[aprssig] Weather station viewing online

[Rick Green]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Michael J. Wolthuis wrote:

> I just want to display it to basically the general public or at least the
> amateur/RACES/ARES/fire communities on a nice Google map where they can just
> click the individual stations and get "neat" graphically presented info.
>
  Consider xastir on a Linux workstation or running in a Linux VM, with a 
feed from aprs-is, filtered for wx stations only.  It'll present the 
station symbols, optionally with current wx stats in the label, and the 
full wx telemetry is just a right-click away.
   However, among the many map formats that xastir supports, google maps is 
not among them.  The Census bureau's Tigermap data is probably the most 
accessable, and with the WMSRADAR as an overlay, makes for a very 
impressive display.  And the other shortcoming is that the individual 
stations' wx data is displayed as current-only, with no historical info 
kept, or graphical trend possible.

   If you're bent on developing something yourself, I'd encourage you to 
leverage the incredible work the xastir developers have done already, and 
develop an add-on to xastir that would create and display in 
near-real-time an isobar and/or isotherm map layer from the incoming wx 
data, which could be overlayed on the already-beautiful maps that xastir 
supports.
   Come to think of it, it doesn't have to be built-in to xastir at all. 
Build it as a stand-alone map server, akin to the TIGERMAP.GEO or 
WMSRADAR.GEO services I mentioned earlier, and put it up where we can all 
take advantage of it!

-- 
Rick Green, N8BJX

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