Weathertap Radarlab HD

[Mike McDonald]

A couple of apparent bugs:

I have my default setting as NWS radar colors. However, at startup and every time I switch sites, the colors default to WeatherTAP. I have to go into "Filter Radar" and hit "Reset Images" for the radar to change to NWS colors.

The Radar Info box doesn't seem to update. After the image reloads automatically, or after reloading manually, the time stamp changes, the image changes, but the info in the Radar Info box doesn't. I've had that display be way out of whack with current time and image. Right now for example, the image and time stamp match that on the NWS radar, but the radar info box is 40 minutes behind, even after a manual reload.

Suggested change:
"Auto Refresh" should be on the settings page so it can be stored. I've forgotten to check that box a number of times.

Overall, I like the Radarlab HD.

Mike

 

[Tyler Allison]

You could integrate with the SpotterNetwork and folks could just use that client to show their position. Or just show the Spotter locations.

www.spotternetwork.org

I'll be happy to work with you to integrate the data feed. It's free to use and display so no issues there!

 

[ssimmons]

Thanks for the info on the color scale and radar info box. I'll look into that. I'll take a look at the SpotterNetwork.

 

[ssimmons]

Mike,

Can you check to see what version of RadarLab HD you are running? You can do this by clicking the RadarLab HD logo in the upper right corner. The current version is 1.0V Revision 4. If yours does not say this, can you please follow my step above to clear the Java cache? Java Web Start is supposed to detect when the software has updated and then download the new version but it is not working that way at the moment. We are looking into this.

 

[Mike McDonald]

I'm running 1.0 Rev 4, Java VM version 1.6.0 on Windows XP Pro SP1.

Mike

 

[ssimmons]

Mike,

I found the problem with the Radar info box not updating. This is being corrected and hopefully will be in place this afternoon or early tomorrow. I still cannot reproduce the color scale problem. We did get Java Web Start to download the updated versions of RadarLab HD. So from now on you should not have to delete your Java cache and you should always get the latest version of the software. Thanks for your help.

 

[Jody Radzik]

I have a question about RadarLab HD. I've got it running on my Macs, but I can't seem to find a way to get it to display the velocity scans. Is this something I can do in RL HD, or do I need to go back to WeatherTap to view this data?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Jim Zandonai]

" I can't seem to find a way to get it to display the velocity scans. Is this something I can do in RL HD, or do I need to go back to WeatherTap to view this data?"



It isnt available yet in RLHD. For now just the 1 Base Refl. You have to go to the regular RL or apps

 

[Jody Radzik]

Thanks for the info, Jim. It seems that an Intel Macbook Pro is the way to go over a G4 given the sad fact there's just not a lot of good weather monitoring software for the Mac. Hopefully one day that will change.

 

[Mike McDonald]

Just wanted to say that the apparent bugs I mentioned earlier have been fixed in Radarlab HD revision 6 (which should download automatically). SSimmons has been very helpful working with me offline to resolve them. The latest revision adds a third color scale that was suggested by another user.

Mike

 

[J Kinkaid]

Just wanted to say that the apparent bugs I mentioned earlier have been fixed in Radarlab HD revision 6 (which should download automatically). SSimmons has been very helpful working with me offline to resolve them. The latest revision adds a third color scale that was suggested by another user.

Mike

That was skysummit's color scale so I will not take credit for it I just passed the idea along to Stacey

 

[Bill Tabor]

Couple of improvements / changes to add. Obviously implementation of Storm Relative Motion and similar products (Vil, Tops, etc) would be great and greatly add functionality - particularly SRM.

Also as I recall chasing on the 30th down near DRT I seem to recall being in a tornado warning county that was displaying as a Flood Warning. Probably the priority should be Tornado Warn. So far I don't recall seeing Torn Warns - only severe. The watches / warnings areas should perhaps be a bit more transparent - however perhaps that is a currently adjustable parameter (I didn't check).

Also when chasing bandwidth is important. I notice every time I zoom in or out it has to redraw the layers for roads, warnings, etc - and that is a bit slow. It would be nice if it didn't have to do that or could do it quicker. It seems it is slower on a cell connection, and that if the connection fails it won't reload the data it already has from other zooms. It also seems to require communication to server and back even though it already has the current data. Auto reload / download of latest image would be nice rather than hitting the Reload button - but I think I remember seeing an auto refresh in options? Will this auto download the latest radar? And yes, GPS integration would be great!

 

[Robbie Cox]

I'm having problems when I increase the java box and lose everything on the rightside see screenshot. Also it's such a memory hog

 

[Bill Tabor]

Oh, regarding my post above discussing Tornado Warnings showing up as Flood Warnings - that isn't correct. I see now that it handles all Severe Warned counties as a Severe Statement and has one color. So there is no color to distinguish Severe versus Tornado warnings. Obviously that would be a nice feature.

 

[ssimmons]

Sorry it took so long for me to respond to the posts here. I've been at the Hurricane Conference in New Orleans all week and just now got back.

1. Adding more radar products: we are planning on adding more of the different radar products in the future.

2. Watches and Warnings: All warnings are displayed in Red. This includes flood and tornado warnings. To determine what type of warning it is, just place your mouse cursor over that area and a tooltip will be displayed showing what type of warning it is as well as the expiration time of that warning. This is also true for the Statements, Advisories and Watches. The watches, warnings and advisories are updated every five minutes. As far as the transparency of the overlays, I am going to make the WWA colors more transparent.

3. Retrieving new images at different zoom levels: The code does retrieve new overlays images of the cities, airports, counties and state boundaries at different zoom levels. I may look at trying to cache some of the overlays to help with this. In the mean time, to help with this you can click and drag the slider to where you want to zoom and then release the mouse button. This way it will only retrieve the data at that zoom level.

4. Auto reload of data: The Auto Refresh check box can be selected to turn on auto updating. This will retrieve the newest data for each layer that is turned on. It will do this every five minutes.

5. GPS Tracking: I'm currently working on adding GPS tracking to RadarLab HD. Hopefully this will be completed within the next couple of weeks.

5. Problem with losing everything on the right side: This is a problem that we are aware of and I'm trying to find the cause of the problem. For some reason at some high screen resolutions, Java does not repaint the window properly. If it does this again, I've found that resizing the window just a little (by clicking on the side of the window and dragging it to make it a little smaller) will make Java repaint the window properly. We are looking into this.