WeatherFax ...

[HUR450502]

Dear Rick, dear all involved.



I just want to say how much I appreciate all your work. As "conachair" already mentioned - "this is such a handy plugin" and I totally agree, this plugin is VERY useful and ingenious in the way it has been designed. However, special thanks to Rick, who - still being on vacation in NZ - seems to be working day and night to get this made available....



All the best and again thanks to all, especially to Rick and Sean,



Uwe

[rgleason]

Stelian provided the engineering for fixes to the cursor and decoder menu size! Thankyou Stelian!

[Maelruan]

Weatherfax 1.8 for OpenCPN 5, Win 10.

I am unable to resize the "Capture" dropdown box to view captured faxes, and it is too small for the Map Correction process. The cursor will not engage with the edge of the box. Box is the same size when a fax is opened from file, and in the screens following the "Next" button. There is no problem moving the box around the screen by holding the cursor on the top bar. OpenCPN does remember the position of the box after a restart.
I have deleted the old plugin, removed entries from OpenCPN.ini, and re-installed, but fault still there.

Otherwise this version is excellent!

M

[rgleason]

Marlruan what os?
Don't you have sliders?
Please post screenshot
What link did you use for download?

[Maelruan]

RGleason, tks for getting back.

Marlruan what os? - Windows 10, OpenCPN 5, Weatherfax 1.8 for OpenCPN.
Don't you have sliders? - Part of the "Phasing" slider is there, but it's cut off just above the "S" of the "Skew" slider, & all to the right of that "S" is cut off.
Please post screenshot - Sorry, I went back to version 4.88, where all works as before.
What link did you use for download? - "OCPN 5.X Version
Windows Setup package" at https://opencpn.org/OpenCPN/plugins/weatherfax.html

There was a similar problem discussed on the forum a few weeks ago, and corrected v. quickly. Was it with WeatherRouting? I've searched with a few different keywords but I can't find it now.

[rgleason]

Both recent versions of weatherfax_pi (which have the most current weatherfaxinternetretrieval files) have this format bug which makes the Decoder impossible to use.



I have tried to track down many of the previous commits that caused this, but was not successful.


Thanks maelruan, you must be using an older version on Opencpn 4.8


Stelian, can you help us out again? Also is it possible to make the second decoder screen sizeable as well, so that we can use it in a larger window more effectively? (or even have a slider that scales the image larger and smaller so we can identify small coordinates etc.)

[Maelruan]

RGleason,

"you must be using an older version on Opencpn 4.8" - This version is working with opencpn 4.88:
"weatherfax_pi-1.8.002e-ov42-ov48-new-xml-win32.exe". When I originally upgraded to OpenCPN 5 I had deleted those old plugins which did not work with vers 5, so when reverting to 4.88 the one that now works with vers 4.88 had to be downloaded from the same source. It looks like the same internet retrieval files are installed and these work very well, but the decoder routine may be independent.

M

[Maelruan]

I hope that this excellent and valuable plugin is retained and further developed. Some over on the thread for the Linux version of Weatherfax argue the other technologies make the audio wefax decoder obsolete, and this is to counter that.
The filters in the decoder routines of the plugin provide the cleanest wefax pictures of any decoder I have used. The morphing process is brilliant! The phasing and skew controls are most responsive, and the whole is very intuitive. All of this is available with just a small SW receiver with a BFO, a computer/tablet, and the most meager of power sources.
Whether you're a blue ocean sailor or not, no transmitter of any kind is required, no satellite gear, no SW antenna or ATU, no account with any ISP, etc, etc
It contributes to the great pleasure of exploring remote places blind to VHF signals of any sort, and knowing that no one knows you're there.
I expect that in time the Windows version will allow SDR dongle control (in the interim SDRSharp & VAC work very well with it), and decoding SYNOP and other formats will be available.

[rgleason]

Maelruan,
That is great news about the decoder routines and Sean's great work in concieving this plugin and bringing forward to all of us.
Your enthusiasm and points are excellent. We need inexpensive weather data anywhere we sail and your points and Sean's plugin address that.


BTW I've done some testing and I think the Windows plugin version that you used for with OpenCPN v5.0 was an earlier version, and those problems have been resolved (but not bug in the second menu in the decoder, which is a showstopper for calibrating charts, particularly for me and Uwe!). Please see this screenshot. (Also the ov40 version of weatherfax_pi should be identical.)

InternetRetrieval menu can be resized.
The download menu can be resized.


Hf Radio Schedules seems to be able to be resized too.
I think it is probably time to update this schedule world wide.
Are there any helpers out there?

Maelruan,
Your experience with use of weatherfax for receiving faxes is very valuable. Would you be able to provide a step by step setup or any information with regard to getting this working, perhaps with an rtlsdr using Sean's rtlsdr_pi with Windows? I hope you will become a spokesperson and support person for how to setup and download faxes over SSB and rtldsr, have not succeeded yet with my rtlsdr using Windows yet.

Incidently, the new versions have new weatherfaxinternetretrieval.xml and coordinatedatasets.xml files provided by Uwe and me.

Thank you.
Rick

[Hakan]

Rick..
I've a interested mate who can test. His last test resulted in a request to be able to switch the fax picture of from either canvas when using dual mode. When to much zooming on one canvas the fax picture of course went very blurred.


Håkan

[Franziska]

Unfortunately I can confirm that the latest Plug-in for OpenCPN 5 has issues with windows sizes.
If you look at the attached image you can see this I can not resize the window to show anything to the right of my cursor.
Would be great if it can be fixed.
One more, is it possible to graphically place the image over the chart rather than using coordinates, or is that already possible somehow?

Thanks for your great work despite these issues.
In some areas with bad cell coverage it's a great option to get the latest weather chart.

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by Franziska

Unfortunately I can confirm that the latest Plug-in for OpenCPN 5 has issues with windows sizes.
If you look at the attached image you can see this I can not resize the window to show anything to the right of my cursor.
Would be great if it can be fixed.
One more, is it possible to graphically place the image over the chart rather than using coordinates, or is that already possible somehow?

Thanks for your great work despite these issues.
In some areas with bad cell coverage it's a great option to get the latest weather chart. Attachment 189683

Franzisca, I believe you are using and older download. We very recently changed the download link. (Yesterday, I believe.)

I will download and test that file, if you can give me the same link, but please download the current version and try it again first and report back here. Thank you. Sorry about the troubles.

Excellent idea about dragging to position the fax, however that would happen only after other scaling and projection types are set, so I am not so sure it would help much.

[rgleason]

Please use the link here


https://opencpn.org/OpenCPN/plugins/weatherfax.html

[stelian]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Stelian, can you help us out again? Also is it possible to make the second decoder screen sizeable as well, so that we can use it in a larger window more effectively?

Hi Rick,

I think I managed to fix this and some other small bugs, including a proper fix for the "mouse click for Android" bug.

I've pushed the changes to my repo: http://github.com/stelian42/weatherfax_pi.git

Can you please test and report back, if it's ok I'll put up a merge request for Sean.

Thanks,

Stelian.

[Franziska]

Hi Rick,

just tried it and downloaded from the link provided.
The file is weatherfax_pu-1.8002h-ov50-new-xml-win32.exe
The issue persists.

Btw, I am using an audio file sample from the web.
If I retrieve a file directly via the web it displays fine.
Still, in a way that defeats my objective. If I have web access I'd be using primarily Gribs.
Without web it would be weatherfax as audio over the air.


I'm on a Dell Latitude E7240 with Win10Pro (64Bit).
Resolution is 1366x768
OpenCPN is release 9065270.

Regards,

Franziska