About the Project
- Overall
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The Heartland Hams amateur radio Skywarn group wanted to have a mashup of where weather spotters were located in relation to the current weather and warnings.
Radio operators equipped with GPS and packet radio can transmit a beacon of their current location to the local digipeater(s).
This location information propagates to an internet server gateway that provides a KML network link reflector which we use as a layer to draw current locations of the weather spotters.
- Animation
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The NWS radar overlays and warning polygons have timespan metadata which allows them to be animated across a duration of time on the Google Earth canvas.
A time control in the top of the canvas pane allows a variable length range of time to be iterated over the available data.
The resulting overlay allows the "net control" operator to direct and advise spotters of advantageous positions, as well as advising spotters to relocate out of the path of dangerous cells.
Future Goals
- Timespan animation metadata for spotters
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Leave a thematic fading line behind where the spotter has driven.
This would allow us to see at a glance the driver's path on the canvas.
- Archival of NWS radar overlays
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Find, collect, and maintain a long-term history of radar overlays for the interest of studying weather patterns.
This would allow us to animate at high speed a very large time span such as a year or more worth of weather: summers, winters, each month of May, etc.
- Caching reflector agent
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- Script to fetch most current NWS radar overlays on behalf of Google Earth.
- Script to reflect these overlays on the localhost directly to Google Earth, thereby eliminating any delay during loading of new images.
- Programming interface to allow varying timespans to be reflected back into Google Earth using the archived radar imagery.
- Driving helper GUI
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Python script GUI to control the Google Earth application process.
Move the camera, handle active layers, and provide on-screen alerts.
Perform some geospatial queries, sanity checks, and safety checks.
Project Files (KML) for Google Earth
- Heartland Hams Mashup KML
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The following files are identical -- you only need ONE of them.
If you're not sure which one to use, choose the first one (kmz).
Note also: after you open a link into Google Earth, it will put the features into the "Temporary Places" root folder in the "Places" pane.
To keep these features loaded for future use: drag and drop the "Heartland Hams Mashup" folder into the "My Places" root folder.
Once that is done this particular mashup will be ready every time you start Google Earth.