12/14/06 The big storm of 06 sweeps through dumping .32 inches of rain
per hour and winds clocked at speeds of 40.8 knots (46mph). The lights go out
at 7:51 PM and the cameras and weather posting quit. But the
weather station keeps collecting data on battery power! The power
was out in Fall City for a full 5 days and other areas such as here
near Redmond were out for a full 7. Thank goodness for
natural gas and generators! Did anyone get pictures of the trees
and power lines down? I'd like to post one picture for every event.
Dan P.
Anyone care to write about the 200 year flood of 06?
11/19/06 I never give up! Contrary to the advise that my professional
programming buddies gave me, switching over to "passive ftp" seems to
have resolved the reliability issues with the file transfer. Since I
switched it I have not seen a failed file transfer, even with very
heavy traffic on the dsl line. I'm happy as a clam now! I added a cloud
background to the main page. We'll see if anyone comments pro or con.
Dan P.
11/15/06 I've noticed a lot of reliability issues with the weather data
and the images from the airport this past week. I've made changes in
the way that the cameras update and have tried a number of settings in
the file transmission system. The weather PC is configured now to be a
(FTP) file server to the cameras, so that all the files are gathered
and sent out sequentially. What it boils down to is that the DSL
line is a shared resource that is donated by my son. He some times
utilizes the line to it's fullest extent and that creates a large
number of errors in the file transfer process to the web site. After a
lot of extensive testing, I know that programming and methodology are
are correct (I think elegant actually). It just comes down to the fact
that the data pipe is only so big and we don't own it. So, even if the
pipe gets plugged occasionally, I'm still grateful to have the pipe at
all. Perhaps some day we will find a way to fund the line or
link wirelessly to someone else's pipe. Enjoy! Dan P.
11/4/06 The Westerly looking camera was installed. Yahoo! That's about
it other than correcting some typos and making the site more visually
appealing. I also added a just for fun section. Enjoy! This may be the
last entry I make until something breaks! Dan P.
10/28/06 One more trip to adjust the image compression and I also found
why the updates were unreliable. I had one camera posting every 20
seconds and it was saturating the DSL line. Dan P.
10/25/06 At 11:17AM this morning the PC that serves the weather
station information went on strike complaining of "too many open
ftp sessions" and "too many socket errors to deal with!".
The management countered with "no! you're set up correctly and should
be able to do the job!". "Refusal to perform will call for a nightly
automatic reboot" (That will make my Linux buddies grin). I also turned
up the weather stations image compression ratio to make smaller files
to transfer. Perhaps I turned it up to much because I can see the
compression in the display. I'll tune it a bit more this weekend and
get a sharper weather picture. Dan P.
10/24/06 I notice that the weather on the main page is not updating on
schedule. That part of the page should update update every two minutes.
Tonight I'm seeing 2 to 30 minutes between updates. It could be a lot
of different things. I'll have a look this weekend and tweak it a bit.
I'm not happy seeing the 30 minute refresh. Dan P
10/22/06 It's done! The weather
station is up and running! After a bit of network problem resolution
and fine tuning the PC is up and serving its weather data to the web
site every 2 minutes. I also moved the camera to look at
Tiger and Mitchell Mountains. I want to thank Walt and Tom for helping
me bolt the weather sensors up and a thanks to Doug
for donating a PC. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I do. I
had wanted to put one more camera up but I ran out of resources. I've
prewired a location that would look to the west from the hangers
that would capture the fog banks and the good wind-sock. I could put it
up for a nominal cost but the order would have to come from the
association officers. Let them know if you want one more camera! One
more thing, if you like all this, thank the hippie renter in the
apartment. He's my son Kevin and he donates the DSL service, domain
registration, and web server space to make this happen. Please write me
and I'll forward on your comments. Dan P
10/19/06 I received the new serial port and it works flawlessly. I got
everything all tweaked out then discovered the PC that it's on didn't
offer the option to reboot after a power outage. I moved it all over to
a second less powerful PC but it all works fine. I developed a
graphical strip chart page that should be popular. It's all calibrated
and ready to go. I'm hopeful to have it up this weekend. Dan P
10/13/06 The weather station has been delivered and looks like it's
going to do a great job. I've only run into one bug and that is
that I opted for the USB interface between the console and the PC. Only
a techie will understand this but it turns out that it's not strictly a
USB device. It's a CP210x single-chip USB to UART bridge that
converts data traffic between USB and UART formats and the driver for
it is buggy. The instrument company knows this and is shipping me a
standard serial interface but it puts the project a week behind... I
want to see this thing up and running before the wind blows and it
starts dumping rain by the bucket. It's going to be fun to watch all the info from home! Dan P.
10/10/06 Frequency change announced by post card. I assume it's immediate... 122.85 MHZ .
Dan P.
10/8/06 All the network cable is installed to support the weather station, also to allow for one more camera and to relocate the
original. The weather station has been ordered and Doug B. has volunteered to donate a PC! Thanks Doug.. Dan
9/29/06 Small improvements made almost daily. Added links for TFRs,
NOTAMs, and WSDOT Aviation pages. The web site is near its
final configuration until the weather station is purchased and
integrated. Dan P.
9/23/06 The airport association votes to approve the development of the
web-site and weather station as proposed in a document provided by Dan
Plute and presented by Andy Carrel. Dan is a hanger renter, and friend
of the airport. Dan P
9/15/06 Added links for NOAA aviation weather, Space Needle Cam, WSDOT cams and more fine tuning. Dan P.
9/11/06 Andy Carrel's camera is added to the proof of concept web-site. Thanks Andy! Dan P.
9/9/06 Enough web development is done to present the idea
visually at the annual corn roast. The idea is well received. We can
use this space to post the results of the contests in the future. Dan P.
9/2/06 The prototype web-site is developed and one camera is installed. Dan P.
Your news goes here! Mail me!
Email me please!
Admin@1wa6.com
Thanks!
Dan Plute
