Mobile Threat Net and Delorme

[Sean McMullen]

I imagine there are many chasers out there that use Delorme Street Atlas and Threat Net together like myself. I like the feature on threat net that allows you to see your position compared to the storm but the lack of detail on threat net is the reason most of use delorme along with it. A problem that arose for me was that I couldn't use both the threat net gps and the delorme gps together at the same time on my laptop. This meant that I had to decide, do I want to see my position compared to the storm or do I want the more detailed map that delorme offers? In case anybody is dealing with this same issue I thought I'd help out. You can have your cake and eat it to. What I mean is that you can get your threat net to recognize your delorme gps antenna. It won't make the threat net map more detailed but you'll be able to see your position compared to the storm while at the same time you can see yourself on the delorme map as well and you only have to use the delorme antenna. Here is the link on how to do it, just follow the steps it's super easy.

http://delorme.com/support/supporttemplate.aspx?id=217

If you have any trouble or questions just post or PM me.
-Sean

 

[Dick McGowan]

Hey, thanks for posting this. Next year, I will be using threatnet, and was wondering if it would work with it, and being able to flip back and forth. When I first purchased Street atlas 2006, I couldn't even get it to recognize the satellites, but once I downloaded the link you posted, it worked (After searching their forums of why it wasn't working).

 

[Dan Robinson]

The DeLorme Serial Emulator is a nice feature that lets you use the single Earthmate receiver for gps positioning on both apps.

The problem I run into is that ThreatNet's mapping is not sufficient for navigation, even though most roads are shown. The roads and town names are usually not labeled on the ThreatNet map, and even if they are, you must either zoom in all the way to see the town names or click on the road to see what it is.

End result is that I have to run both apps anyway and switch between the two constantly. On my laptop, this frequent switching of two resource-intensive programs causes a progressive slowdown that eventually bogs down the entire system after about an hour, requiring a reboot. September I had to do one of these reboots with a tornado about to cross the road in front of us. It had gotten so bogged down it wouldn't respond.

This problem is alleviated with chase partners with laptops one of which can be delegated to navigation/Delorme duty only, leaving my laptop dedicated to ThreatNet.

I would love for one of two things to happen:

1.) Delorme and ThreatNet find a way to merge their products into one app with overlays, or

2.) Programmers for both apps find a way to make them less resource-intensive (particularly ThreatNet, which is a huge resource hog for what it does)

 

[Sean McMullen]

The DeLorme Serial Emulator is a nice feature that lets you use the single Earthmate receiver for gps positioning on both apps.

The problem I run into is that ThreatNet's mapping is not sufficient for navigation, even though most roads are shown. The roads and town names are usually not labeled on the ThreatNet map, and even if they are, you must either zoom in all the way to see the town names or click on the road to see what it is.

End result is that I have to run both apps anyway and switch between the two constantly. On my laptop, this frequent switching of two resource-intensive programs causes a progressive slowdown that eventually bogs down the entire system after about an hour, requiring a reboot. September I had to do one of these reboots with a tornado about to cross the road in front of us. It had gotten so bogged down it wouldn't respond.

This problem is alleviated with chase partners with laptops one of which can be delegated to navigation/Delorme duty only, leaving my laptop dedicated to ThreatNet.

I would love for one of two things to happen:

1.) Delorme and ThreatNet find a way to merge their products into one app with overlays, or

2.) Programmers for both apps find a way to make them less resource-intensive (particularly ThreatNet, which is a huge resource hog for what it does)

I agree completely, you'd think Baron would have gone all the way with a much greater mapping program when they made the program but what are you going to do?
And yes you have to flip back and forth still but my problem was that I could only have one GPS running at a time which ment I usually opted for delorme so I could have the greater detail. But this download made it possible for me to have GPS running on both programs while only using one antenna.

For those new to this, make sure your com ports for threat net and the serial emulator are the same. And you still have to start the GPS in your Street Atlas in order for the Threat net to properly recognize the delorme GPS. I hope I'm making sense, I probably wouldn't make a great tech support guy.

 

[fplowman]

Hey Sean,

I think Dan mentioned a Delorme aplication that would allow you to access GPS activation in both apps.

Another application that i use and I know others use is named Franson GPS Gate. http://franson.com/gpsgate/

You tell the software what port your GPS is on and then you basically activate them in the software to work as a splitter for a better lack of a word.

It worked rather well for me last year on a 1.1 Pentium 512 Ram.

Chasing becomes a whole new element with GPS technology where you toggle back and forth from Delorme to Threatnet, plotting your course and studying the weather data. Its fun!... lol

I imagine there are many chasers out there that use Delorme Street Atlas and Threat Net together like myself. I like the feature on threat net that allows you to see your position compared to the storm but the lack of detail on threat net is the reason most of use delorme along with it. A problem that arose for me was that I couldn't use both the threat net gps and the delorme gps together at the same time on my laptop. This meant that I had to decide, do I want to see my position compared to the storm or do I want the more detailed map that delorme offers? In case anybody is dealing with this same issue I thought I'd help out. You can have your cake and eat it to. What I mean is that you can get your threat net to recognize your delorme gps antenna. It won't make the threat net map more detailed but you'll be able to see your position compared to the storm while at the same time you can see yourself on the delorme map as well and you only have to use the delorme antenna. Here is the link on how to do it, just follow the steps it's super easy.

http://delorme.com/support/supporttemplate.aspx?id=217

If you have any trouble or questions just post or PM me.
-Sean

 

[Sean McMullen]

Hey Fred!

First, I loved your April 15th footage especially the rotation right above your head. I have a really hard time filming good rotation that is directly overhead without a tripod, it seems like my own movement always cancels out the cloud movement but you caught it perfectly so major props!

Second, It was great meeting you at the convention at the beginnng of the year. I had a real drunk time, I mean a real good time, a good time.

Third, I have a crappy laptop that lacks a pentium processor so unfortunately I can't try that out.

Fourth, PM me so we can chase a storm together this upcoming season.

 

[Sean McMullen]

By the way that just reminded me. It would be great if they came out with a program that would allow people to track their freinds on their own GPS.

You know what I mean? You could be chasing a storm and see on your own computer where your fellow chasers are in relation to you. Privacy rights might be an issue but maybe they could work out an invitation system where one could invite others to watch them on their network somehow. I don't know, just sounded cool you know.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

By the way that just reminded me. It would be great if they came out with a program that would allow people to track their freinds on their own GPS.

You know what I mean? You could be chasing a storm and see on your own computer where your fellow chasers are in relation to you. Privacy rights might be an issue but maybe they could work out an invitation system where one could invite others to watch them on their network somehow. I don't know, just sounded cool you know.

APRS does that... I don't know how many chasers run APRS in their vehicle (either through their ham radio or through the internet via the findu CGI script that updates your position in the APRS database via the web), but it's designed to do what you are looking for. APRS has been discussed in the past, so a forum search (or Google search) should yield more information.

 

[Tim Samaras]

If you have a data card, try using Rory's SwiftWX program. This plots radar (the good stuff), surface obs, the location of other participating chasers, and has the ability to 'click' on the spot where they are at..and you can send text messages/pictures to them.

I've never tried it, but sounds cool..

www.swiftwx.com


Tim

 

[John Wetter]

By the way that just reminded me. It would be great if they came out with a program that would allow people to track their freinds on their own GPS.

You can do this with the spotternetwork client, and one of the apps that it can send data to, such as GRLevel3. It has the added benefit of allowing you to send in reports, etc. to offices supporting it this coming summer.

-John

 

[Matthew Havin]

Responding to Dan's post..... I would love to see an integration of Baron and DeLorme's products in ThreatNet..... but with the current configuration you would still end up with an app that hogs a good 400-700 MB of RAM when running, if not worse.

And developers SHOULD write apps that are more efficient, but there is a negative incentive in the industry for that kind of work..... which I hate. Slow sluggish programs helps push sales on faster hardware. I still have and use Street Atlas 9.0 (from 2001) and it runs about 10X faster and smoother than SA2006 while it still has almost as many features. Grrrr.

 

[Sean McMullen]

I do like swift wx and especially love level3 graphics but I'm pretty iffy about going back to mobile internet due to reliability issues out in the boonies. I might think twice if I had Tim's set up though.

I didn't know that they offered the possibility of tracking your friends on GPS that is very interesting to me, especially since I tend to always have a friend following me or I'm following someone else and it would come in very handy in case one of us loses the other. I'll deffinately look into any links you guys put up.

Thank you
Sean

Edit: maybe someone could start a new thread about this since it's not exactly what this thread is about.