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20040413: from wx-talk about distribution of noaaport data

>From: Tom Whittaker <address@hidden>
>Organization: SSEC/CIMSS
>Keywords: 407C0028.1010503 LDM IDD NOAPORT commercial entities

Hi Tom,

re: Rob Dale's note to WxTalk that mentioned porting the Unidata LDM to
Windows
>Thanks for the background...

Your musings below make me think that you would benefit from seeing
the exchanges that Rob and I had yesterday.  I was going to send you
To the IDD email support Glimpse search page:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/glimpsedocs/ghidd.html

and suggest you use 'skywatch' as the search key, but I just tried
this and the search is broken for inquiries at the moment (!@#$%).

The jist of the exchanges was my responding to Rob's inquiry about
.com sites being fed through the IDD (in particular, the Weather
Underground, Inc.).  He wanted to know if we were branching out to
serve commercial interests.  I explained that more and more .com sites
are showing up in the real time stats pages by virtue of their
ingestion of CRAFT data, and that the Weather Underground did have a
unique relationship with us since they are a top level IDD injection
and relay node.  I also pointed out that anybody can approach a Unidata
university to see if they would be willing to send them data on a
not-for-profit basis -- this has always been the case, and is the
method by which non-university educational institutions can get real
time feeds of data.

One of the main thrusts of our exchange was me filling Rob in on the
NWS' plans for transitioning NOAAPORT to use of DVB-S technology.  I
can do this since I was in the middle of our effort to evolve our
NOAAPORT ingest softare to work with the DVB-S test broadcast that has
been running on the vacated GOES-West channel since last September.  In
fact, the Universidad de Costa Rica is the first site I know of that is
using the DVB-S broadcast "operationally".  Of course, they are using
the system that I installed on my trip to San Jose last month :-)

I told Rob that one can put together a DVB-S NOAPORT ingest system
for very little money, so he and other non-university entities might be
more interested in the satellite ingest than in an IDD feed.  I also
pointed out that there was nothing to prevent any site doing the ingest
from sharing the data using tools like the LDM.  After all, the LDM has
been adopted by such non-Unidata sites as:  the government of Spain;
the South Korean National Meteorological service; NASA, the US Army
corps of Engineers; the National Weather Service, and who knows who
else.

Rob asked if we had a version of the LDM that works with Windows, and I
said that there had been no UPC effort aimed at porting LDM-6 to
Windows.  I mused that if he or others wanted to do the work, others
may be interested, so he should keep us aware of development efforts
(call me Huck!).  The LDM is now on a GForge site here at Unidata, and
we have already had contacts by folks that wanted to participate as
developers.

>> Exactly what are you wondering about?

>I was wondering how many copies of NOAAPort data will end up being sent around
>the internet,

Good question!

>and whether the NLDM might be something more interesting to them
>(with the Java-based, "platform independent" code to allow it to work on PCs, 
>Macs, Sparcs, etc),

I thought of this, but since the NLDM is not a supported package, it
would be hard to justify starting a conversation that would likely
take a measurable amount of someone's time here at the UPC for
a non-site.  The possibility is still open, of course, as are discussions
of other technologies like BitTorrent <http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/>
and PDTP <http://pdtp.org/networks.php>.

>and whether we would start seeing more contacts to 
>universities from hobbyists and maybe EMs who would like to get a feed from 
>them, and...stuff like that.

We have been seeing an increased number of requests for realtime data
feeds from high schools, hobbyists, etc. in the past year or so.  We
always advise folks that they should connect with a Unidata university
to see if that university would be willing to provide them a feed AND
provide them with support.  We are very careful to inform them that
they will not be getting support from the UPC since we are a small
outfit and are funded to support mostly universities.

Anyway, when the Glimpse search of IDD archives is working again, it
might be interesting for you to read through Rob and my exchanges to
get a better picture of what was discussed and what was not.

Cheers,

Tom

>From address@hidden  Wed Apr 14 08:32:25 2004

Hey Tom...

Thanks for the updated Glimpse pointer.  I've read through the emails
and now have a better picture.  I liked the tone (and info content) of
your responses.

The EMWIN project has been of interest to me since its inception, since
they were using my old US IR+MDR loop ;-)

I agree that it would be good for them to consider setting up their own
IDD and there certinaly are enough development arenas for Windows that
might work...but I still think it's a shame (& waste of bandwidth) to
have multiple copies of NOAAPort data flowing on the 'net.

Thanks again...

tom

-- 
Tom Whittaker (address@hidden)
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Space Science and Engineering Center
Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies
Phone/VoiceMail: 608.262.2759