Page 1 of 1

Status update from Tim

Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 8:26 pm
by Tim Vasquez
Hi everyone... sorry I'm continuing to be short on forum-based support but there has actually been substantial work going on. Unfortunately most of it is rather tedious, detail oriented work that takes awhile but has to be done. This work specifically has been updating the station identifier tables and including a large number of identifiers used during the 1950s-1970s (many of which NCDC isn't even aware of) so that Digital Atmosphere can give more accurate historical maps.

This was also done to test the new station identifier list format to its limit and make sure we have a structure that will last for the next several years. Getting this taken care of is necessary so we don't have more changes of what is an essential core component of the software. Finalizing this station database will also allow me to start writing inhouse programs to update the list regularly based on FAA change notices and so forth. This will be introduced in DA V2.10 and will consist of a "master" station list, which can be automatically updated anytime, with an optional user-defined overlay file so that users can maintain their own versions of this list (for mesonets, etc) which will never get deleted or overwritten. Again this has been tedious work but fortunately it's almost ready for release.

As far as new, actual changes I spent this week developing a "Live Chart Retriever" module that monitors selected Internet graphics and when they're updated they're sent straight to your printer. This allows everyone from hobbyists to industrial users to have their own "weather feed" of centralized maps and model graphics. It is similar to Weatherpipe but more robust, and it's an active rather than passive chart streamer. This is available only in the Professional Version (V2.09) and pro users are welcome to download this right away in the pro directory (refer to your login e-mail or contact me). See the front page ( http://www.weathergraphics.com ) for a full description and a PDF instruction sheet.

I will be getting to some of the other high priority changes shortly... I have been collecting your reports over the past weeks and have a task list.

Tim

Live Chart Retriever problem

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 2:40 pm
by Jon Wright
Hi Tim; Downloaded 2.09 and when I run it I get an error message saying "lib1.dll not found".

Live Chart Retriever problem

Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 9:21 pm
by Peter
Tim,

Live Chart Retriever appears to work well for .GIF files.
Downloaded extra files as recommended in your PDF description (fax2png.zip) and put them in the DA installation directory (where DA.exe is located).
Unable to download and print TIFF files and CPU useage 100%.
DA can only be shut down by Windows Task manager.

By that I mean DA is locked as running and CPU running 100%.

Regards

Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:16 am
by Greg Higgins
from Tim this evening:

Hi Greg,


I'll look at this shortly. I actually subcontracted the TIFF work
to a Russian developer, which was delivered today, and I will
be examining the work and testing it, hopefully eliminating the
problem with the LibTiff dependency.


The zlib1.dll file however is not an Epson dependency but one
for ZLIB compression in the TIFF module and is probably
in the LibTiff dependencies. I guess it was already registered
on my system and so was not detected as missing in the build.
Finding it in the LibTiff distribution and extracting it into the DA
folder should get rid of the problem (and perhaps uncover more
missing dependencies).


Either way we should have a solution tomorrow.

Works well after adding zlib1.dll to program directory

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:46 am
by Daniel Davis
I'm running Windows 7 and the retriever works very well by adding the TIFF files and zlib1.dll to the da root directory.

Thanks Tim; a very useful addition to DA pro.

##update: After running DA with both scheduler ON and Live Retriever, the Live Retriever seems to stop sending jobs to the printer. In addition, DA will not end from the menu, I can only exit the program by killing the process using the Task Manager.

Forgive my ignorance, new to DA

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 4:02 am
by Corey Sloan
Can someone give me the steps I need to do to make the Live Chart work with the Tiff files...I have attempted without success to get them to work...appreciate the help in advance....