Weather

NOAA Weather Service Radio Not Encoding Weather Watches via SAME?

Posted Fri 12/19/2008 @ 5:50 PM

As the entire Northeastern United States is getting blanketed by upwards of a foot of snow today and tonight, then another 7+ inches from a different storm tomorrow night, my dad made an interesting observation:  He's not receiving any Severe Weather Watches via NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) VHF weather radio.

I only realized it after he mentioned it, but even through the ice storm last week and the snow this week, I haven't received any watches or warnings either.  However my wife has been thrilled not to be woken up by the shrill alerts.

My dad called the NWS field office in Buffalo, where an unnamed meteorologist told him they were under a directive not to issue watches via the weather radio.  We both remember receiving watches during the summer thunderstorm season, but it's been very quiet the past few months.  Too quiet.

I emailed Raymond O'Keefe with the NWS Albany field office about this, and confirmed that while they do issue watches via weather service radio (as in, they announce them via voice), they do not SAME encode them.  He also said this isn't a new policy for them.

This weekend I will be digging into this issue while digging out from the snow while we impatiently await for our new arrival.

N2QDK-5

Testing... eventually this will be a home weather station and APRS digipeater located in Long Beach, Long Island, New York.  This will be a battery backed up solution, hopefully 100% solar-powered.

Hopefully this station will be online spring 2009.

N2QDK-4

Home weather station located in Deer Park, NY, reporting via the Internet to CWOP/APRS-IS as N2QDK-4, and via the web as weather.dipino.com and Weather Underground as KNYDEERP3.

N2QDK-3

Testing... eventually this will be a weather station and digipeater will be located somewhere in the Adirondack Park of New York State.

The primary goal for this digipeater is to provide APRS coverage to the High Peaks region, which currently is a huge hole for APRS.  Secondarily, transmitting weather information four times an hour to the amateur radio and meteorological communities from a remote location, from which weather reporting is traditionally difficult (mountaintop).

I am currently looking for a high elevation secure location to site this station.  It will be 100% solar-powered.

N2QDK-2

N2QDK-2 is a home weather station in Webster, NY, reporting via the Internet to CWOP as ID AS108, APRS as N2QDK-2, and via the web to WebsterWeather.com.

Additionally, weather information can be heard in Rochester, NY on the K2RRA 146.880 MHz amateur radio repeater. The DTMF control codes are on the Echolink page.

Melrose Neighborhood of Albany, NY 12203 Weather

10/14/2008 - Under Construction

N2QDK-1

System Status: All OK.  Between Christmas and New Years 2009/2010, the router/firewall in front of APRSALY lost its brains, requiring not only a hardware replacement, but a reconfiguration of all setting from scratch.  This is home Internet connection, and the QoS (quality of service, bandwidth shaping) settings are quite complex to prioritize certain types of traffic, like Skype.  As of 1/1/2010 at 1pm, APRSALY should be back online as normal.

N2QDK-1 is also known on the APRS-IS as APRSALY, an APRS Internet Gateway running javAPRSSrvr.  On May 30, 2009, Dennis Hudson N2LBT who had previously kept APRSALY online for over 13 years, graciously turned over the hardware and knowledge to allow me to steer the ship for a little while.

Here are some public feeds that are availble for users who want to connect on the following ports:

  • 14579: Regional 500km plus Weather
  • 14580: Bi-directional Filter and CWOP Input
  • 10253: 30 Minute Filtered History (Out Only)

If you are interested in having your local (100 mile radius of Albany, NY) objected gated to RF, let me know the Callsign and SSID and I'd be happy to add it.

Hardware

APRSALY resides on a Via Mini-ITX PC with a fanless 533MHz processor and 512MB RAM.  Rather than a standard hard disk, I'm using a Compact Flash-to-IDE adapter and a 2GB SanDisk Extreme III card.  The swap partiton was turned off to reduce writes to the card. The server draws around 15 watts at idle and requires no active cooling. 

Webster Weather Dot Com

This is the project page for WebsterWeather.com, which contains description and configuration information of the hardware and software used, as well as a changelog.

Hardware

WebsterWeather.com Ratsnest 10/13/2008

The brains behind the whole operation is a simple home-built PC; It's the beige PC tower box. The PC hosts the WebsterWeather.com website, communicates with the Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather console, Yaesu FT-2800M EchoLink radio, and shares the HP LaserJet 1020 printer to the LAN.

All hardware is running off of an APC Back-UPS ES 650, with some minor modifications to provide additional runtime in the event of a commercial power failure.

To the left is a messy and unflattering view of everything while I was  in town troubleshooting a communication issue between the weather console and PC. The weather console is on the left in front of the printer. The tower PC is in the cabinet, and the EchoLink radio is on top. To the right of that is the UPS sitting on top of an Astron 20 Amp 12 Volt power supply for the EchoLink radio. Hidden on the right side of the PC tower are the two 12 Amp hour batteries for the APC, Time Warner cable modem, and Buffalo Tech WHR-HP-G54 firewall/router.

And yes, I tried powering the radio with the 12 volt UPS batteries, which didn't make the APC especially happy. Even on low power transmit, the APC eventually passes a bad battery error due to the unexcpected voltage drop on the batteries.

Projects

This is a collection of hardware and software projects on which I have contributed over the years.

Use the navigation on the right (under the Projects header).

This section is in a permanent state of consturction, as new projects are added and old are appended to.

EchoLink Node K2RRA-R (#217959)

As of 2/23/2010, I am no longer hosting the K2RRA-R Echolink node.  Any issues regarding the node should be directed to RRRA and/or kb2chy@frontiernet.net.

All information below is mothballed and kept online for posterity, and is likely depricated.

 

 

I currently maintain EchoLink node 217959, K2RRA-R. EchoLink is a method of connecting Amateur Radio operators and voice repeaters via the Internet with voice over IP (VoIP) technology.

It is a full-time Internet link to Rochester Radio Repeater Association's K2RRA 146.880 MHz amateur radio repeater located in Rochester, New York and is always available for general amateur use.

The link PC and radio are located at my parents house in Webster, NY, and is running on the same PC that hosts the websterweather.com website. The PC, radio, cable modem and firewall (and Time Warner DVR) are powered through a beefed-up UPS, providing over 30 minutes runtime in the event of a commerical power failure. For more information about the PC server and weather station hardware, check the WebsterWeather Project page.

Besides Internet audio linking, the node also provides on-demand playback of current weather conditions, weather forecast, and severe weather alerts for the greater Rochester area via the 146.880 MHz Repeater in Rochester. Additionally, instant notifications (push) are sent over-the-air when severe weather alert is issued by the National Weather Service.

Prior to issuing DTMF commands, please remember to announce your callsign.

New Weather Station for WebsterWeather.com

Posted Mon 04/11/2005 @ 12:34 AM

This weekend I helped my Dad replace his four year old Davis Vantage Pro weather station in Webster. This is the hardware that feeds weather data to WebsterWeather.com. It was being replaced because of a low battery condition received from the ISS (integrated sensor suite - it's the brains of the station, which includes temperature and humidity sensors, a rain collector, and a plug for the anemometer, along with the transmitter that beams the data to a receiver in the basement). All this gadgetry is powered by a solar panel by day. During cloudy days and at night, the weather station kicks over to an internal battery. We had replaced the original battery last fall as preventative maintenance.