[Xastir] Davis, Lacrosse weather code modified, need testers.

[Tom Russo]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 05:46:39PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> Davis/Meteo and LaCrosse users:

Please read if you use Davis weather stations with Meteo and db2APRS, or
LaCrosse weather stations with open2300 and open2300db2APRS.

> I have once again hacked on Xastir's weather station code for Davis (with Meteo)
> and LaCrosse weather stations.  My latest commit changes Xastir *AND* the
> "db2APRS" and "open2300db2APRS" support programs.
> 
[...]
> 
> This new commit adds Total Rain to the output of the two database programs,
> and adds parsing code to the DAVISMETEO code block to handle it.  It also
> adds computation of rain-since-midnight for LaCrosse stations, because those
> stations don't provide the information.

I should point out that as of the aforementioned commit, the output of
the two database programs is no longer a valid APRS weather report, as it
now contains an extra field "Txxxx" for total rain since weather station reset
(in 100ths of an inch).  That is OK as long as only Xastir is using those 
programs, because Xastir does not simply retransmit the data from these 
daemons, it parses them, extracts the information, then re-assembles its own 
weather report.  Xastir likes to have the total rain around, and does some
computations from it if other information is missing from the station's report.

I have heard from one user who was using db2APRS to feed a Wx Underground
script at a higher rate than is acceptable on APRS.  He needed to modify those
scripts to remove the additional data that Xastir's db2APRS program  now
provides.

I made my modification on the assumption that users of the db2APRS or
open2300db2APRS daemons supplied with Xastir are using them only to feed
weather data to Xastir.   It had not occured to me that there would be a use
case where folks might be feeding this data to something else that expects
rigid adherence to APRS WX report specs.  If this is a common use case, I will
need to rethink how to implement passing "total rain" information from these
programs to Xastir.  If it's unusual, then we can pass on the need to rethink
things to those who are using the codes for unusual purposes.

So far, the responses to my requests about the Davis and LaCrosse daemons has
been underwhelming --- it looks either like few people are using Xastir with
these weather daemons, few people care one way or another whether they work,
or all the WX stations that run Xastir are owned by people who don't subscribe
to these lists.

If you're using Xastir and either db2APRS (Davis with Meteo) or open2300db2APRS 
(LaCrosse with the open2300 library), and you are ALSO using these daemon 
programs with some other program that is using the output and expecting it to
be valid APRS wx reports, please contact me privately (if you have not already
emailed me).  Otherwise, I'll assume that the use cases for db2APRS outside of
Xastir are rare, and can be dealt with by some other means than by my hacking
db2APRS yet again.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick