J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) (07/20/90)
Background. As you may know, the UK has been undergoing nothing but a heatwave the last few days. Motivation. As part of a distributed computing experiment, we are considering setting up a Sun workstation, with a bi-metallic strip and small coil tempearture device, and providing a network wide reading, combined with time of day service and cartesian location data. Deliverable. The intent is to deploy such a service across the Internet as a way of detecting optimal vacation sites over the coming years of weather disruption whilst conventional forecast techniques may not suffice. An rfc (request for centigrade) may be forthcoming shortly. jon (but seriously ... :-)
louie@SAYSHELL.UMD.EDU (Louis A. Mamakos) (07/21/90)
In article <9007210040.AA28109@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> you write: >As part of a distributed computing experiment, we are considering >setting up a Sun workstation, with a bi-metallic strip and small coil >tempearture device, and providing a network wide reading, combined >with time of day service and cartesian location data. Actually, the facilities for doing most of this are already available on the internet. If you run NTP (network TIME protocol) on a host, you can certainly provide the time of day service. To determine the temperature, you need only look at the drift rate of the clock relative to the a reference clock which corrolates rather nicely to the temperature of the crystal in the clock of your computer. You'll find that its trivial to see day/night variations of the clock and hot vs. cold days. All you need do now is calibrate the drift rate to the temperature. I'm sure Dave Mill can describe the use of NTP as an earthquake predictor in another message. This would be another important factor in picking a location for a holiday. louie
jsm@ss01.pppl.gov (John Scott McCauley Jr.) (07/21/90)
In article <9007210040.AA28109@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) writes: > >As part of a distributed computing experiment, we are considering >setting up a Sun workstation, with a bi-metallic strip and small coil >tempearture device, and providing a network wide reading, combined >with time of day service and cartesian location data. > What ever happened to 'finger weather@hermes.ai.mit.edu'? This reported the wind speed and temperature at the top of Tech^2, at MIT. There was also 'finger coke@a.cmu.edu' which reported the status of a coke machine at CMU. Scott P.S. Don't come here -- some things here are hotter than 30 keV.
Mills@udel.edu (07/22/90)
jon, You don't need the bimetallic strip, just use the frequency-compensation variable maintained by the Network Termperature Protocol. Of course, you will need to calibrate your individual workstation quartz oscillator against temperature, which you should insist be included in the specifications of the workstation. With the local-clock model defined in N Time P Version 3, the coefficient of temperature shoulc be in the order of 2500 per degree C. Dennis Ferguson has already calibrated his workstation, which apparently is not environmentally controlled. That gives you Ontario. You will need other volunteers who agree to chime NTP and operate their workstation in ambient environmental conditions. We should expect objections and very little data from McMurdo Station. Heck, you can expect objections from Delaware. Dave
Mills@udel.edu (07/23/90)
Folks, Louie refers to an incident where an NTP primary time server, perched almost atop the Loma Pietra fault, mysteriously abandonded chime a couple of minutes BEFORE the recent quake. We were tempted to investigate application of NTP as earthquake predictor, until we learned that a fortuitous power failure within BARRNET happened to quench its chime. Now, we are concentrating on the nature of that precipitous failure as a possible earthwuake predictor. Meanwhile, on the night of the quake, NTP turned out to be a useful monitoring tool and provided much comfort that at least computers in the area, much less people, were safe and that circuits out the Pacific were still operation. Actually, what that was doing was confirming that the NASA Ames massive single point of failure was still up. A UPS failure there later in the evening conked out the entire Pacific. Dave
kasten@europa.interlan.COM (Frank Kastenholz) (07/23/90)
> From tcp-ip-RELAY@NIC.DDN.MIL Mon Jul 23 07:55:00 1990 > From: Mills@udel.edu > To: Jon Crowcroft <J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk> > Cc: tcp-ip@nic.ddn.mil, discussion@cs.ucl.ac.uk > Subject: Re: Network Temperature Protocol > > jon, > <stuff deleted> > > You will need other > volunteers who agree to chime NTP and operate their workstation in ambient > environmental conditions. > > We should expect objections and very little data from McMurdo Station. Heck, > you can expect objections from Delaware. > > Dave > Dave, I'm afraid that your scheme probably won't work in New England (about 20 Miles West of Boston) in the summer. The machines would need to be sealed against humidity and other gunk in the "Ambient Environment" (I wonder what ozone, water, and various unburned and partially burned hydrocarbons would do to the insides of a Sparcstation?:-(. You would then have to pump cooled air into the machine so that it doesn't melt from the heat, defeating the whole purpose of the scheme. Of course, even if the machine could stand the outside, I doubt that the person sitting at the keyboard could - unless s/he is a chain-smoking sauna freak. Air Conditioning-ly Yours Frank Kastenholz Racal Interlan
kmeyer@wrl.dec.com (Kraig Meyer) (07/24/90)
In article <> J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) writes: ||As part of a distributed computing experiment, we are considering ||setting up a Sun workstation, with a bi-metallic strip and small coil ||tempearture device, and providing a network wide reading, combined ||with time of day service and cartesian location data. The idea of being able to find out about a network node's environment has some good network management potential. Back when I was at Merit helping build the original Merit nodes, we started to design a module which would sense temperatures in and and nearby the processor cabinet. The idea was that an alarm in the NOC would sound when the temperature was outside of an appropriate range, and the NOC could call a human to either turn up the A/C, plug in a fan, or turn the node off. (A fair number of our original campus backbone nodes were in poorly cooled phone closets, broom closets, *steam tunnels*, etc. at the Univ. of Michigan). We also toyed with the idea of hooking up a computerized weather station to the RS-232 ports on some of our upstate nodes--we had found an extremely high correlation between certain DDS lines going out and thunderstorms on the western edge of the state. Might give us enough time to warn users :-) Neither project ever came to fruition, but I seem to remember that there were a couple sources for RS-232 interfaced weather stations (Edmund Scientific, perhaps?) And a simple temperature gauge is easy and relatively inexpensive to build--all that is needed is the appropriate thermistor, a basic analog-digital converter and some random electronics. If I remember correctly, you could hook the appropriate thermistor directly to the game paddle port on an Apple II and get relatively accurate temperature readings (and you could, of course, locate the thermistor any place you wanted). ***************************************************************************** Kraig Meyer kmeyer@wrl.dec.com On parole from the University of Southern California. All views expressed are my own and may or may not be the same as those of Digital Equipment Corp.
Mills@udel.edu (07/24/90)
Kraig, You don't need an external transducer and don't want one. You want the ambient environment of the CPU circuit board, which is reliably reported by the quartz crystal resonant frequency, assuming it is calibrated. For this appliation you want to maximize the temperature coefficient, rather than minimize it, which is the usual practice. As for knocking about in the steam tunnels, rewind history to circa late fifties, when some of us installed miles of surplus field-telephone wire in the steam tunnels between the student dorms, along with broadcast carrier transmitters. That 40-watt monster under Alice Lloyd was my contribution. Dave
postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU (07/24/90)
Network Working Group J. Postel
Request for Comments: XXXX ISI
July 1990
Temperature Quote Protocol
Status of this Memo
This RFC suggests an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.
Hosts on the Internet that choose to implement a Temperature Quote
Protocol are encouraged to experiment with this protocol.
Introduction
A useful debugging and measurement tool is a temperature quote
service. A temperature quote service simply sends a short message
(the temperature) without regard to the input.
TCP Based Temperature Quote Service
One temperature quote service is defined as a connection based
application on TCP. A server listens for TCP connections on TCP port
16. Once a connection is established a short message (the
temperature) is sent out the connection (and any data received is
thrown away). The service closes the connection after sending the
quote.
UDP Based Temperature Quote Service
Another temperature quote service is defined as a datagram based
application on UDP. A server listens for UDP datagrams on UDP port
16. When a datagram is received, an answering datagram is sent
containing the temperature (the data in the received datagram is
ignored).
Temperature Syntax and Semantics
The temperature quote is the current temperature at the location of
the server reported in degrees Celsius (or centigrade).
It is transmitted as decimal digits represented as ASCII printing
characters, preceded with a plus or a minus sign.
Examples:
+22 ; a pleasant temperature for people
-3 ; a bit on the cool sidemcc@WLV.IMSD.CONTEL.COM (Merton Campbell Crockett) (07/24/90)
Jon: The major problem with the TQP specification are in the examples at the end of the RFC. The +22 is excesively warm--the -3 is more appropriate of the two examples. There is enough medical evidence to suggest that +22 is not conducive to mental activity. MCC
LVARIAN@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU ("Lee C. Varian") (07/24/90)
On Mon, 23 Jul 90 20:36:21 -0700 Merton Campbell Crockett said: >The major problem with the TQP specification are in the examples at the end of >the RFC. The +22 is excesively warm--the -3 is more appropriate of the two >examples. There is enough medical evidence to suggest that +22 is not >conducive >to mental activity. Merton, I think your Celsius to Farenheit converter may be overheated. +22 C = +72 F (fairly comfortable). BTW, the temperature in Phoenix reached +50 C = +122 F about two weeks ago -- now that is hot! Lee Varian Princeton University
rlb@rtpark.rtp.semi.harris.com (Boyd,Bob) (07/24/90)
In article <9007240048.AA00668@bel.isi.edu>, postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU writes... > > >Network Working Group J. Postel >Request for Comments: XXXX ISI > July 1990 > > Temperature Quote Protocol > >Status of this Memo > >This RFC suggests an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. >Hosts on the Internet that choose to implement a Temperature Quote >Protocol are encouraged to experiment with this protocol. > >Introduction > >A useful debugging and measurement tool is a temperature quote >service. A temperature quote service simply sends a short message >(the temperature) without regard to the input. > >TCP Based Temperature Quote Service .. > >Temperature Syntax and Semantics > >The temperature quote is the current temperature at the location of >the server reported in degrees Celsius (or centigrade). > >It is transmitted as decimal digits represented as ASCII printing >characters, preceded with a plus or a minus sign. > >Examples: > > +22 ; a pleasant temperature for people > -3 ; a bit on the cool side It seems to me that it would be more useful to establish this as a more general environmental protocol rather than just temperature. I would suggest that the quote consist of a string of information separated by delimiters such as "," or ";". This way humidity and other more esoteric environmental parameters could be checked -- such as "on emergency power", "particle count", etc.... This would make it feasible for monitor manufacturers to make their equipment more accessible by having a standard protocol for reporting environmental conditions. Is there already such a beast in the RFC's? Bob ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Boyd Voice: (919)549-3627 Harris Semiconductor Microelectronics Center E-Mail Address: rlb@rtpark.rtp.semi.harris.com
hascall@cs.iastate.edu (John Hascall) (07/24/90)
In some article, mcc@WLV.IMSD.CONTEL.COM (Merton Campbell Crockett) writes: }The major problem with the TQP specification are in the examples at the end of }the RFC. The +22 is excesively warm-- ... Huh? ((22 * 1.8) + 32) = 71.6 John Hascall
kelley@molecules.ecn.purdue.edu (Stephen Kelley) (07/24/90)
Temperature should be in Kelvins. Steve Helpful
PADLIPSKY@A.ISI.EDU (Michael Padlipsky) (07/25/90)
Jon--
Since you did request comments, after all, I'd observe that it would be
more appropriate to offer Fahrenheit readings via TCP and UDP, reserving
Celsigrade/Centius for TP4 and CLNP whenever X.500 can furnish the necessary
SAPpiness. (Perhaps Kelvin should be furnished via TP0.) I mean, every
time we try to be international about things it only leads to difficulty,
as witness the subsequent messages re what 22C is....
Or should we be spec-ing a CF "gateway", to be contemporary?
Other than that, though, it seems to be one of the better protocols to come
along in some time, except for one technical omission, I believe. Unless,
of course, the Host Requirements RFC specifies that UDP checksums will be
used for all protocols that don't say not to use 'em, since if one cares
enough about the temperature to ask, one presumably cares enough to want to
get it right.
So I urge the IAB not to progress the TQS to DIS [*] status without changing
it to Fahrenheit for both TCP and UDP, and explicitly requiring UDP checksums
(except for the UNIXtm "man" page, naturally, where total recall of all
remotely relevant context is always assumed).
cheers, map
[*] Draft Internet Silliness
(not to be confused with Draft International Sanctimoniousness)
-------faunt@CISCO.COM (Doug Faunt N6TQS 415-688-8269) (07/25/90)
From: "Lee C. Varian" <LVARIAN@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
Merton, I think your Celsius to Farenheit converter may be overheated.
+22 C = +72 F (fairly comfortable). BTW, the temperature in Phoenix
reached +50 C = +122 F about two weeks ago -- now that is hot!
Lee Varian
Princeton University
There was a comment in the military mailing list that it hit 62 C in
Australia not too long back. THAT'S HOT!!raj@hpindwa.HP.COM (Rick Jones) (07/25/90)
one the subject of temperature quotes... One person has mentioned that the temperature of the system's environment might be a good piece of *management* information... Why not make it an extension to the system variables of the MIB and let SNMP do the querry-response stuff rather than create a new protocol? While this discussion may have started-out as an arcane excercise ;-) it seems as though arcane items like this might be quite useful. (perhaps not as *fun* as the CMU coke machine ;-). Maybe the folks at Leibert (sp) would like to put SNMP into their PDU's and air conditioners and put them on the local LANs? rick jones ___ _ ___ |__) /_\ | Richard Anders Jones | MPE/XL Networking Engineer | \_/ \_/ Hewlett-Packard Co. | But it IS TCP/IP - Honest! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Being an employee of a Standards Company, all Standard Disclaimers Apply
LVARIAN@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU ("Lee C. Varian") (07/25/90)
On Tue, 24 Jul 90 15:22:37 GMT Boyd, Bob said: >This would make it feasible for monitor manufacturers to make their >equipment more accessible by having a standard protocol for reporting >environmental conditions. Is there already such a beast in the RFC's? Bob, Isn't this just another MIB for SNMP to deal with? Lee Varian Princeton University
jqj@RT-JQJ.STANFORD.EDU (JQ Johnson) (07/25/90)
I'm afraid we're getting too serious about this "Temperature Quote Protocol"
stuff. If anyone is tempted to get serious about it, they should write
an experimental MIB and offer temperature/humidity/... as SNMP variables,
not using yet another protocol.
The above in response to Bob's query:
>Is there already such a beast in the RFC's?
I do NOT believe there is an appropriate MIB yet.davis@groucho.ucar.edu (Glenn P. Davis) (07/25/90)
In <9007240048.AA00668@bel.isi.edu> postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU writes: >Network Working Group J. Postel >Request for Comments: XXXX ISI > July 1990 > Temperature Quote Protocol >Status of this Memo >This RFC suggests an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. >Hosts on the Internet that choose to implement a Temperature Quote >Protocol are encouraged to experiment with this protocol. ...and so on You probably don't want to hear this, but there are a number of protocols and formats for weather info defined by the "World Meterological Organization" (WMO). See, for example, WMO publication number 386, "Manual on the Global Telecommunication System, Volume 1, Global Aspects, Part II" for the protocols. Of more relevance to this discussion is the specification of a synoptic report (a weather report from a ground station). This is contained in the WMO "Manual on Codes", publication No. 306. The synoptic codes are code form "FM 12-VIII Ext." . Here is an example: ^A^M^M 727 ^M^M SMBZ4 SBBR 241200^M^M AAXX 24124 ^M^M 83827 21225 80000 10110 20101 39900 40190 53012 7104/ 886// 333 ^M^M 20082 69974=^M^M^M ^M^M ^C This is a report from "SBBR" (Brazilia) at 12:00 UTC on July 24. "Control" characters are indicated using "^X", etc. The actual report begins at line AAXX ... I can't decode it, but somewhere we have some software that can :-). Things like temperature, wind speed and direction, rel humidity, barometric pressure, cloud cover, etc are all in that line. They devised these things in the days of 300 baud teletypes == expensive bandwidth. Cheers. Glenn P. Davis UCAR / Unidata PO Box 3000 1685 38th St. Boulder, CO 80307-3000 Boulder, CO 80301 (303) 497 8643
obrien@aeroaero.org (Michael O'Brien) (07/25/90)
Now, I may be going silly in my old age, but didn't SAIL used to have a port number you could Telnet to that would give you the inside (machine room) and outside temperatures through some digitally interfaced silliness? Surely, SAIL being the premier computer science installation that it is (was), there MUST have been a protocol number duly assigned to this service... -- Mike O'Brien obrien@aerospace.aero.org
jpp@specialix.co.uk (John Pettitt) (07/25/90)
postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU writes: >Network Working Group J. Postel >Request for Comments: XXXX ISI > July 1990 >Temperature Syntax and Semantics >The temperature quote is the current temperature at the location of >the server reported in degrees Celsius (or centigrade). >It is transmitted as decimal digits represented as ASCII printing >characters, preceded with a plus or a minus sign. How about an international option: For the UK it could say `Phew what a scorcher' if the temp is over 68 F and `Brass Monkeys' if it is below. This does assume that JNT will allow some nasty American protocol on their network ... (world == rutherford.ac.uk) -- John Pettitt, Specialix International, Email: jpp@specialix.com Tel +44 (0) 9323 54254 Fax +44 (0) 9323 52781 Disclaimer: Me, say that ? Never, it's a forged posting !
iann@specialix.co.uk (Ian Nandhra) (07/25/90)
postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU writes: >Network Working Group J. Postel >Request for Comments: XXXX ISI > July 1990 > Temperature Quote Protocol >Status of this Memo >This RFC suggests an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. >Hosts on the Internet that choose to implement a Temperature Quote > [ lots of stuff deleted, best get the real RFC....] Now were getting somewhere. However TQP should be regarded as a stepping stone to the more worthwhile Temperature Syncronisation Protocol or TSP. There would obviously have to be a few regional variations to cope with localised concentrations (outbreaks??) of SPARC stations, etc but these could be agreed with a little give-and-take. Prehaps a temperature standard of 19C would be acceptable to all. If sucessfully implemented, such a protocol would also contribute towards reducing Global Warming. Ian. -- Ian Nandhra, Specialix, 3 Wintersells Road, Byfleet, Surrey, KT14 7LF, UK {backbone}!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!iann iann@specialix.co.uk Tel: +44 (0) 9323 54254 Fax: +44 (0) 9323 52781 Telex: 918110 SPECIX G >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
smb@ulysses.att.com (Steven Bellovin) (07/25/90)
In article <8078@ncar.ucar.edu>, davis@groucho.ucar.edu (Glenn P. Davis) writes: > You probably don't want to hear this, but there are a number of > protocols and formats for weather info defined by the > "World Meterological Organization" (WMO). I hope we don't have to use ASN.1 to encode them....
Mills@udel.edu (07/25/90)
Glenn, As you know, the WMO has a bunch of weather forecasting and reporting formats used in the aviation and marine communities. For some years venerable Miami short-wave station WBR70 broadcasted continuous data on various frequencies receivable over significant portions of the globe. While this station has since shut down, Halifax Radio CHU presently broadcasts 75-baud radioteletype messages (along with facsimile maps) on several frequencies. A little known fact is that for some years anybody could TELNET to a magic port on one of my machines (dcn6) and watch the weather flow (translated to ASCII, of course). While I can't guarantee to continue that for my friends, due to shortage of equipment, it sure would be interesting and maybe even useful if some site or other could splice the weather wire and in effect resurrect WBR70. Dave
rws@cs.brown.edu (Central Scrutinizer) (07/25/90)
>Temperature should be in Kelvins. >Steve Helpful Well, then I guess the sign bit would be kind of useless... :-} rick s. <rws@cs.brown.edu>
mis@Seiden.com (Mark Seiden) (07/26/90)
kmeyer@wrl.dec.com (Kraig Meyer) writes: >In article <> J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) writes: >||As part of a distributed computing experiment, we are considering >||setting up a Sun workstation, with a bi-metallic strip and small coil >||tempearture device, and providing a network wide reading, combined >||with time of day service and cartesian location data. >The idea of being able to find out about a network node's environment >has some good network management potential. Back when I was at Merit >helping build the original Merit nodes, we started to design a module >which would sense temperatures in and and nearby the processor cabinet. >The idea was that an alarm in the NOC would sound when the temperature >was outside of an appropriate range, and the NOC could call a human to >either turn up the A/C, plug in a fan, or turn the node off. whether you want the temperature of your cpu board or the room temp is open to debate. i believe that large disks with motors and big power supplies are the things which generate the most heat today. anyway you can place the sensor within a reasonable distance of the gadget (20 ft) using an ordinary radio-shack type extension cable... anyway such a gadget is commercially available... Subject: /dev/thermometer want to monitor the temperature in your machine room? run a shell script if a certain temperature is exceeded, or a particular rate of temperature increase is exceeded? there is now such a gadget .. wiztemp-1. -40 C through 88 C with .5 degree C resolution (that's 8 bits...) chart recording software (c and postscript) furnished in source. out of range conditions reported in a user-configurable fashion. small package, connects to serial port (of sun, mac, pc, many unix systems) -- velcro it to the side of your machine... costs $250 including software. avoiding one meltdown could easily justify the cost... 2 yr mfrs warranty, 30 day money back guarantee. available from Seiden and Associates, Inc 16 Woods End Rd Stamford, CT 06905-2727 203 329 2722 mis@seiden.com -- mark seiden, mis@seiden.com, 1-(203) 329 2722 (voice), 1-(203) 322 1566 (fax)
hughes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (larry hughes) (07/26/90)
In article <9007240048.AA00668@bel.isi.edu> postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU writes: > > >Network Working Group J. Postel >Request for Comments: XXXX ISI > July 1990 I'd like to see the daemon take ntpd's lead, and modify the temperature when it gets too hot or cold. ;-) //=========================================================================\\ || Larry J. Hughes, Jr. || hughes@ucs.indiana.edu || || Indiana University || || || University Computing Services || "The person who knows everything || || 750 N. State Road 46 Bypass || has a lot to learn." || || Bloomington, IN 47405 || || || (812) 855-9255 || Disclaimer: Same as my quote... || \\==========================================================================//
karn@envy.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) (07/26/90)
In article <9007242321.AA21214@rt-jqj.Stanford.EDU>, jqj@RT-JQJ.STANFORD.EDU (JQ Johnson) writes: |> I'm afraid we're getting too serious about this "Temperature Quote Protocol" |> stuff. If anyone is tempted to get serious about it, they should write |> an experimental MIB and offer temperature/humidity/... as SNMP variables, |> not using yet another protocol. I can't wait to see how you'll implement SNMP's SET operation, especially for outdoor temperatures. Think of the applications... :-) Phil
craig@NNSC.NSF.NET (07/26/90)
> A little known fact is that > for some years anybody could TELNET to a magic port on one of my > machines (dcn6) and watch the weather flow (translated to ASCII, of course). Dave: I've had this fantasy for about two years now that I'd someday convince someone to take this sort of weather info (or perhaps satellite weather data which some sites make available) and combine it with the MERIT geography server, and allow me, on my bitmapped workstation, to pull up the current weather map for some part of the country on my workstation screen. Thus: csh% weather Princeton would cause a weather map for the Princeton NJ area to appear on my screen (and would have allowed me to diagnose that JvNC was down on Tuesday due to thunderstorms causing power problems). I mean, what are all this nifty data and these bitmap displays for except drawing useful pictures? Craig
J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) (07/26/90)
> csh% weather Princeton >I mean, what are all this nifty data and these bitmap displays for except >drawing useful pictures? Craig, joking aside, it would be a very low cost excerise for doing some seriously accurate stats for global warming detection - this was at the back of my mind when originally jesting... joking not aside, i thought only the English took the weather this seriously; i mean sea shells and weather; i ask you:-) jon
heker@NISC.JVNC.NET (Sergio F. Heker) (07/26/90)
Craig, I think that would be a neat idea indeed (of course the archaic way of calling our NOC would have also worked :-) ). -- Sergio ___________________________________________________________________________ Sergio Heker Voice: (609)520-2000 (until 8/15) Director, JvNCnet Voice: (609)258-2400 (after 8/15) E-mail: "heker@nisc.jvnc.net" __________________________________________________________________________
kline@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charley Kline) (07/26/90)
craig@NNSC.NSF.NET writes: >I've had this fantasy for about two years now that I'd someday convince >someone to take this sort of weather info (or perhaps satellite weather data >which some sites make available) and combine it with the MERIT geography >server, and allow me, on my bitmapped workstation, to pull up the current >weather map for some part of the country on my workstation screen. Here at the U of I I can run "wxmap" and then tell it I want a map centered on Champaign and a current conditions map will appear on my X display, complete with weather watch boxes and severe weather risk areas. Radar data is coming soon. The code was homegrown here in the cornfields. The weather data comes from Alden Electronics, a reseller of government weather data. It all comes out in the WMO format, with which I struggle every day. Is this what you mean? _____________________________________________________________________________ Charley Kline, KB9FFK/KT, PP-ASEL c-kline@uiuc.edu University of Illinois Computing Services (217) 333-3339
craig@bbn.com (Craig Partridge) (07/26/90)
In article <1990Jul26.144406.19495@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> kline@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charley Kline) writes: >Here at the U of I I can run "wxmap" and then tell it I want a map centered >on Champaign and a current conditions map will appear on my X display, >complete with weather watch boxes and severe weather risk areas. Radar data >is coming soon. Charley: This is precisely the sort of thing I think would be a fun (and useful) application to have generally available on the Internet. Craig
Mills@udel.edu (07/27/90)
Craig, I've had this fantasy, too. Problem is our government wants to get out of the distribution business leaving the commercial sector to make a buck. There are, of course, various weather feeds, but it seems they are really intended for for-profit distribution and then not in raw form, but various "value added" forms. I pine for the old raw, ubiquitous broadcasts. At least CHU continues to broadcast, even if it is specialized to the North Atlantic and Ice Patrol. Dave
karn@envy.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) (07/27/90)
In article <1990Jul26.144406.19495@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, kline@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charley Kline) writes: |> Here at the U of I I can run "wxmap" and then tell it I want a map centered |> on Champaign and a current conditions map will appear on my X display, |> complete with weather watch boxes and severe weather risk areas. Radar data |> is coming soon. |> |> The code was homegrown here in the cornfields. The weather data comes |> from Alden Electronics, a reseller of government weather data. It all |> comes out in the WMO format, with which I struggle every day. We also have one of the VSAT dishes on the roof, and one of my colleagues has also been experimenting with displaying it on bitmap screens. It's especially interesting to watch the radar maps when thunderstorms roll through the area. Unfortunately, even though the weather data comes from the government the commercial resellers claim proprietary rights to it, so I'm not sure it could be made freely available over the net. It's like RSA claiming private patent rights to an invention developed with public funds, but don't get me started on that... Phil
Mills@udel.edu (07/27/90)
Charlie, With all that horsepower you still struggle with WMO format? Zillions of five-digit encoded obscurities? Surely a wee finite-state autonmaton such as tinkered by one of my students can relieve that tension. Taking this issue seriously, I personally eyeballed a PDP11/40 at Heathrow Airport near London which tapped those digits from the weather wire and produced a quite respectable English rendition suitable for automatic broadcast by regions throughout the country. One of my radios has a feature that announces its frequency in English. Strongly Japanese-accented English. Dave
kline@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charley Kline) (07/27/90)
Mills@udel.edu writes: >With all that horsepower you still struggle with WMO format? Zillions of >five-digit encoded obscurities? Surely a wee finite-state autonmaton such >as tinkered by one of my students can relieve that tension. Oh lord no. I meant I struggled with the various categorization of products by their WMO headers, some of which encapsulate an entire product, others signify a set of products to follow, each of which to be separated by ASCII RS characters, some have several products separated by "zone codes" which seem to differ in syntax depending on who is typing them in, and so on. The kinds of things I parse are the SA observations, which I tried writing a yacc grammar for but it was so full of ambiguities it wasn't funny. My student wrote a chunk of code to convert them into little data structures, which works fairly nicely. I also decode the Weather Watch announcements, which are fixed-format enough that a perl program can take a stab at pattern-matching them down to something useful. >Taking this >issue seriously, I personally eyeballed a PDP11/40 at Heathrow Airport >near London which tapped those digits from the weather wire and produced >a quite respectable English rendition suitable for automatic broadcast >by regions throughout the country. One of my radios has a feature that >announces its frequency in English. Strongly Japanese-accented English. I'm trying to talk management here into a DECtalk box. Although the geewhiz of talking computers has kind of lost its appeal these days; everyone wants to see, not hear. Another argument for the no-code license, I guess. Personal for Dave: What kind of radio is this? My latest acquisition is an Icom IC-24AT, which doesn't speak but has that strongly Japanese flavor nonetheless. For example in the manual. I love it for its size, but the damn puts out five watts on high power, which is enough to get the combination heat sink/belt clip hot enough to burn my hip. _____________________________________________________________________________ Charley Kline, KB9FFK/KT, PP-ASEL c-kline@uiuc.edu University of Illinois Computing Services (217) 333-3339
news@msg.UUCP (Alex Brown) (07/28/90)
If you're dead serious about it, you might think about CMOT. -- Alex Brown uunet!msg!alex alex%msg.uucp@uunet.uu.net
news@msg.UUCP (Alex Brown) (07/28/90)
Steven Bellovin writes: > Glenn P. Davis writes: > > You probably don't want to hear this, but there are a number of > > protocols and formats for weather info defined by the > > "World Meterological Organization" (WMO). > > I hope we don't have to use ASN.1 to encode them.... These codes were established for manual encoding of weather measurements reported by TTY; most of them are now IA5 (ASCII) strings. They aren't easy to generate because many of the measurements are conditions such as "partly cloudy" which are based on observer judgement. The FAA is developing a network of "Automated Weather Observation Systems" that establish uniform reporting algorithms. Although the WMO messages aren't record- oriented, other equivalent messages used internally in FAA systems are. Haven't had to describe them with ASN.1 yet, but the day may come, because the FAA is well underway in developing an ISO-stack real-time network for air traffic information, weather, and other aviation data. BTW, this NTP is an example of how useless a toy protocol for automated data collection can be. If we're really serious about automated status or ambient condition reporting, it should be done right, with Common Management Over TCP (CMOT) which should eventually line up with ISO Common Management Info Svc and Protocol (CMIS/CMIP). Sorry to have to say it here in the TCP lobby, but this is the sort of thing that made real-world users nervous looking at RFCs, leading to calls for the GOSIP mandates that many of you loathe. -- Alex Brown uunet!msg!alex alex%msg.uucp@uunet.uu.net
piet@cwi.nl (Piet Beertema) (07/30/90)
If sucessfully implemented, such a protocol would also contribute
towards reducing Global Warming.
Wonder if it would help reducing temperature in more
exotic places too, like those mentioned below:
============================================================================
Some consolation
----------------
I wish to clear up the old question: "Which is hotter, heaven or hell?"
Verse 26 of Chapter 30 of Isaiah defines the energy radiated heavenward
by the sun and the moon in terms of the amount received by the earth:
"Moreover the light from the moon shall be sevenfold, as the light from
seven days". Thus, heaven receives from the moon as much energy as the
earth does from the sun. If we add to that 49 times ("seven times seven")
the earth's solar radiation falling on heaven, we have a total of 50 times
the energy we receive from the sun. Using a known absolute temperature
of the earth and the Stefan-Boltzmann fourth-power law, we arrive at the
determined temperature of heaven: a less than paradisiacal 525 degrC.
And the temperature of hell?
Revelation 21:8 says: "The fearful shall have part in the lake which burns
of fire and brimstone". Since brimstone (sulfur) has a boiling point of
445 degrC, hell must be several degrees cooler. If it were not, it would
be a vapor, not a lake.
Therefore, heaven is hotter than hell by at least 80 degrC.
============================================================================
(Actually this story is a couple of years old already;
can't remember where I ever got it from).
--
Piet Beertema, CWI, Amsterdam (piet@cwi.nl)mleech@bcarh342.bnr.ca (Marcus Leech) (07/30/90)
In article <9007251236.aa03466@huey.udel.edu>, Mills@udel.edu writes: > > globe. While this station has since shut down, Halifax Radio CHU > presently broadcasts 75-baud radioteletype messages (along with CHU is a station operated by our National Research Council to propagate time-of-day information, and NOTHING ELSE. It's also located in Ottawa, Ontario--not Halifax, Nova Scotia. Canada does operate a number of shortwave services--you probably just got the callsign wrong, Dave. There could, of course, be another CHU that I'm unaware of, but having two stations with the same callsign and completely different purposes would be too strange... ----------------- Marcus Leech, 4Y11 Bell-Northern Research |opinions expressed mleech@bnr.ca P.O. Box 3511, Stn. C |are my own, and not VE3MDL@VE3JF.ON.CAN.NA Ottawa, ON, CANADA |necessarily BNRs
olsen@artemis.ll.mit.edu (Jim Olsen) (07/31/90)
>>In article <9007251236.aa03466@huey.udel.edu>, Mills@udel.edu writes: >> Halifax Radio CHU presently broadcasts 75-baud radioteletype messages... Marcus Leech writes: > CHU is a station operated by our National Research Council to propagate > time-of-day information, and NOTHING ELSE. The Canadian Forces Halifax station is CFH. It does indeed broadcast radioteletype and facsimile weather reports and forecasts on a number of HF frequencies. For those interested, I have appended some frequency information and a FAX schedule (perhaps out of date). At least here in New England, the CFH signals are quite strong and easily received. ------ CFH Radioteletype frequencies (some part-time): 75-baud radioteletype, 850-Hz shift: 4271, 6330, 6338, & 10536 kHz FEC radioteletype: 13351 kHz ------ Forwarded from rec.radio.shortwave: From: roskos@IDA.ORG (Eric Roskos) Subject: New CFH Fax Schedule Date: 29 Jan 90 00:50:20 GMT Organization: IDA, Alexandria, VA A few mornings ago I happened to be up at 5AM when CFH sends its Fax schedule, and thus recorded the current schedule. According to a note at the bottom, this is a new schedule as of 1/15/90, so here is the current schedule. (This was sent via Fax and is hand-transcribed below, so any errors are probably mine.) Note that while some of these charts are local to Nova Scotia in their coverage, others, such as the surface analysis, cover the entire east coast of the US. The Surface Analysis is the old-fashioned hand-drawn kind with the graphical symbols, rather than the digitally-produced NOAA kind with the nearly (if not entirely) illegible small numbers -- it's especially good if you're using a PK232 or other low-resolution device, since the large lines and lettering make it easy to read by comparsion to the NOAA charts. Canadian Forces Metoc Centre Halifax FMO Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 2X0 Canada CFH Facsimile Broadcast Schedule Transmitting On LF: 122.5 KHz / HF: 4.271-6.330-10.536-13.510 MHz No. Trans Time Chart Description Valid Time ================================================================ WHF01 0001-0014Z Significant Weather Depiction 1200Z ----- 0015-0037Z Ice Chart Latest CFH01 0101-0114Z 850 MB Forecast Wind/Temp/Height 18Z/00Z CFH04 0301-0312Z 500 MB Analysis 0000Z CFH03 0312-0331Z Surface Analysis North 0000Z CFH03 0331-0338Z Surface Analysis South 0000Z WHF02 0401-0414Z Wave Analysis 0000Z WHF03 0414-0427Z 12 Hr Significant Wave Prognosis 1200Z CFH02 0427-0438Z 850 MB Analysis 0000Z CFH05 0501-0514Z 24 Hr Isobaric Prognosis 0000Z WHF04 0514-0527Z 24 Hr Significant Wave Prognosis 0000Z WHF05 0601-0614Z Significant Weather Depiction 1800Z WHF06 0614-0627Z 36 HR Significant Wave Prognosis 1200Z CFH06 0701-0714Z 850 MB Forecast Wind/Temp/Height 18Z/00Z CFH07 0801-0814Z 36HR Isobaric Prognosis 1200Z CFH08 0814-0833Z NFLD SST -Wed-Sat- (NS OFA -Tue-) Latest NS SST -Sun-Thu- (NFLD OFA -Mon-Fri-) CFH09 0901-0920Z Surface Analysis North 0600Z CFH09 0920-0927Z Surface Analysis South 0600Z CFH07 1000-1014Z 36 Hr Isobaric Prognosis (Repeat) 1200Z ----- 1014-1026Z CFH Test Chart -Tue-Thu-Sat- ----- ----- 1014-1026Z CFH Fleet Broadcast Schedule ----- ----- 1101-1123Z Ice Chart Latest WHF08 1201-1214Z Significant Weather Depiction 0000Z ----- 1301-1323Z Ice Chart Latest ----- 1401-1423Z Ice Chart Latest CFH10 1423-1438Z 850 MB Forecast Wind/Temp/Height 06Z/12Z CFH14 1501-1512Z 500 MB Analysis 1200Z CFH13 1512-1531Z Surface Analysis North 1200Z CFH13 1531-1536Z Surface Analysis South 1200Z WHF09 1601-1614Z Wave Analysis 1200Z WHF10 1614-1627Z 12 Hr Significant Wave Prognosis 0000Z CFH11 1627-1638Z 850 MB Analysis 1200Z CFH15 1701-1714Z 24 Hr Isobaric Prognosis 1200Z WHF11 1714-1727Z 24 Hr Significant Wave Prognosis 1200Z WHF13 1801-1814Z Significant Weather Depiction 0600Z WHF12 1814-1827Z 36 Hr Significant Wave Prognosis 0000Z CFH16 1901-1914Z 36 Hr Isobaric Prognosis 0000Z CFH17 2000-2014Z 850 MB Forecast Wind/Temp/Height 06Z/12Z WHF14 2014-2033Z NS SST (NFLD SST -Mon-Wed-Sat-) Latest WHF14 2101-2120Z NS OFA (NFLD OFA -Mon-Wed-Sat-) Latest CFH18 2120-2139Z Surface Analysis North 1800Z CFH18 2139-2146Z Surface Analysis South 1800Z ----- 2201-2223Z Ice Chart Latest ----- 2301-2323Z Ice Chart Latest -- Eric Roskos (roskos@IDA.ORG or Roskos@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL)
pst@ack.Stanford.EDU (Paul Traina) (07/31/90)
Gee, in our part of California, making the server would be pretty trivial: #!/bin/sh # set `date` case $2 in Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct) echo "The weather today is really nice." echo "Take the day off from work and go to the beach or" echo "go for a bike ride." ;; Mar) echo "The weather is ok today, but it will probably rain." echo "Go home early so you don't get caught in an afternoon" echo "shower." ;; Dec|Jan|Feb) echo "It's cloudy today and really cold. Don't expect" echo "temperatures to get above 70." ;; Nov) echo "It's ok today, but a little too cold for the beach." ;; esac -- I told the priest - don't count on any second coming. God got his ass kicked the first time he came down here slumming. He had the balls to come, the gall to die and then forgive us - No, I don't wonder what he thought it would get us. -- Prieboy
Mills@udel.edu (07/31/90)
Marcus, I knew that, but my keyboard didn't. Halifax Radio is CFH, not CHU. Boy, did may pals pile on for that goof. Dave
Mills@udel.edu (07/31/90)
Jim, Would be only that WBR70 continued its venerable broadcasts; but alas, Miami Radio has faded into the past. However, intrepid squirrels will discover yet a few 50-bps Baudot-coded WMO broadcasts from various European countries and also the interesting air-america types from Middle America. Gentleman, man your shortwave receivers. Dave
david@twg.com (David S. Herron) (08/01/90)
In article <1990Jul26.144406.19495@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> kline@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charley Kline) writes: >craig@NNSC.NSF.NET writes: >>I've had this fantasy for about two years now that I'd someday convince >>someone to take this sort of weather info (or perhaps satellite weather data >>which some sites make available) >The code was homegrown here in the cornfields. The weather data comes >from Alden Electronics, a reseller of government weather data. It all >comes out in the WMO format, with which I struggle every day. There's a fairly inexpensive box available for Amiga which encodes and decodes the transmission formats used to send pictures from satellites, and used by the wire services on shortwave-TELEX. One of these hooked to an Amiga sitting on ether (ether has been available for years, along with TCP/IP & NFS) could grab current weather maps from satellite and make them available over NFS. Then when Craig gets one of his fantasies again his software can just get the picture from wherever it was stashed by the Amiga. No need to buy the data from Alden either.. -- <- David Herron, an MMDF weenie, <david@twg.com> <- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <david@ms.uky.edu> <- <- Sign me up for one "I survived Jaka's Story" T-shirt!
kevinr@moe.Tandem.COM (Kevin J. Rowett) (08/09/90)
In article <7688@gollum.twg.com>, david@twg.com (David S. Herron) writes: |> In article <1990Jul26.144406.19495@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> kline@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charley Kline) writes: |> >craig@NNSC.NSF.NET writes: |> >>I've had this fantasy for about two years now that I'd someday convince |> >>someone to take this sort of weather info (or perhaps satellite weather data |> >>which some sites make available) |> |> There's a fairly inexpensive box available for Amiga which encodes and |> decodes the transmission formats used to send pictures from satellites, One can buy an adapter for a PC which will receive HF WEFAX for $99. It produces GIFF files. Seems like that's a pretty easy way to make some data available. KR