In this edition of AWIPS Tips, we’re exploring the CAVE Product Browser. Did you know that CAVE can access even more datasets than just those listed in the default menus? It can! The complete data inventory is exposed in a side window called the Product Browser. The Product Browser is an explorer-type tree structure that organizes products by category.
If you maintain your own EDEX server, being familiar with the Product Browser is helpful. You may have additional data ingest feeds that aren’t found in the default CAVE menus. In this case, you can use the Product Browser to locate those products and load them into a map editor.
TIP: You can also customize the CAVE menus to your specification to include or remove products (or whole menus).
Let’s take a look at an example where CAVE is connected to an EDEX server containing some GOES-16 Fog and Low Stratus (FLS) products that can’t be found in the default menus. We can instead locate them in the Product Browser. Let’s use the Product Browser to view IFR fog probabilities (IFR_Fog_Prob) in a map editor.
To open the Product Browser, either select the icon in the toolbar (
) or go to the menu:
CAVE > Data Browsers > Product Browser.
Items are organized into a hierarchy by data type. When you’ve drilled down to the product you want to display (in this case, IFR Fog Prob), add it to the active editor by right-clicking on the item and select Load Product.
TIP: The Product Browser organizes products similarly to the DataAccessLayer in python-awips. So if you are looking for a visual representation of where to find data using python-awips, the Product Browser can help.
All products loaded with the Product Browser are given default settings, which means that they may not have an appropriate color map or min/max values. If not, we’ll need to customize its appearance. We’ll change the colormap to use the premade IFR_PROB option. Also, since this is a probability field, we’ll modify the values to range from 0-100.
Enjoy browsing with the Product Browser! Check back in two weeks for the next blog post where we share tips about CAVE's local cache, caveData.
To view archived blogs, visit the AWIPS Tips blog tag, and get notified of the latest updates from the AWIPS team by signing up for the AWIPS mailing list. Questions or suggestions for the team on future topics? Let us know at support-awips@unidata.ucar.edu
This blog was posted in reference to v18.1.1 of NSF Unidata AWIPS
