>From: Mark Maciver <address@hidden> >Organization: University of Washington >Keywords: 200008012158.e71Lw1T00664 McIDAS composite Mark, >I am interested in creating composites similar to >http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/tom/topoir.gif to be displayed in the >department. Are there scripts available that create these composites. Yes, the routines needed to create composite imagery are distributed with Unidata McIDAS-X. >If so I >would be very interested in them or any advice you can give on creating a >satellite/topo image - Thank you - Mark MacIver Your system can be configured to create the composite imagery automatically as new Unidata-Wisconsin images are received. This requires some setup in the 'ldm' account (minimal) and some configuration in the 'mcidas' account (also minimal). This means, however, that the machine running the LDM has to have a distribution of Unidata McIDAS-X built for it and accessible to the user running the LDM. The other thing that makes all of this easy is if your 'ldm' and 'mcidas' users are in the same group. The procedure is basically as follows: <in the 'ldm' account> o put a copy of the file batch.k that is included in the ldm-mcidas distribution in a directory that is in 'ldm's PATH. A good directory for this is typically ~ldm/decoders. It is a bad idea to leave batch.k (a Bourne shell script) in the ldm-mcidas distribution directory tree as it is a file that will get overwritten by each new ldm-mcidas installation and it is a file that you need to edit to change some internals to match your McIDAS installation setup. o make sure that ~ldm/decoders/batch.k is executable o edit ~ldm/decoders/batch.k and set MCHOME, MCDATA, MCPATH, MCGUI, MCLOG, and PATH to match your McIDAS-X installation. For instance, if McIDAS is installed in /home/mcidas, then you would setup MCDATA, etc. to look like: MCHOME=/home/mcidas MCDATA=$MCHOME/workdata MCGUI=$MCHOME/bin MCLOG=$MCDATA/ROUTEPP.LOG MCPATH=${MCDATA}:$MCHOME/data:$MCHOME/help PATH=${MCGUI}:... (fill in the '...' with directories that 'ldm' would have for its login) o since you are already receiving Unidata-Wisconsin imagery, you might be all setup on the LDM side to produce the composite images. What you need to check is your ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf entries for UW images. In particular, you will need an entry that uses the McIDAS file routing table concept for output file naming. In the recent past, the entry(ies) would be for execution of the ldm-mcidas decoder, lwtao3. Now (as of yesterday :-), the entry(ies) would ve for execution of the ldm-mcidas decoder pnga2area. This entry will probably look something like: MCIDAS ^pnga2area Q1 (..) (.*) (.*) (.*) (.*) (........) (....) PIPE -close pnga2area -d /var/data/mcidas -r \1,\2 This entry assumes that you are decoding your images into the /var/data/mcidas directory. If your setup is different (likely), substitute your output directory for /var/data/mcidas in the discussion below. o in order to run McIDAS ROUTE PostProcess BATCH files (the things that are going to create the composites for you), you will need to have copies of two McIDAS files in your ldm-mcidas image decoder output directory: ROUTE.SYS and SYSKEY.TAB. Both of these files will need to be readable AND writable by the user running your LDM ('ldm'). If these files don't exist in the decoder output directory yet, you can get them from the McIDAS installation: ROUTE.SYS can be found in the ~mcidas/workdata directory, and SYSKEY.TAB can be found in the ~mcidas/data directory. Simply copy these two files to the output data directory and make sure that they are readable and writable by 'ldm' (and 'mcidas'!!) <as 'mcidas'> o login and start a McIDAS-X session o verify that your session is "pointed" to the copies of ROUTE.SYS and SYSKEY.TAB that are in the ldm-mcidas image decoder output directory: <from the McIDAS command window> DMAP ROUTE.SYS DMAP SYSKEY.TAB If the output from the McIDAS DMAP commands don't show the copies of these two files in /var/data/mcidas (again, substitute your own output directory in this discussion), you need to setup McIDAS REDIRECTions to them: REDIRECT ADD ROUTE.SYS "/var/data/mcidas REDIRECT ADD SYSKEY.TAB "/var/data/mcidas After doing this (if you had to, that is), you should verify that your McIDAS session can access the files by rerunning the DMAP commands above. o make sure that he routing table (that is ROUTE.SYS) entries for the composite images are active. This means that their entries in ROUTE.SYS are not SUSpended. To find out the status of the needed entries, type the following in the McIDAS comamnd window: ROUTE LIST Look for the lines that refer to the compositing of imagery. Here is a listing showing the entries that you need to be concerned with (i.e., others have been removed from the listing for brevity): S Pd Description Range Last Received Post Process C - -- ------------------------- --------- ------------ ---------- ------------ - s CI GOES-E/W IR Composite 80-89 none none none 3 s CV GOES-E/W VIS Composite 90-99 none none none 3 s CW GOES-E/W H2O Composite 70-79 none none none 3 s N1 GOES-East IR/TOPO Composi 220-229 none none none 3 s N2 GOES-East VIS/TOPO Compos 230-239 none none none 3 s N3 GOES-West IR/TOPO Composi 240-249 none none none 3 s N4 GOES-West VIS/TOPO Compos 250-259 none none none 3 s N5 MDR/TOPO Composite 260-269 none none none 3 s N6 Mollweide IR/TOPO Composi 270-279 none none none 3 s N7 GOES-E/W IR/TOPO Composit 280-289 none none none 3 s N8 GOES-E/W VIS/TOPO Composi 290-299 none none none 3 All of these entries are currently SUSpended in this list. This is what the 's' in the first column refers to. To make these entries active, run the following McIDAS comand: ROUTE REL CI CV CW N1 N2 N3 N4 N5 N6 N7 N8 Now, the listing should look like (again shotened for brevity): S Pd Description Range Last Received Post Process C - -- ------------------------- --------- ------------ ---------- ------------ - CI GOES-E/W IR Composite 80-89 none none none 3 CV GOES-E/W VIS Composite 90-99 none none none 3 CW GOES-E/W H2O Composite 70-79 none none none 3 N1 GOES-East IR/TOPO Composi 220-229 none none none 3 N2 GOES-East VIS/TOPO Compos 230-239 none none none 3 N3 GOES-West IR/TOPO Composi 240-249 none none none 3 N4 GOES-West VIS/TOPO Compos 250-259 none none none 3 N5 MDR/TOPO Composite 260-269 none none none 3 N6 Mollweide IR/TOPO Composi 270-279 none none none 3 N7 GOES-E/W IR/TOPO Composit 280-289 none none none 3 N8 GOES-E/W VIS/TOPO Composi 290-299 none none none 3 That should be all that you have to do to get the PostProcessing working! What happens is the following: o an image is received by your LDM o it is decoded by pnga2area (lwtoa3 if your system hasn't been upgraded yet) o after successful decode of the image, the decoder reads the McIDAS routing table, ROUTE.SYS, IF it exists in the decoder output directory. If it finds ROUTE.SYS, and if it can write to ROUTE.SYS and SYSKEY.TAB, it will see if the routing table entry for the image just received is set to run a PostProcess BATCH file. For instance, here is the listing from a machine here at Unidata: S Pd Description Range Last Received Post Process C - -- ------------------------- --------- ------------ ---------- ------------ - U1 Antarctic IR Composite 190-199 none none none 3 U3 Manually Digitized Radar 200-209 none none MDR.BAT 3 U5 GOES-West US IR Band 4 130-139 none none GW-IR.BAT 3 U9 GOES-West US Visible 120-129 none none GW-VIS.BAT 3 UA Educational Floater I 160-169 none none none 3 UB GOES-West US Water Vapor 170-179 none none GW-WV.BAT 3 UC Educational Floater II 60-69 none none none 3 UI GOES-East US IR Band 4 150-159 none none GE-IR.BAT 3 UR Research Floater 180-189 none none none 3 US Undecoded SAO Data default none none none 1 UV GOES-East US Visible 140-149 none none GE-VIS.BAT 3 UW GOES-East US Water Vapor 210-219 none none GE-WV.BAT 3 UX Mollweide Composite IR 100-109 none none MOLL.BAT 3 UY Mollweide Composite H2O 110-119 none none none 3 The entries that have something in the 'Post Process' column other than 'none' are setup to run McIDAS PostProcessing. The McIDAS BATCH files that are named are distributed so that they will be installed in the ~mcidas/data directory. These files will be available to the copy of batch.k that you edited earlier by virtue of the MCPATH setting in batch.k (that is why you have to edit batch.k to set MCHOME, etc. to match your McIDAS installation setup). o if a product has a PostProcess in the routing table, it is run. The entries above for Pd (product codes) U3, U5, etc. all have PostProcesses set to go, so they will do whatever is set in the BATCH files. A snippit of what is in one of these PP BATCH files will show how the composites are made: <GW-IR.BAT> REM Run NORTMAPR to remap the image and composite the remapped copy with a REM a topography image NORTMAPR 9017 %2 9989 N3 NONE 0 9017 MAPAREA=9970 DEV=NNN REM Run GOESCOMP to create a composite of the GOES-East and TOES-West images GOESCOMP %2 NONE 9986 C CI N7 SCRAREA=9981 9984 MAP=YES 9019 9970 DEV=NNN NORTMAPR combines the image with a topographic image to give you a composite like the one you mentioned at the beginning of this email. GOESCOMP will composite the GOES-East and GOES-West images into a central view. An example of one of these can be found in: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/tom/gewir.gif If you are creating these composites and if the routing table entry for compositing these composites with topography is not SUSpended, then you will also start producing images like: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/tom/gewirtopo.gif The actual image extends further to both the east and west than this GIF (tm) capture. My frame was not big enough to display all of it at once, that is why it is chopped off. This should be enough to get you going. Please let me know if you have any questions about the setup. Tom Yoksas
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