SPOT Parser in the Console

We already had one Web version of a SPOT Parser, we now have one embedded in the Navigation Console. It allows the manipulation of the SPOT bulletins even if you are far from the Internet...

It also comes with a possibility to compose your own SPOT request.
At sea, you would compose your request (possibly with the data from the GPS), paste it into your Airmail client to send it through SailMail.
Once the response is in your inbox, you paste it in the utility featured above, and you have a graphical rendering of the SPOT data.
Enjoy!

Fax crawler, for SailMail users

I wanted to get something more dynamic for the patterns that can be used at sea...

When ashore, no problem, the faxes are pulled out from the Internet.

At sea, that's different, you have GetFax (from SailMail) downloading the faxes from the SSB onto your hard drive, and when it's about putting the faxes together in a composite, that used to be a painful experience, you had to locate the faxes one by one... Baaaaad.

There is now a new kind of dynamic pattern. If the protocol used to get the fax(es) is not http, then there is a surprise. There is a "search:" protocol implemented like in:

search:chartview.util.SearchUtil.findMostRecentFax(".*500.*", "${fax.path}")

That allows the soft to crawl the directory where the faxes are downloaded.

It does not look that friendly, but that is quite powerful, and extendable. After the "search:" keyword is the name of the Java class and method used to find the right fax. That method must be static, take two String parameters, and return a String value, that's all. The first parameter is a regular expression to match the description of the fax to find. SailMail appropriately stores this information when a fax is downloaded through GetFax... The second parameter is the root directory to start the search from, to find the most recent, matching the regular expression pattern. In the example above, it is the value of the path stored in the Weather Wizard preferences.

It is extendable in the sense that you can write your own crawlers, in Java. It just needs to be put in the classpath.

The same kind of syntax and method is available for the GRIBs as well.

search:chartview.util.SearchUtil.findMostRecentFile(".*\.(grb|grib)$", "${grib.path}")

The idea when at sea is to have GetFax running in "auto" mode for a while, and then to use this kind of composite pattern in the Weather Wizard. This way, this rendering is just one - I said "one" - click away:

Even fuzzy faxes make sense. Click the image... Cool!

To learn how to use this feature the best way, just Google "Regular Expression", this is soooooooooooo kewl!

3rd dimension for GRIB smoothing

We already had the surface (2D) smoothing, we now have a time smoothing for the GRIB data.
That means that you can get a better resolution for the GRIB cell (divide the cells, and set the values based on the ones of the cells around), the same is now available for time.
You download a 2 degrees by 2 degrees GRIB, for 3 days, every 24 hours, you can very well render a GRIB of 1 degree by 1 degree (or less), every 1 hour. And it works pretty well (offshore, of course, local coastal phenomenons, like the one shown here, cannot be taken care of by a GRIB).
In addition, some performance issues have been fixed, impacting the GRIB animation. With the previously described feature, we can now generate an animation that shows a frame every hour.
That will definitely minimize the demand on the SSB, when downloading the data at sea.
For example, you download a GRIB file for a given area, with cells 2° × 2°, with a frame every 24 hours. With the smoothing, you can easily display it with a 1° × 1° resolution (or less, your call), and with a frame every 1 hour. The equivalent GRIB would be 2×2×24 times bigger, that it 96 times bigger. That does not sound that great, but you can put it another way: instead of 1 minute to download it, it will take more that 1 and half hour. Sounds more convincing like that!
In addition, the dustlets take advantage of the same feature, you can watch really smooth animations.

Example:

A Composite has been displayed
Hide the faxes and place labels
Change the wind display to colors
Play animation, it's anything but smooth


Set a (2D) smoothing factor of 3
Looks better for each frame
Play animation, it's still not ideal


Now, set the time smoothing factor so it generates a frame every one hour
Play animation, it's now much better, perturbations evolution becomes way clearer.
Vancouver is going to be windy and wet again ;)

Path for GRIB & Faxes

Minor but useful enhancement to the software. We now have the possibility to give a path - instead of a single directory - for the software to find the GRIB and Faxes. 

It occured to me when I was configuring the new laptop on the ketch, for both Internet and the SSB. The faxes and GRIBs coming from SailMail are not stored on the file system in the same location. 

So now, you can tell the soft to took into morte than one directory when you configure the preferences for GRIBs and Faxes.

Becoming stable

It looks like the software has reached some stability, less and less updates are now showing up.
The last ones mostly concern some cosmetic details in the UI.
The routing features have also been improved, Bruce took benefit of them during the last leg of his trip, between Tonga and Auckland in New Zealand.
More parameters have been externalized. It's becoming more and more flexible.
The viewlet (animated how-to's) page keeps growing, it is available from the same page as the software, click on the How-to link, on top of the History section.

Next steps will be to have installers running for Linux and Mac.
Keep posted!

Software availability

At least for now, the soft is available from http://donpedro.lediouris.net/software/OlivSoftSetup.exe.
And the user manual - included in the distribution - can be downloaded separately from http://donpedro.lediouris.net/software/UserManual.pdf.

I am now working on an Applet version of this thing, so it can run with just a browser.
Keep posted!

Dynamic Patterns

We introduced a while back this concept of pattern. Once you have reshaped all several faxes to fit your needs, you can "replay" the re-shaping step by creating a pattern out of it, so you can apply it again on other similar faxes, stored on your file system. That is pretty convenient, when you use the GetFax utility from SailMail, which stores the downloaded files on your disk.
We have also added some features, allowing you, when you are planning a trip, to download from the UI faxes from the Internet. In that case, you download the fax(es) from the net, save them on your disk, and then apply a pattern on them. Mmmh..., there is room for improvement here!
This is where we've introduced the concept of dynamic pattern, containing the URLs of the faxes to download before applying a pattern on it.
As a result, the picture below is just two clicks away. One to invoke the dynamic pattern, another one to show the result in Google Earth... Google Map behaves the same. Click on it to enlarge.It is made out of three faxes:

1. North Pacific Surface Analysis
2. North Pacific 500mb analysis
3. Central Pacific Streamlines

Notice that this last one has to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise, as it comes from the net on its side. This rotation is now part of the pattern as well.

500mb in 3D

The GRIB files can also contain data related to the 500mb charts. A 500mb fax would typically look like this:

It is really supposed to represent the topography of the atmosphere...
Other rendering(s) of the same data might be helpful, like this one:

Plus it is really animated, you can orient it the way you want, just with the mouse.
The four lows are really easy to spot, notice that the one in the Gulf of Alaska is not that impressive, and look - it is not on the fax, it's beyond its edge - how much fun they're going to have in the south Japan...
Sea temperature and PRMSL (Pressure at Mean Sea Level) can also be represented the same way. I want to check if wave heights can be represented the same way...

Smoothing the GRIB

The smoothing algorhythm mentioned in an earlier post can be adapted to the GRIB Data.
It allows you to turn this:

into that:

This smoothing is spatial, in other words, it fills the gap between the points.
This can reduce substantially the size of the GRIB data to download, as it gives the possibility to rebuild the data between the actual points. This will need some validation, but that sounds promising. SailMail users might be concerned; on the example above, the size of the GRIB file is ~15 times smaller.
The next step will be to add a time dimension, smoothing the wind across several frames.
Keep posted!

3D Grib files

Still making progresses on the weather charts program. Now we can visualize the GRIB files over the globe...
I'm still fighting with the Lambert projection..., we'll get there. The soft is almost good to be released, as - let's say - developer preview.
Print capabilities have been added too.
The superimposition of the faxes works well for the Mercator projection, and this is the most important for now. Surface analysis below a 500mb chart are really kicking asses. Quite a neat tool.

SailFax, utility for SkedFile.txt

Almost done with SailFax. See a preview here.
Will soon be available for download.