Cumulus Realtime Gadget

dane · **Posted:** Sun Jan 17, 2010 2:07 pm

Quote:

Hmm, according to the wiki: "The number of the current forecast as per strings.ini. If the forecast is not being provided by the station and not being generated by Cumulus a value of 0 (zero) is returned "
My realtime.txt has a value of 24 for this parameter (Precipitation, very unsettled). So not sure why it shows up different on Terry's gadget.

DaveNZ, you both have non-zero forecast figures in your realtime.txt.
In the screenshot below, the forecast no. is the 2nd temperature value.
(Howick to the left, Janter to the right).
Why they differ I don't know. Maybe you have different settings for min/max? or different weather?

Attachment:

Sreenshot.JPG

Super-T · **Posted:** Sun Jan 17, 2010 10:10 pm

Dave is 300 metres down the road.
My station is a fine offset and dave is the davis.

dane · **Posted:** Sun Jan 17, 2010 10:19 pm

Quote:

Dave is 300 metres down the road.
My station is a fine offset and dave is the davis.

Dave is apparently using Cumulus' forecast and is constantly showing forecast no. 24.
Yours is 2 - until you went offline at 11:00 your time.

beteljuice · **Posted:** Sun Jan 17, 2010 11:58 pm

Super-T wrote:

...
It may be that the formula doesn't work too readily for Auckland as it is very changeable.
... Pressure is set to 971 and 1036 in my case.

Super-T has 'shortened' his weather range (going tropical), thus Highs are not so high, Lows are not so low, and in the middle is more volatile (liable to change).

Super-T · **Posted:** Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:27 am

The pressures are set to my all time high and low tracked since July, 2008.
It can go lower but we haven't had a hurricane come this far south for a while in Auckland.

Went offline this morning because the computer that C1 is installed on decided not to be able to open the Cumulus Help file....just sat in the task bar but wouldn't display. Windows problem, not Cumulus :-)

Reboot didn't fix it and it won't open from double-clicking the chm file......track that down later.

Forecast is about right at present.....rain expected and dark clouds around but lately these have come to nothing in this vicinity.

Name is Terry. Super-T comes from the old days of being a network supervisor and is my car rego so I stick to it.

TNETWeather · **Posted:** Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:20 am

Super-T wrote:

Name is Terry. Super-T comes from the old days of being a network supervisor and is my car rego so I stick to it.

People will typically use your User ID rather than a name in your signature because when they are creating a post, they can't see the signature any more just your userid in older posts.

dane · **Posted:** Mon Jan 25, 2010 12:12 am

Version 1.99IH uploaded to first post of this thread.
Note: name of version 1.99IH is cumulusih.zip.

Change:
- settings.ini: if temperature2 is not specified (which is the default) the 2nd temperature will be a 'feels like' temperature:
wind chill if lower than temperature1, heat index if higher than temperature1

bpsmicro · **Posted:** Sun Jan 31, 2010 12:57 am

I just stumbled across this new version. Pretty cool, but I have one question (or suggestion): Is there any way to tweak it (or perhaps get an option added later) to *not* show the forecast graphic?

I have a *lot* of windows on my desktop showing various statuses (statii?), and this particular gadget would do well to be 1/3rd shorter. And for me, the Cumulus/Vantage Pro forecasts are not all that useful anyway.

Okay, one other question: Is the "Last Updated" time at the bottom the date/time from the realtime.txt entry, or the system time? I ask because I have Cumulus running on an old klunker notebook that tends to hang once in a while. If this is displaying the realtime.txt timestamp, then I can tell from my main desktop when it's gone (again), so I can give it a boot.

Brad.

gemini06720 · **Posted:** Sun Jan 31, 2010 1:29 am

bpsmicro wrote:

Okay, one other question: Is the "Last Updated" time at the bottom the date/time from the realtime.txt entry, or the system time?

Brad, the time/date displayed by the gadget are those saved by Cumulus into the 'reatime.txt' file which is being used by the gadget.

So the date/time you see at the bottom of the gadget are the time Cumulus produced its last updated file and NOT your computer system time/date.

bpsmicro · **Posted:** Sun Jan 31, 2010 1:36 am

Outstanding.

Being somewhat of a hacker, I decided to poke at the source files that make up the gadget. Didn't take long to figure out that with some minor tweaking of the "blank" background bitmaps, index.html file and gadget.js, I could quickly hack up a version that eliminated the forecast and vertically shrink the rest. I can also see how making the forecast "optional" might be more of a hassle than it's worth. No sweat, I can just re-do my little tweaks for each new release. :-)

Brad.

TNETWeather · **Posted:** Wed Feb 03, 2010 8:08 am

Been using one of the versions of this for a while. One annoying thing is that the icon is based on forecast is not what most people expect when they look at the gadget. They expect it to be current conditions instead.

For example, the icon on the gadget now is showing Rain, but it is actually a completely clear sky with no rain in sight. That is going to change, and we have a 40% chance of rain coming, but someone looking at the gadget would assume that it is or has rained recently.

Now that I have a metar collection script that will be combined with my webtags system, I am going to give this a rework by creating on the fly a gadget collect file that a reworked gadget can get to get exactly what it needs, rather than pulling from the realtime.txt file.

Something like:

gadgetfeed.php

Which when called outputs a similarily formatted space delimited file like realtime.txt but with only the fields I really need like:

Code:

   Date
   Time
   Timezone
   Temp
   Temp Diff
   Wind chill
   Dewpt
   Humidty
   Rainfall day
   Rain Rate
   Rainfall month
   Rainfall year
   Wind Speed
   Wind Dir
   Pressure
   Pressure Diff
   Uv
   SolarRad
   Current Cond icon code
   Forecast icon code
   visability
   temp units
   wind units
   rain units
   pressure units
   Daylight Flag

And perhaps some more fields that I am not thinking about yet.

Then I will have exactly the data needed to provide the a gadget with current conditions showing instead of forecast. Could even set it up so that it switches or can be switched to show more detail, like rain data.

Each time the script is called, it will use the webtags along with the metar data to fill in the current conditions etc...

The ultimate goal would be to create a fixed configured gadget that visitors can download and use which only obtains info from the weather station it was designed for. Kind of like a public service to the area.

The configuration would be fixed with the URL of the station with the getgadge.php script, a fixed time interval like perhaps once every 3 or 5 minutes, and perhaps a selection to choose between a full sized gadget like it is now, or a smaller compressed one like Brad is talking about.

The long update times are because I can imagine a number of these running forever once they are setup and over time that could start taking a toll.

Also, as a php script, I could control who uses the data, and what data they can see... a possible bonus service type thing.

The graphics used can be customized for just the station as well giving it a custom look.

Hmmmm... network just dropped. How cool... NOT!..

Must be the pissed off Groundhog chewing on the cables again.

For a change the business side is not effected... normally it is the other way around.

TNETWeather · **Posted:** Wed Feb 03, 2010 9:19 am

Sample gadgetfeed.php output

Code:

2010-02-03 02:43 MST 52.8 -0.9 52.8 43.7 71 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.88 0.0 --- 1003.86 -0.43 0.0 0 FINE 21 Occasional_precipitation,_worsening 10_miles °F mph in hPa 0 

Live File:

http://cumulus.tnetweather.com/gadgetfeed.php

Play script:

Code:

<?php
####################################################################
#
# Test Script for Gadget Feed
#
# (c) 2010 TNET Services, Inc.
#          http://cumulus.tnetweather.com/projects
#
####################################################################
require_once("tnetwebtags.php");
$SITE['metarstation'] = 'KIWA'; // Which Metar station to use.  Would be in Settings.php file
require_once("getmetar.php");  // Eventually called by the webtags script itself rather than from here

echo $WX['year'] . '-' . $WX['month'] . '-' . $WX['day'] . ' ';
echo $WX['hour'] . ':' . $WX['minute']  . ' ';
echo 'MST '; // Missing from tagfile
echo $WX['temp'] . ' ';
echo $WX['temptrend'] . ' ';
echo $WX['wchill'] . ' ';
echo $WX['dew'] . ' ';
echo $WX['hum'] . ' ';
echo $WX['rfall'] . ' ';
echo $WX['rrate'] . ' ';
echo $WX['rmonth'] . ' ';
echo $WX['ryear'] . ' ';
echo $WX['wspeed'] . ' ';
echo $WX['wdir'] . ' ';
echo $WX['press'] . ' ';
echo $WX['presstrendval'] . ' ';
echo $WX['UV'] . ' ';
echo $WX['SolarRad'] . ' ';
echo $WX['curicon'] . ' ';
echo $WX['forecastnumber'] . ' ';
echo preg_replace('/ /','_',$WX['forecast']) . ' ';
echo preg_replace('/ /','_',$WX['metarvis']) . ' ';
echo $WX['tempunit'] . ' ';
echo $WX['windunit'] . ' ';
echo $WX['rainunit'] . ' ';
echo $WX['pressunit'] . ' ';
echo $WX['isdaylight'] . ' ';

Test Metar Get Script:

http://cumulus.tnetweather.com/scripts/getmetar.php

daj · **Posted:** Wed Feb 03, 2010 9:39 am

Quote:

The ultimate goal would be to create a fixed configured gadget that visitors can download and use which only obtains info from the weather station it was designed for. Kind of like a public service to the area.

Great idea

gemini06720 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 03, 2010 1:20 pm

Kevin this is a great idea.

When will it be ready for testing...

TNETWeather · **Posted:** Wed Feb 03, 2010 4:27 pm

The gadget itself, would need to be reworked... No ready to start doing that yet but once one of the others has access to a gadgetfeed output, it is not hard. I am a bit weak on javascript... just don't use it much.

The metar script should be ready shortly. Just doing some more tweaking on it before building the actual script. It is a external script to the webtag script, which would then call it if it is there. Not really intended to be called as a stand alone script.

The modified webtags script just needs to insert that check and call..

The gadgetfeed.php is already working. Just need to fine tune what variables it outputs. As you can see above, there is next to nothing in it.

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