- To the best of my knowledge, all the weather related programs currently
- available for Linux are either very simple and provide little
- meteorological information or are huge, ancient, or proprietary beasts
- created for the National Weather Service. AWeather is made to fill the
- gap by providing lots of weather information while still using standard
- free software practices. As such, the research focus of this software
- is weather, not creative way to write software.
+ AWeather is a free/open source application which has been
+ designed to integrate and visualize high-quality meteorological
+ data using an interactive Virtual Globe interface suitable for
+ a wide range of users including weather enthusiasts, academics,
+ and professionals.
+
+ It is designed to provide more information than is typically
+ available from weather widgets and simple desktop applications.
+ At the same time, it strives to be simpler and easier to use
+ than existing meteorological software packages such as GEMPAK
+ and IDV.
+
+ Currently AWeather only displays data provided by the United
+ States National Weather Service.
-
Intended Features
-
-
High quality data sources
- (Level-II archive, etc)
-
3D Volume browser (todo)
-
GTK+ User Interface
-
API for algorithms
- (vortex/hail signatures, rain-rate, etc)
- (todo)
-
Other?
-
-
Status
-
Now that it's spring again, progress on AWeather is continuing.
Additional data sources (watch/warning boxes, surface data, etc)
-
Animation
-
+
Features
+
+
Working
+
+
High quality data sources
+
Level-II archives
+
Conus NEXRAD imagery
+
Volume display of dBZ iso surfaces
+
Storm based and county based
+ warning/watch/advisory displays
+
+
Virtual Globe base rendering
+
Including terrain, satellite, and map imagery
+
+
GPS tracking using GPSd (Linux only)
+
Real-time and offline mode
+
Auto-updating
+
Fullscreen mode
+
+
+
+
Planned
+
+
Additional data sources
+
Surface data (temp., humidity, etc)
+
+
Derived NEXRAD data
+
Storm relative motion
+
Compost reflective
+
Echo tops
+
+
Vertical cross sections
+
Spotter network intergration
+
Animation
+
+
+
+
+
Licencing
+
AWeather is free software licensed under the terms of the
+ GNU GPL.
+ As such, it can be used by any individuals or organizations
+ without any license fees or royalties.
Behind the scenes, mouse support in Grits
+ has been much improved
+
+ This release was a little bit faster than previous releases.
+ Hopefully additional improvements to the alerts plugin
+ can be made incrementally during the 0.x.x releases.
+
+ Update: AWeather 0.5 is also compatible with the
+ newly released RSL v1.41
+
+
2011-06-13
Started work on this new website. Lots of progress in AWeather as well:
Merged support for isosurfaces to the main branch (Finally!)
@@ -135,24 +265,29 @@ Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
progress is being made on libgis, which is now able to display
a virtual globe using data from NASA servers.
- AWeather provides consistent user interface that allows the
+ AWeather provides a consistent user interface that allows the
user to zoom in from a high level view of the entire Earth down
- to regional and microscale views.
+ to regional and mesoscale views.
+
<% print_screen("synop"); %>
- High level view using grits
+ High level view using Grits
<% print_screen("region"); %>
- Regional view of a storm front
+ Regional view over the midwest
<% print_screen("meso"); %>
@@ -162,56 +297,97 @@ Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
<% print_screen("iso"); %>
Close up showing a 52.5 dBZ isosurface
+
+ <% print_screen("alert"); %>
+ Current severe weather alerts for the CONUS
+
<% } %>
<% void print_download(void) { %>
-
Stable release
+
Stable releases
- While AWeather won't be considered stable until version 1.0,
+ While AWeather won't be considered stable until version 1.0,
these are as close to stable as you can get until then
Check out the files directory for any potential updates
-
Pre-releases are labeled with a -p0 and are mainly build for testing the Windows packages
+
Pre-releases are labeled with a -p0 and are mainly built for testing the Windows and Mac packages
Development code
- Development code is available from Git, and from gitweb
- (AWeather,
- Grits,
- RSL)
+ Development code is available from Git
+ (and gitweb:
+ AWeather,
+ Grits,
+ RSL)
-
git clone git://lug.rose-hulman.edu/proj/aweather
-
git clone git://lug.rose-hulman.edu/proj/grits
-
git clone git://lug.rose-hulman.edu/~spenceal/rsl
+
git clone <%= GIT_AWEATHER %>
+
git clone <%= GIT_GRITS %>
+
git clone <%= GIT_RSL %>
+
+
+ Repositories for packaging and this website
+ (and gitweb:
+ Packaging,
+ Website)
+
AWeather has direct dependencies on Grits, and RSL, among other things.
-
Currently building AWeather will require the exact same version of
- Grits to be installed, but this may change in the near future as
- the software stabilizes.
-
-
Architecture Overview
Built on top of GObject and GTK+
-
Uses the Grits "Virtual Globe" library for much of the graphics work.
- Grits also provides some other generic functionality and a plugin API.
-
AWeather itself is a front-end for grits along with a
- bundle of weather related plugins.
AWeather has direct dependencies on Grits, RSL, among other things
+
Currently building and running AWeather requires the
+ exact same version of Grits to be installed
+ (This may change in the near future as the software stabilizes)
+
The Downloads page has information
+ on accessing the AWeather source code repositories
<% } %>
<% void print_grits(void) { %>
-
Grits
-
Grits is a Virtual Globe library developed along side AWeather, but
- can be used by other programs as well.
-
It is differentiated from other Virtual Globes such as Google Earth,
- NASA World Wind, and KDE Marble in that it is developed as a library
- that is used by other programs, such as AWeather, rather than
- providing a user interface that is used directly.
+
+ Grits is a Virtual Globe library developed along side AWeather,
+ but desigend to be usable by other program as well.
+
+ It is differentiated from other Virtual Globes such as Google
+ Earth, NASA World Wind, and KDE Marble in that it is developed
+ primairily as a library that is used by other programs, such as
+ AWeather, rather than providing it's own user interface.
+
+ AWeather has at times needed a custom version of the
+ TRMM Radar Software Library
+ for accessing Level-II radar files. However, most of the changes have
+ since been incorporated into RSL Version 1.41, which can also be used
+ with AWeather. Some remaining changes exist though and are mostly
+ related to code organization and compiler warnings.
+
+
- AWeather is designed to be an advanced weather program which is
- designed to be used by weather enthusiasts. AWeather is not
- another weather dockapp that simply displays a pre-computed
- forecast. It is designed to be an easy to use program that
- integrates a variety of weather data in simple unified
- interface; see features for more details.
+ AWeather is a free real-time weather data viewer designed for weather enthusiasts.
+ AWeather is not a weather widget/dockapp that displays a pre-computed forecast.
+ It is designed to be an easy to use program that integrates a
+ variety of meteorological data in simple unified interface;
+ see the about page for more details.
+ 
+
+