is compatible with the EMWIN-N signal.

Based on the last information that I received, Tigertronics is evaluating whether to develop a new receiver. At this time, they do not have a receiver in development. In no case will one be available by April.

Users on the West coast will be able to use their existing receivers until the West coast satellite is decommissioned at the end of 2011. The East coast users that can receive the West coast satellite can continue to use their current receive system until the end of 2011.

If you have receive equipment that is not compatible with the EMWIN-N signal, you may want to consider repositioning your dish to see if you can receive the West coast signal.

April 26, 2010 --- GOES East will transition to EMWIN-N

From the EMWIN Transition page:  http://www.weather.gov/emwin/transition.htm

There are currently two GOES-N series satellites, GOES 13 and 14 in orbit and awaiting full time operations. Once they are placed into service the EMWIN-N broadcast will replace the current legacy broadcast. In order to receive and demodulate the EMWIN-N broadcast all users with legacy EMWIN systems will need to obtain EMWIN-N capable systems.

Although subject to change, the current plans are for:

• GOES 13 to replace GOES 12 (East) on or around April 26, 2010
• GOES 14 to replace GOES 11 (West) in December 2011

After GOES 13 becomes operational, GOES 12 will be moved to 60 degrees west to help support the Caribbean and South America. We are attempting to have the EMWIN-I 9.6 kbps signal remain on the GOES 12 satellite in order to ease the transition for users.

The transition could occur earlier due to premature failure of one or both of the current GOES satellites. All users should consider migrating to EMWIN-N capable systems. Please see the vendor page on the EMWIN website. Anyone with an EMWIN-N system can try out the broadcast by using GOES 14 satellite, which is providing a test broadcast.

Why the transition to EMWIN-N:

Changes in the next series of GOES satellites, the GOES-N thru P constellation, have necessitated development of EMWIN-N. Sometime before 2011 the current GOES satellites will be removed from operation and will be replaced by the new series. This will allow for the use of improved technologies, but all current EMWIN users will need to migrate due to frequency, power and modulation changes.

Coming Improvements Include:

• Data rate is doubled to 19.2 Kbps - More data!
• Forward error correction - Greater reliability
• Increased use of compression - More data!
• Enhanced data stream - Including regional Nexrad images
• Dedicated transponder
• No eclipse seasons