New weather plugin for OpenCPN : MeteoVache

[Rodemfr]

Hi everybody,


Thanks to COVID-19' mandatory containement in France, I finally had time to build my first OpenCPN plug-in. That's what I'm presenting to you now.

It's a pretty small & simple plug-in which gives you weather forecast at cursor's position. Just right click on the map and request weather forecast, that's all.

Unlike other weather applications or plug-in, the amount of data provided by MeteoVache is somewhat minimalistic but it has the nice quality of requiring very little bandwidth on your internet connection, maiking it still usable when you pay for your data or chen your mobile phone is connected through Edge or GPRS.

I'm interested by the return of those who have some time to look at it !

There is no automatic installer at that time and you will have to install it manually.


Everything is there :

https://github.com/Rodemfr/meteovache_pi#download


Thanks !

[P_Dub]

Merçi, fonctionne très bien sur Windows 64 bits.
Thank you, work very well with Windows 64 bits.
Salutations.

[Rodemfr]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

Merçi, fonctionne très bien sur Windows 64 bits.
Thank you, work very well with Windows 64 bits.
Salutations.

Thanks P_Dub.


Note that there is only European coverage for now, but I hope to add a new weather model with world coverage before the end of the week.

[Schnapsy]

Bravo, cela fonctionne très bien.
L'idéal serait de pouvoir enregistrer automatiquement les fichiers téléchargés, avec par exemple comme nom : date_heure_seconde, ou tout autre item.


Well done, it works very well.
The ideal would be to be able to automatically save the downloaded files, with for example as name: date_heure_seconde, or any other item.

[Recy]

This is what I get and I am not able to select any data.


Edit; It works fine now. And thank you for a nice PI.

[Rodemfr]

Originally Posted by Schnapsy

Bravo, cela fonctionne très bien.
L'idéal serait de pouvoir enregistrer automatiquement les fichiers téléchargés, avec par exemple comme nom : date_heure_seconde, ou tout autre item.


Well done, it works very well.
The ideal would be to be able to automatically save the downloaded files, with for example as name: date_heure_seconde, or any other item.

That's exactly what I plan. Something like a preference panel in which you provide the destination folder and then a text file would be saved automatically at each request.


I will first finish adding a new model with world wide coverage on the server side...

Originally Posted by Recy

This is what I get and I am not able to select any data

I see two possible causes :
- You have not requested weather forecast by right clicking somewhere in the map and selected "Weather forecast" item in the menu
- There is a bug


If you think it is the second case, can you just provide me your configuration ? (OpenCPN version and OS)


EDIT : Forget about it -> I just read your edit...



Thanks !

[Rasbats]

Thanks Ronan ... works well here on Win 8.1 64 bit.

Going forward 'zlib' is causing me problems for compiling standalone. I have 'zlib.lib' on my system from working with netCDF. Needed to copy 'zlib.h' and 'zconf.h' to the 'src' folder from the zlib source code. Not sure how to deal with this at the moment on Windows, but Sean Depagnier has used 'zlib' for the Weather Routeing plugin.

Problem here:

FIND_PACKAGE(ZLIB REQUIRED)
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES( ${PACKAGE_NAME} ${wxWidgets_LIBRARIES} ${ZLIB_LIBRARY})

'ocpn_plugin.h' had to be copied to the 'src' folder.

The final hurdle was the location of 'opencpn.lib'.

LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file '..\..\release\opencpn.lib

Using Visual Studio 2017 I edited the link file location and built the plugin. Made an installer package at the same time, which worked fine.

Mike

[Rodemfr]

Thanks Mike,


I will make the plug-in able to compile standalone in the next version. Still have to read documentation and example to be sure to do it the right way...


Ronan.

[Baikal]

Is it possible for the wind to make the metric system meters per second?

[Rodemfr]

Yes it is. I plan to add a preference panel. This will be the place to select display units (m/s, kt, bft, etc.)

[Rodemfr]

Hi everybody,


Here is a new version of the plugin (v0.3):


https://github.com/Rodemfr/meteovache_pi/releases


I added a preference panel allowing to change display units.
I cleaned-up the compilation process and generated a windows installer.

Some bugs have also been fixed here and there.
On the server side, I added a new model (Arpege 0.5°) with world wide coverage.


I did not have time to add manual and automatic saving of the weather report. It will be for the next release...


Best regards,


R.

[Rodemfr]

Hi,

Here is a new version of the plugin (v0.4):

https://github.com/Rodemfr/meteovache_pi/releases

I added a button to manually save weather forecasts to a text file.
I also added options in the preference panel (accessible via the plugin manager) to enable automatic save of every weather forecast. You can select the destination folder, the format (normal or column) and choose to compress it or not in a zip file.



I'm interest in any return concerning potential problems or ideas of improvement.


Thanks,

Ronan.

[AISEAG]

Originally Posted by Rodemfr

Hi,

Here is a new version of the plugin (v0.4):

....

.

Thanks Ronan for this plugin.

Does it take in account the Grib option (UTC/Local Time ) ?

Serge

[Rodemfr]

Hi Serge,


I'm not sure to understand what you mean by "Grib option UTC/Local time". What I can tell to you is how dates and time are handled in the plug-in :


Internally, all times are handled UTC, but when displayed in the report all dates are converted to the system current time zone.


Reading your remark, I think it might be a good idea to add a preference setting to select between UTC and local TZ in the preference dialog and to display the actual TZ in the report. I will add it for v0.5...


By the way, if there is anybody using OpenCPN on Raspberry PI ? I would be interested by a bit of help. I used my RPi Zero to compile the plugin but it has not enough memory to run OpenCPN and to verify that is is working properly. Could anywone test it on his RPi ? The binaries have been added to the v0.4 release page :


https://github.com/Rodemfr/meteovach...eases/tag/v0.4


Thanks !


Ronan.

[AISEAG]

Originally Posted by Rodemfr

Hi Serge,


I'm not sure to understand what you mean by "Grib option UTC/Local time".

Hello

The explanation given is good for me.

A preference setting would be OK, may I suggest to use the one selected in Grib preference to avoid misreading beetween this plugin and Grib plugin

-----
Merci, les explications données sont suffisantes pour moi.

Pourvoir choisir son système de référence serai un plus, mais n'est il pas judicieux de prendre en compte le choix donné dans le plugin Grib pour éviter les erreurs de lecture entre les 2 plugin ?

Thanks/Merci