[aprssig] findU and RSS

[Steve Dimse]

On May 23, 2005, at 4:23 PM, Henk de Groot wrote:

> FireFox seems to know about RSS feeds, but even better for this is  
> Mozilla Thunderbird. The only gotcha is that the "feed:" protocol  
> is not recognized.

 From now on, I'll be providing the findU RSS feeds as http:// to cut  
down on the confusion. Safari recognizes an incoming RSS feed and  
changes the URL, so http should work in any system. I may  
occasionally forget to change, as I test URLs in the browser and cut  
and paste, and as I say these are converted to feed:// by the browser.

I'm now working on the weather RSS feed now. I only have the  
temperature check working so far (each variable will require a  
separate index in the database):

http://rss.findu.com/wx.cgi?temp=gt100

will feed those stations with temps greater than 100 degrees. You can  
replace gt with lt for less than. I realize the syntax is a bit  
opaque, but I can't think of a better one which will pass through a  
browser and cgi parser. This may not be hugely useful, as the  
outliers are often bad hardware, but we'll see.

You can also get a feed on a specific callsign, where there is one  
item for each report that meets the criteria, so

http://rss.findu.com/wx.cgi?call=k4hg&temp=lt70

will feed those reports when the temp at my house falls below 70  
degrees (it'll be November before anything appears here!). I need to  
parse out more of the weather info into each item, and I'll be doing  
parameters for the common weather values, I'll announce them when  
they are available.

Steve K4HG