[Xastir] NWS Weather Alerts

[Curt, WE7U]

On Tue, 21 May 2013, Dean Groe wrote:

> So I have to use firenet, not the standard rotate pool?

I don't think that is the case, but I use Firenet all the time so for me it's the default!

I'm one of the Firenet guys writing the scripts & injecting Firenet objects, running two of the Firenet servers, also wrote the weather alert scripts that are injecting weather alerts into Firenet.

If you stick to the APRS-IS servers instead of Firenet you get fewer alerts:  The guy who wrote the software for injecting them there had different priorities/thoughts about which alerts were important.  It's a long story.  So I came along later and independently wrote the same thing, but produce more types of alerts, which I inject into Firenet.

Firenet also has LOTS more objects than APRS-IS, but otherwise you can think of them as the same thing, and they are interconnected.  The "special" injection alerts and objects on Firenet do not get ported across to APRS-IS, but all the usual user/igate things are ported bidirectionally.


> I remember seeing some talk about Wx Alerts on firenet before, but I assumed that was targeted to people who wanted to optionally use that feed AND get alerts.  
>
> If I remember correctly, we are NOT supposed to inject additional data / objects into firenet.  

Not true.  As I understand it you should treat it as you do the APRS-IS.  It's the APRS-IS + extra Firenet objects/alerts.


> I am currently running Xastir as a bi-directional I-Gate and Wx Station.  
>
> So if I understand this correctly, I can either have an I-Gate with the rotate feed, or I can get (and Gate to RF) Wx alerts from firenet, but not both.  
> Is this correct?

Nope.  Run the igate on Firenet if you wish.  Run it on APRS-IS servers if you get enough weather alerts and other objects to satisfy you.  I do inject some objects into both, but usually limit what goes into APRS-IS:  Earthquake objects are a prime example.


> Curt, I think it was about a week and a half ago that I compiled from latest and got and ran the latest NWS script, so it should pretty much be up to date.

You should probably do a "cvs update" and then run through the compile/install again.  We changed things last Thursday the 16th and will be changing them again on or about June 6th and July 1st.  The NWS keeps changing files on us, so every time I make a change I re-check their site and add upcoming file changes to my Google Calendar so I get reminded when I need to change Xastir again.  It's a pain!

-- 
Curt, WE7U.        http://wetnet.net/~we7u
Closed-minded about open (-source)...