New Ireland Weather Network. Weather Stations Wanted

Snowbie

New station added. Pauln weather from Kilgobnet near Dungarvan Co.Waterford.

Thanks Paul and nice to have another site from the south east.
I think Mike will have particular interest in this site.

Deep Easterly

And two more coming up over the next few months. One in Tuam in North Co. Galway before the end of the year, whilst ongoing plans for another being set up with lightning detector in Galway (city) early 2009.

Snowbie, probably a mad/bad/sad idea, but is there a way to get a "current conditions" page set up on here based on the stations already available on this thread? Would be good the have an "at a glance" look at what is going on around the country weatherwise. Not manual of course, but somesort of link up to each station where conditions are updated automatically.

Actually, it does sound a bit mad/bad/sad..:o

Snowbie

Hi Paddy, My broadband at home is down since saturday night so i'm only getting to read the forum now as i'm in work.
I have looked into this before and will post up later as i have not got a min atm.

Snowbie

Snowbie wrote: »

Hi Paddy, My broadband at home is down since saturday night so i'm only getting to read the forum now as i'm in work.

Right someone is telling me porky pies. Eircom told my ISP that a lightning strike happened around my area on Saturday and an outage is the result. Now they are telling me a lightning strike when none such occured.;) My exchange is yards from my house also.

There are two neat little programs that i can upload which creates a map with current weather conditions using similar to METAR coding. You can add most stations both aviation and personal stations use for this but it comes at a cost to me or anyone who wishes to do this.

Mesomap

Skymet

This would give us stations from around the country with a live animated display of our data.

Or

I know we can do it with weather display software where anyone uploading their data can copy a certain URL to have a section displaying on live data. But only a couple of us have this software program.

Any more suggestions be good as i think it's a good idea.

I have setup mesomap on my website, the image below is live from the website.
But to get the full effect of mesomap you'll need to view the map on the website
where you can "hover" the mouse over any temperature reading to get additional information.


PS the station has been intermittant recently, so some info is missing (the 30 days history only goes back to the 10 August)

Weather BOFH

It should be possible to do some screen scraping from each site and aggrigate the results together onto a single page. I can look at knocking somthing together later on.

A more complicated but much better approach would be to log the data from each station directly to a database of some kind. There is a perl script which should work under Windows for the Vantage and I have already created a modified a version of Open2300 for the LaCrosse stations that does exactly this for my own site.

I'm guessing the scraping option is probably the best way to go as it requires a lot less work

Mothman

Snowbie wrote: »

Eircom told my ISP that a lightning strike happened around my area on Saturday and an outage is the result. Now they are telling me a lightning strike when none such occured.;) My exchange is yards from my house also.

:pac:

Mothman

Deleted User wrote: »

I have setup mesomap on my website, the image below is live from the website.
But to get the full effect of mesomap you'll need to view the map on the website
where you can "hover" the mouse over any temperature reading to get additional information.

This is excellent, pity the additional info stays visible for short length of time.
Is there a way to upload daily rainfall?

Danno

Excellent job dolanbaker - I see my data there via WUnderground. The rainfall figures there are incorrect for mine for some unknown reason. For example, WU says 134mm rain this month so far while WeatherLink says 177mm. Any ideas on what is happening?

Also, I wonder do MET Eireann use our data at all?

StratoQ

I like this display by the Scottish Weather Network. Seems quite a few countries have copied this template now.

http://www.scottishweather.net/

btw : Congrats to Paul. Things are hotting up in the Déise now!

Supercell

That scottish network is pretty impressive. Something like that here would be cool.

Snowbie

Supercell wrote: »

That scottish network is pretty impressive. Something like that here would be cool.

Have made contact with the chap on the Scottish network about something similar here,

His reply

The man you want to speak too is Ken True in the U.S.
He has put together all the weather networks that are listed here:
http://www.scottishweather.net/wxlinks.php

The way it works is that each member has to be uploading their data to a
website using Weather Display, VWS, WeatherLink or WUHU sofeware.
Those running the last three in the list are give small text files that
collect the data and are then uploaded to their site. Weather Display can
upload it's own file called "clientraw.txt".
The network server then gathers the data from all the members sites once
every 5 minute to display on the mesomap.

The network server will need to be able to run PHP scripting as that's what
the whole site is based around.

To make contact with Ken then maybe the best thing to do is join the
American Weather Network Forum, which is the main forum for all the network
admins, the forum is attached to this site:
http://www.northamericanweather.net/

Quite a few of the admins & members also frequent the Weather-Watch forum
which caters for the Weather Display software.

Now do we have enough sites that use the following software (in bold above) to start something similar here.

Myself, Trogdor and Black Briar use Weather Display software to begin with.
What software do the rest of you use?

Mothman

I use weatherlink and already upload such text files for a couple of networks
One example

I use VWS and upload to Wunderground.com

Snowbie

There on the ball in replying quickly and very helpful.:)

I'd be pleased to help you set up an Irish weather network. I can build the starter Mesomap graphic and PHP code for the network.
There's a few things you'll need to be able to run your network:

1) a domain name to act as the regional hub site (irishweather.net? erieweather.net? )

2) a *nix webhoster that allows you to run cron jobs .. and it's helpful (but not required) to have SSH access. The cron should be able to run at 5 minute intervals, and preferably with a specific minute offset (2s and 7s is the best). The cron job runs a PHP script to fetch and store a cache of the member station conditions. The cache file is read from the hub site by member's mesomaps to display the conditions on the mesomap itself.
It would be very helpful for me to have temporary FTP access to the new site for initial setup and testing.

3) a forum for your members .. could be a subforum on an existing forum, but it should be viewable by members only .. the mesomap code is exclusive for each network. The majority of the networks have a dedicated SMF forum associated with the network hub domain, and I highly recommend SMF for that purpose. The only two vBulletin boards are run by Grant (tamworthweather.co.uk) for the UK and for (strangely enough) New Zealand.

So.. let me know what you decide on for the domain name and host site .. I'll get started customizing a mesomap software set for you (I can even generate a hub website based on the template set).

Snowbie

I will set up a new domain for the new site later on at 5.75euro a year only. My webhost can handle all of the above requirements.
Obviously this new site will show all our own personal stations on a custom vector map for the entire island (something similar to my map i use with the lightning detector) I am supplying him with.

Seperate to all this i am creating a METAR mesomap that will upload all the aviation AP around the country. I don't know as yet if i can incorporate one into the other but should be able to run them side by side.

Snowbie

Snowbie wrote: »

Right someone is telling me porky pies. Eircom told my ISP that a lightning strike happened around my area on Saturday and an outage is the result. Now they are telling me a lightning strike when none such occured.;) My exchange is yards from my house also.

Much as I am loathe to agree with Eircom on a corporate level...They may well be correct.
You see the lightning may have struck at a pole several miles from your house [hence you wouldn't have thought that there was one near yours] and then it travels all along the line to the exchange.

Living in the sticks as I do,I get along well with the local ESB and Eircom crews and they tell me that lightning strikes several miles away can blow out the transformer at the end of the line [in the case of the ESB] or the exchange in the case of Eircom.

Supercell

Fair play Snowbie, really appreciate the effort you are putting into this.

Snowbie

This is coming along nicely now atm. I have registered a domain and map has been created.
I dont know if this is a requirement as yet but who here uploads data to Wunderground or CWOP? Even if you don't have a website, you could still be included on the map to show your data.

Weather BOFH

Snowbie, I was wondering if you had an example of the format of the text file required? I'd like to contribute if possible.

Snowbie

nemonoid wrote: »

Snowbie, I was wondering if you had an example of the format of the text file required? I'd like to contribute if possible.

I have to get mine up and running first and will let you all know hopefully over the weekend. If you have a wunderground ID it would be helpful.

Also everyones location in decimal degrees is needed.

Mothman

Snowbie wrote: »

If you have a wunderground ID it would be helpful.

Also everyones location in decimal degrees is needed.

Here's the Irish stations, mine being ICO.WICK2
Locations are listed.

Supercell

I'm IWICKLOW3 as you might have guessed from Mothmans link.

Snowbie

Thats a big help MM. Thanks.

Also found 4 sites at a glance in NI also with WU ID.

I90580912 I'm there as well

edit: found this link in wunderground, it shows current stats from all stations that particitate in wunderground.

http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/?lat=53.38333&lon=-7.89917&zoom=7&type=map&rad=1&rad.num=1&rad.spd=25&rad.opa=70&rad.stm=0&wxsn=1&wxsn.mode=tw&svr=0&cams=0&sat=0&riv=0&mm=0&hur=0&fire=0&tor=0

Snowbie

Right the site is almost done now, just a few loose ends and hope to give you a first glance later on over the weekend when we tie up these few loose ends.

Looks good.:)

Snowbie

Okay the site is setup. Still a bit of tweaking to do with adding more graphics and a new banner but that won't be long. There is also another forum on the new site too.
What i need you all to do is to sign up clicking on the Join us tab and the station be added. We will have our data live for all to see on one map now.:)

Click here to Join up

Mothman

Snowbie wrote: »

Okay the site is setup. Still a bit of tweaking to do with adding more graphics and a new banner but that won't be long. There is also another forum on the new site too.
What i need you all to do is to sign up clicking on the Join us tab and the station be added. We will have our data live for all to see on one map now.:)

Click here to Join up

In the sign up link , you need to remove "old-"
Just going to look at signing up.

Great work Snowbie

Supercell

Mothman wrote: »

In the sign up link , you need to remove "old-"
Just going to look at signing up.

Great work Snowbie

Signed up already, pay close attention to the *.htx corresponding file path on your sites.

Just signed up, but will be a couple of days before I can setup the VWS_stickertags.htm page.