It seems like you have two projects here:
Display current conditions to a website
Store all observations in a database and create a website/website extension to analyze that data
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If dividing these two items up into two projects makes it easier to attract more interest, then we can do that. I wanted to give an idea of what kind of project this could be. Like the weather station project, whatever group comes together will have a say in planning and executing the project. The ultimate goal for the weather website is for it to be a useful tool.
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I sort of like the idea of having the website graph display to have full access to entire range of data captured and stored in database available for viewing at userās whim.
And yes, then you have the data acessing webpage as a process, and a continuous logging as either separate process/program, or parallel loop, or even different system, different platform even.
The only gotcha I can think of is that some contingencies may come up when data changes during a graphing access. And for this reason, it may make sense to contain both loops in a single environment so that programmer can do race condition contingency planning. Spoken another way, if a programmer has control of both operations, he/she can force read and logging completion prior to beginning a read for display operation.
Hella slick indeed.
But now we are sizing up wow factors: I took a minute to see what I could dig up. Now I know this is way over the top of what is needed, but I want to show you that indeed anything is possible and we are in no way constrained at all beyond limits of our imaginations. In 5 minutes, here is what I have:
http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361K-01/lvhowto/viewfprmtlyusngbrwsr/
Basically says I can export the front panel of a running vi to a webpage (note the .html ending). As I understand things, the remote user/webpage viewer can even manipulate the front panel objects like I do in the following video (and of course 2D is capable in place of my overthetop 3D silliness):
(may take a min for utube to process)
Warning, I need to doublecheck some things to make very sure I can deliver upon all aspects of my claims. This is just 5 mins of researching capability available through NI toolset.
Ok I see what you are going for now! aahh yes this is a cool option to explore!
There is baseline, and then there is whoa, I gotta show this to my friends. Doppler? Cloud formations? Past Data. Predictions? AI? Graphics? DMS is center of public meteorlogical data for DFW?
Throwin ideas outā¦lolā¦
OK, I misspoke. Interacting with the panel remotely requires LabVIEW runtime engines.
But to view still and dynamically changing, it seems just a browser will suffice.
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/09B82EFACFF958A586256BC800779CB4?OpenDocument
O yes for sure and we are trying to establish a baseline for the website project above. But again DMS Weather is meant to be an open source project. You can still do youāre idea and/or join us and we can try to implement youāre idea. I canāt guarantee your ideas will be added because it all depends on the volunteers who are willing to do the work.
Keep coming up with ideas and things that you would like to see on the Weather page or things you yourself would like to implement for the DMS Weather Project. Itās open source so nobody is going to can your project (I do ask that you document your work for others to take up the mantle). If you can find a way for it to be used with labview then perfect! The DMS Weather Project is whatever you can make it.
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Thatās an interesting one. Open source and labview. Turns out, labview files *.vi are open source and git savable as long as diagram is not password locked. So while placing it outside the solution space pursuant to open source may be paradigm discriminatory, I do see how it feels weird to save non textual files thusly.
But no, I am certainly not campaigning for extra labview efforts. I have my hands beyond full. I did, however wish to showcase the capability, because while it is not so simple for labview newcomer, the only other way I know of to get such complete control of the window the web user will open is to do the Java/flash sort of thing ( of which I know knotā¦lol). But lv graphing and animation is bar none, especially when coupled with sql database access, and considering ease of implementation.
Truthfully, I think this project was headed for traditional text based open source from jump, and is a great exercise and fun. I do, however, recommend a user other than myself implement a LV version of logging plus Web display to compare the efforts alongside each other. For myself, both aspects looks like 1-2 hours labview effort. Text based, for me, might be a project to carry me into retirementā¦
That Epoch viewer is a very nice piece of javascript! It does make me wonder if there are any nicely designed data retrieval libraries out thereā¦ This cannot be a unique set of issues, and Iām thinking it may not be necessary to write some kind of custom node.js backend at all if someone has already done it?
Guys, It has been called to my attention that perhaps I tend to ramble and it takes away from the point that I may need to make clear.
Whenever you are thinking in terms of displaying data to a screen and/or logging instrumentation data, the industry standard, and by no small margin, is LabVIEW. DMS owns a license of the software, and so creating the files to be saved in open source fashion is possible, and these files can be opened into LabVIEW by anyone at any date in the future for further review/editing/improvement using the license DMS has had for some time now.
And while yes, it may be possible to use something like javascript to create displays, the displays available in LabVIEW are so much more advanced and sexy due to decades of LabVIEW development while this software has been the go-to for display of scientific data, it would require years of development to duplicate the display features you will be able just grab and use with the LabVIEW package.
I am doing DMS a disservice to not be clear here, and doing this development without LabVIEW is doing the project and DMS a disservice, which is why I am speaking up. Again, I am not offering to do it, as that is not so helpful to your cause (as backward as that seems). Instead, I will help the software resource responsible by pointing them to appropriate libraries to get the cool doppler and other displays up, functional, and cool. This development will not be hard, as the display will be already completely written and you will have documentation that completely defines how to use the display feature (these displays will not be simple like Epoch, but rather encyclopedic varieties and variations, each with class based properties and methods you can use to tailor). It will be more of a matter of massaging the data and datatypes so that the data goes into the display feature of choice, then setting class properties and methods to achieve the correct coloring and fonts and such to desired preference. It will not be overly challenging to make this happen. Instead, it will be straightforward, and rewarding because the display quality will speak to the developerās quality of effort.
So to do the best job possible on this project, the thing to do here is to put aside any aversion to the unusual graphical programming paradigm, work with LabVIEW help to understand enough to pass the data into a well selected predeveloped display feature, and hit the right buttons to display the live data to page of your choosing viewable by any current browser. I am doing my best service to DMS to make sure I pass the ability and understanding of how to do this to a strong software resource, who may opt to carefully document what was done so future generations of makers can add new features and displays as the weatherstation evolves forward.
And with that, I will quit my characteristic rambling. If I could sum things up well, it would go like this: if you care about this project and want to do the best thing for DMS, LabVIEW is the choice, and by no small margin.
Contact me should you want the help picking out displays and getting your data into them, displaying on a DMS site.
Does your LabVIEW solution require a PC to process data and for display. If so cost for a specific implementation will hinder its use.
I am not beating my hands on the table, its your project. I am just trying to let you know that in all likelihood, the weather man on TV has his display generated in some flavor of these NI tools.
Some sort of system acquires data and reports it to web server. Yes, in the LabVIEW case to get the cool capabilities, the processing has to be handled somewhere with intel/microsoft architecture. In this case a PC or MIcrosoft server is best choice for being sure all graphics options are available and fully functional. It is the display that is created and updated every so many ms by the x86 system that would be exported to web server for display. And yes, this x86 system can accept data back from web server indicating changes like date ranges to update the data displayed per user preference.
And in anticipation of the next question:
So you mean there is only one display that can be hung up on the page for all simultaneous users to see?
OK, fair question, and having never done this before, Iāll attempt to answer. As long as we are looking at 20 or so or less simultaneous users, I would expect that an old Win7 x86 should suffice to create an array of identical displays, each controllable by its presently connected and viewing user. Now I am not enough of a network guru to know exactly how to show each user a single page of the display, but should I be tasked with such an item to deliver, I feel confident I could figure it out. So web server must issue an index to each user and serve the correct screen to that user, and send the data back to the Microsoft system along with any data display details requested by each user so that the MS system knows what to display in each index of its display output array of similar but customizable displays.
Am I rambling again? Anyhow, I can quit unless we know that we are going to hold out for crazy cool for our DMS weather project. It will be an outward representation of DMS, and were it my project, I would insist that it wreaks of crazy cool, but Iām a bit crazy nonethelessā¦
The weather project is not mine but I was trying to see if there is a cost for a specific solution. Itās their choice to make but I thought they were looking at skinning the site for better organization and clarity. Along with some data download features.
Yes, thats exactly what weāre doing.
Like I said before, itās an open source project. Anybody can do a project to upgrade the station, the station isnt my project.
It comes down to this, I asked who wanted to join the project to PM me. I got one guy. Everybody else who hasnāt, has been giving suggestions on what they want to see done and theyāve been noted. If people want to add more features after weāre done or join us in doing the work then great, otherwise whoever is doing the project will end up doing what they are willing to do. Even after weāre done if others are unsatisfied they can go back and redo it themselves.
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