Geographical Warnings

Tom and I have been discussing Geographical Warnings. These are warnings based on your location. Weather Message now has the capability to send emails and pages based on a fixed latitude / longitude falling inside or near a polygon.

A really neat application would be to have your gps equipped phone know when it is getting near or inside a watch or warning. Is that possible? Yes and it is not too difficult.

It would require one of two approaches.

1) Run an application on the smartphone that would send the current gps position to a weather server. The server would then search the active watch and warning products to see if the position is near or inside one of the watch and warnings. The application would then alert the user. I am thinking that it would have to send that position once per minute.

2) Run an application on the smartphone that would receive a SMS/email message that contains the polygon information. The application would then check the current position against the polygon and issue an alert. The information would only need to be sent once. It would be the applications responsibility to keep the active watch / warnings in memory and check once per minute to see if the phone was in a warned area.

With smart devices (phones and pda's) this application could work. Some major players in technology have been talking about this for sometime. They even want to put this in cars...

So can it be done on a Weather Message budget? I believe a low cost server solution is possible. All it would take is a user that wants this capability, a phone that supports Windows Mobile and a calling plan that allowed for unlimited SMS or reasonable internet access.

WxPda - Version 3.0 - Beta 2

I had a chance today to install WxPda on a Pocket Pc 2003 computer. I quickly discovered that there was a problem with vga screens. I have corrected that problem and uploaded a fresh beta.

WxPda - Version 3.0

I have upgraded WxPda to Microsoft's Compact Framework 2.0. This upgrade also adds support for Windows Mobile 5. I am changing the program version to 3.0 to match the current Weather Message Net major release number.

I have run some very limited tests. I do not know if it will install on Pocket PC 2003 or Smart Phones. If you give it a try, please let me know your results.

I switched the display on my windows mobile 5 device to landscape and the software now looks correct. You can now use landscape on a windows mobile 5 without problems.

Weather Message 3.2 Released

Weather Message V3.2 has been released. You can download the update at
http://www.wxmesg.com/downloadsnet.htm . For information on what has changed in this release, please read the release notes.

There are over 56 changes in this release. Here are some highlights.

Highlights -

* Weather Message Server can now run as a Windows service.

* Support for storm based warnings. You can now alarm by latitude longitude.

* WxMap now supports painting polygons.

* WxMap has all colors located in one tab. You can now select the items that appear in the map legend.

* WxMap supports the NWS Zone and Marine layers. To use this feature you must download the latest map layers.

* See the release notes for a complete list of changes.

Thanks for all of your suggestions, bug reports and assistance with the software. Work will begin on version 3.3.

Suggestions for 3.3

- Multiple state support in one alarm.

- User manager.

WxDataSave, WxLocal and the Retransmission applications have been respectively released along with Weather Message 3.2. If you are using any of these applications, they must be upgraded at the same time you upgrade Weather Message.

Birmingham NWS Weather School

I will be making a one hour presentation on EMWIN and Weather Message at the Birmingham NWS's Weather School October 16, 2007. The Birmingham NWS is a long time supporter of EMWIN.

They have incorporated information about EMWIN into their annual Weather School. Because of this, they will not be holding an EMWIN workshop this year. If you are interested in attending an EMWIN workshop, I suggest you contact your local WCM and ask them to sponsor a class.

Weather Message 3.2 Beta 9

I am getting prepared to upload Weather Message 3.2 Beta 9. I have made a number of internal changes in the programs. I discovered that all of the programs contained some code associated with creating windows that was not needed.

This extra code was a result of the original conversion. I knew it was there, but did not realize the magnitude it had on the application. After removing the extra code from Weather Message Server Setup, the size of the "exe" was reduced by 30,000 bytes. I made the same changes in all of the applications - about 10 hours worth of work. This should help all of the programs load little faster and reduce the size of the installed application.

I have added a third option map layer to WxMap. This layer can be user defined or populated with the new rivers layer. I will be updating the map layers download to include an option rivers layer.

If the test reports on this beta are favorable, I will look at releasing beta 9 as the offical 3.2 release.

Look for the update later this evening.

Weather Message Webserver Crash

The computer that contains the Weather Message website crashed this afternoon. The website is hosted on the computer that contains several other websites. I have been working to get this computer back working all afternoon and into the late night.

I am in the process of updating the website with the latest content. I hope it is back to normal by noon Tuesday.

Update 10/2/2007 - I believe the webserver is back to normal operation now....

WxMap - Polygon Styles

After much discussion with one of my beta testers, I have renamed one of the polygon styles and added an additional style.

The Outline style has been renamed Area. Area paints the double lines around the warned area. The new style is named Outline. This style paints only an outline in the color of the alarm. It causes the program to not paint the county. Here are a couple of examples.

The image above shows an example of a severe thunderstorm and flash flood warning with no other watches or warnings active.

This image shows a severe thunderstorm along with a thunderstorm watch.

Blogging - One year has passed

I started this blog one year ago. It is hard to believe that one year has passed by so quickly. I did not think that I would be able to find items to post when I got started. I spend alot of time working on Weather Message, so I was not sure if I could keep the blog updated.

To the number of people that follow my development progress here -- thanks for taking the time to read this blog. This blog has received 5,793 hits since it was first started. Not alot, but then again, EMWIN and Weather Message are well kept secrets. Hopefully not for long - please keep spreading the word.

WxMap Polygons Release

I should be releasing a new beta this evening that contains the polygon changes to WxMap. Here is a preview of the two styles of polygons supported in WxMap.


This style is called pattern. The pattern is the color associated with the alarm color.



This style is called outline. The polygon is painted with an outline that is the color associated with the alarm color.

WxMap - Polygon Support

I have started changing WxMap to support storm based polygons. Here is snap shot of some polygons drawn on the map. There will need to be a number of options added to determine how they are drawn.

WxControl - Service Controller

Based on user requests I have made a couple of changes relating to WxControl.

1) The program now be setup to connect to two different servers. It will only connect to one at a time.

2) The Weather Message full install will have an option to only install WxControl. For those that want to only install WxControl, this option will meet that requirement.

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From the initial reports that I have received, WxControl works great on a local network. It however does not work across an Internet connection. Due to the mechanism used, I have not been able to resolve this issue. More testing should reveal the nature of the problem.

Weather Radio Recall

On August 29, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in cooperation with Oregon Scientifc, announced a voluntary recall of four models of Oregon Scientific Weather Radios. Details are provided on the CPSC Website

WxControl - Remote Operation

If you are wanting to run WxControl remotely and cannot get it to connect to Weather Message Server, the following information may be helpful.

1) If you get an error 5 Access Denied, you have a security / authentication problem. See if you can create the same user name and password on both computers. The next Weather Message beta will reduce the security requirements for the server. That may also address the problem.

2) Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003's firewall may disable remote access to named pipes. Try opening port 445. Here is a Microsoft article that discusses SQL Server, but the information applies to opening port 445. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839269

3) See if named pipe security has been enabled - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925890

If you have to use one of these means to obtain access, let me know what you did and I will see about automating the procedure.

Danny

Service Controller now available

I have completed the initial work on the Weather Message Server Service Controller. This application will allow you to monitor Weather Message Server when it is running as a service. It will also allow you to monitor a remote Weather Message Server even if it is not running as a service. I am sure there will be requests for refinements, however, it fulfills the basic need to monitor the server.

This gets another request off my list that has been there for some time. Version 3.2 contains a number of good enhancements that have required quite some time to implement. After some clean up work, I will be making other changes.

Service Controller

Since releasing a version of Weather Message that runs as a service, several customers have asked what happened to the user interface. Well when an application runs as a service, most of the time you lose the user interface because the application is running in the background. Most software packages provide another application that can be used to monitor the background service.

I have spent the last week studying interprocess communications. I have decided to use named pipes since they appear to be quite efficient. Named pipes are basically memory files that can be shared across process boundaries. I need a way for a 'controller' application to talk to the server and get the screen updates. Named pipes should do this well.

The 2.0 framework does not have built-in support for named pipes, so it was necessary to write all of the code to communciate with named pipes. Support for named pipes will be in the Microsoft 3.5 Framework. That Framework however will not work on Windows 2000 computers. The 3.0 Framework does support a mechanism that I could have used, it also does not support Windows 2000.

I completed the routines today and the tests look good. I should be able to create the WxController application sometime this week. It will be a small application. The big change will be updating Weather Message Server so that it will send data to the connected controller application.

One good point is that named pipes can be used across a network. So it will be possible to run WxController on a remote computer to monitor the server. I will say that this is only recommended on fast networks. If the primary goal was to monitor remotely, then using tcp/ip sockets would be a better approach.

Fire Zones

I have taken the time to add fire zones to the County_Z.dat file. These zones are used for fire weather products. After adding the zones, I have mixed emotions about including it in the regular distribution.

There are some duplicate county names that may confuse users that do not know the difference between the forecast and fire zones. I added "FZ" before the names so that I could tell the difference.

I will include County_FZ_Z.dat with my normal distribution. If someone wants the fire zones, they can simply replace the stock County_Z.dat with County_FZ_Z.dat.

Note: Fire Zones are generally used in the Northwestern states.

Weather Message Server - Service Support

Weather Message Server now has an option to run as a Windows Service. There have been a number of requests for this ability.

The current version of Weather Message requires you to login before Weather Message will be started. The ability to run as a Windows Service alleviates the need to login. As soon as the computer boots, Weather Message will be started.

I still have a number of tests to run, but my initial tests have been successful. There are some additional enhancements that need to be made. Basically an interface needs to be written that will communicate with the Weather Message Server service.

SSL Support for SMTP Instructions

I have posted a document on the Miscellaneous downloads page that describes the steps necessary to setup Weather Message for a secure smtp connection. The example I used is for gmail.

Here is the direct link Secure SMTP Setup

Changes in file access routines

I have changed the file access routines, that read or write products, to use file streams. File streams are more efficient than the commands that were previously used. Changing the file access routines was the last thing pending from the original software conversion from 2 to 3.

While changing these routines, I discovered that WxByte and WxIngest were creating the tracking file twice when the first block of a product was received. I eliminited one of those. That will reduce the number of writes to the harddrive.

I also made changes in Weather Message server that will reduce the number of times that it accesses a new product. It was checking the size of the file, then reading the file. This has now been incorporated into one file access.

Although the programs seem to run efficiently like they are now, these changes will make them more efficient and ready for the faster data stream.