Click here for the latest findU news!
findU is a database archiving weather, position, telemetry, and message data. The primary source of
data is an amateur radio system called APRS, some weather data
comes from an internet based system called the
Citizen Weather Observer Program.
This large (58 GB) database is hosted on two servers using data replication techniques.
the data is constantly updated (about 20 new reports come in every second),
and is accessed via a number of dynamic web pages. Some examples:
Weather reports
Position reports
Long term vehicle tracking
Telemetry
Messages
Reports are also archived from an amateur radio payload aboard the International Space Station which
relays
APRS reports from amateur radio operators around the globe.
Among findU's most significant uses is the forwarding of over a hundred thousand near-realtime weather
observations to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration daily, where the data is
checked for accuracy,
and used by NOAA and the National Weather Service in a variety of ways.
Here is a page that describes all of the CGIs which are available on this server.
This sometimes lags behind the latest developments, but it is the best place to start. Check
the news link at the top of this page, and especially the
APRS SIG at TAPR, for
the very latest news.
Directly creating a URL by editing the parameters is not meant for beginners, though by reading
the documentation and experiementing a bit, anyone should be able to get the results they are
after.
Other people have written web pages that allow you to enter requests to findU via forms, this is
an easier way to build the URL you need. I'm sure I've missed some, email me your favorites.
URL | Description |
www.wulfden.org/APRSQuery.shtml | N1BQ's page, the original |
www.qsl.net/n9wtm/ | N9WTM |
www.phrozen-neon.com/alarc/aprs.php | N0ESC |
ve2.ele.etsmtl.ca/aprs/recherche.html | In French! |
www.i2sdd.net/findu_mode.htm | In Italian! |
www.qsl.net/iw0hcc/aprs.htm | Another Italian site |
aprs.VA3TK.com | A Canadian site |
n2yqt.tourge.net/findu.php | N2YQT |
www.proaviator.com/findu/ | K4IFR |
email questions and comments to Steve Dimse steve@dimse.com.
First, make sure the question isn't answered in the FAQ below...
findU FAQs
Can I track my car (or anything else) on findU?
Absolutely. The system is open to all amateur radio operators. A license is required, but it is not difficult
to obtain. If
you are in the US, and want information on obtaining a license, see the
ARRL web site for info. Also, there are many commercial sites
that can do tracking without using amateur radio.
I have an amateur radio license, where can I find out how to get started in APRS
(or any other APRS question not concerning findU)?
I'm sorry, but I'm not able to answer these queries due to a lack of time.
At one time I kept a few links to beginner web sites here, but they come and
go too fast for me to keep up. Use Google to find
some that are available now. TAPR's aprssig is a good place to ask these questions,
you can
sign up here.
Why does my station's information not show up on findU?
If you are a member of the Citizen Weather program, the most common problem is an incorrectly
entered latitude and longitude. Some programs do not check the number enetered for validity, but
the system has a very specific format it requires, so check that the information is entered correctly.
For other problems, you should get support from the person or company that produces the program
you are using.
The process of reports getting to findU via amateur radio and APRS is complex.
First, your station transmits
the data, likely it must travel through one or more digipeaters before reaching
an internet gateway, which forwards it to a hub in the APRS Internet System,
and then finally to findU.com.
Problems can occur anywhere along this path, though by far the most common
are in the early stages...an individual's RF system has a problem, their path
is not set correctly to be digipeated by their local RF network, or their local
IGate is down or misconfigured. From the internet there is
absolutely no way I can diagnose these problems. Your best bet is to seek out
a local APRS user that can listen for you on RF, and try to figure out what
is wrong. If you are writting your own software, or manually entered an APRS string
into a hardware or software configuration file, you may have misformatted the data.
findU tends to follow strict interpretation of the APRS standard, and some errors
may be displayable in some client programs but not findU, a typical example is an
incorrect number of digits in a lat/lon. You can always check findU's
parsing error page to see if findU is detecting an error.
On the weather page, it says there is no radar within 150 miles, but there
is!
Currently findU only has US radar sites, if you are in the US and this is happening
to you, let me know.
I have no problems with adding other radars, but the following requirements must
be met:
1. The radar image alone must be available in GIF or PNG format with a fixed
URL and constant scale. I may be able to work with JPEG or other graphic formats,
if everything else is possible let me know.
2. Image provided without any copyright restrictions (this is the big gotcha,
I've not found any outside the US that meet this requirement). Here is the US
National Weather Services statement: "The information on government servers are in the
public domain, unless specifically annotated otherwise, and may be used freely
by the public." If you are submitting another site, either submit the URL of a
page stating there are no restrictions, or the contact information of the
person that stated the use was acceptible.
Some countries allow non-commercial use, and while findU itself is non-commercial,
I am unable to guarantee how people use findU, in
fact I know of several sites that do use findU for commercial purposes.
Commercial use must be acceptible, or an exception made for findU, I will not
accept the risk of copyright violation.
3. Someone must create a geo file for the image(s). This is detailed on
www.findu.com/geo.html
I do not have time to do all this, so if you want your local radar images, it
is up to you.
Why don't you track digipeaters, so I can see who is using my digi (or any other RF propagation related issue)
This is a matter of findU (or more generally the APRS Internet System) being
the wrong tool for the job. My design of the APRS IS was based on getting data
distributed widely, not about characterizing the RF network. Therefore, the system
is designed at each stage to filter out duplicate versions of the same data
packet. However, it is precisely the differences between different instances
of the same packet that would allow you to draw interesting and/or definitive
conclusions about the RF network and propagation.
The decision in favor of duplicate filtering was, and still is, the correct one...without it, the APRS IS data stream would
be perhaps ten times its present size, which is already big enough to cause problems. PropNet now
has set up an alternate network which is suitable for propagation studies.
Their network is based on modified APRS tools, and findU supports it, see propnet.findu.com
Is the source code available?
No. Commercialization is the primary reason
I've not open-sourced my code. I've gotten a surprising number of requests from
persons inside the GIS industry to either give or sell them my code, or consult
for them. After looking at a lot of the commercial systems, the entire APRS system
really holds its own, and on many counts including (in-my-not-so-humble-opinion)
findU, it is better than anything else out there. Winning the Earthlink AVL
competition to me was objective confirmation of this opinion. If my code were
GPL'ed, it would probably be used in commercial systems. I get my satisfaction
from producing a useful system that does cool things, and letting people use
it for free.
I had expected that the Linux Lunacy Geek Cruise I went on October 2001 would
convince me once and for all of the benefits of free (as in speech) software.
In fact, it had the opposite effect...I spent a lot of time with the infamous
RMS (Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation) since we ate
dinner at the same eight person table. Let's just say the discussion was as
enjoyable as, and far spicier than, the Holland America food! After all the
arguments and much contemplation, I've come to agree with the equally infamous ESR
(Eric Raymond, also on the cruise, talk about storm-at-sea!), that RMS and FSF
are seeking power (defined as the ability to make decisions that affect others), not freedom
(the ability to make decisions that affect yourself). Now that I really understand it, I find the
FSF vision of the world a scarier place than even a Microsoft controlled
world. Software is a creative work (RMS agrees), the disposition of which
rightfully belongs in the hands of the creator or their employer (RMS turns
red and starts screaming, because useful creations like a home improvement
TV show, how-to book, or software program, morally belong to the collective).
I believe the decision to donate code for the public good is an altruistic act,
not a moral imperative, and a choice deserving admiration, not expectation.
There are other reasons besides commercialization,
like the amount of time it would take to document,
distribute, support, and re-integrate code from an open source project.
If you want the code, think about the reason for a minute. Is it because
you want to see the magic? Nothing magic, this is a simple, though large, database
driven web application, there are hundreds of examples you can view on the web, and dozens of books that
you could read on this topic. It is to create your own findU site? How useful would that be, and if you do
draw users away from the originl, how can the public be sure any bugs or improvements will be on your site?
Perhap to change one thing that bothers you and send it back to me? When am I to find time to
judge the worthiness of all the modifications? Something else? I am always willing to listen to other viewpoints,
but I need a compelling reason to open the code, and I just haven't found it yet.
My choice for now is to keep control of the code, and provide a service to
the community for free (as in beer!). Not a purely altruistic decision, but
the one I am most comfortable with. In the event I someday lose interest in findU,
it will be passed to someone else for development. Over the years many have offered donations,
and I've decided to accept them now, as well as place Google adds on the pages. None of this will
make me rich, but perhaps snough will accumulate to eventually pay for the next server findU
will run upon.
Why don't you add...
If I never came up with another idea,
the things I already
have on my list will keep me busy for a couple of years. In other words, I have
lots of plans that I haven't implemented, so I may already to be planning to
do it. However, if you have an idea you'd like to share, please do so, for two
reasons. First, it may be something great
I hadn't thought of, and second, my priorities are to some extent dictated by
what people want to see, so voting for what you'd like may get it done sooner.
However, please don't be hurt or surprised if I don't answer your email quickler
(or sometimes at all). I do my best, but at some point it becomes counter-productive...I'd
rather code than write email.
Can I help?
PLEASE! I'd love to see more people get involved in this.
However, I don't have time to run a programming school. If you know Perl, CGI,
or MySQL, (preferrably all three) tell me what you'd like to do. I really don't
want to get into assigning tasks, I think people are more productive doing what
they choose. If you need an idea, the thing I'd most like to see someone
take on is auto-scaling weather graphs.
In the past I've given direct access to the database to some programmers. Unfortunately a single
error in a query on a database of this size can result in making findU unavailable for hours, so
I am not offering that any longer.
Can I publish links to the dynamic pages, or incorporate the dynamic images in my
own page?
In general, yes. Keep in mind this system is in heavy development.
The CGI interfaces
to any of the pages and images may change without prior notice. If you use these links, then
it is your responsibility to check them often to assure that they still function! Please don't
email with broken link problems!!! Dynamic findU HTML pages must not be used to extract
data which goes into a database...in other words, no screen scrapers.
If you have a project that needs
to do this, you should either use the APRSworld database as a backend
or create your own database by parsing the APRS data stream.
Lately there has been a great increase in the number of people attempting screen-scraping, so I must
clarify my position. A single access generated from a user action (starting a program, pushing a button, etc.)
is allowed, while any repetative access by a program is NOT ALLOWED. This is necessary because a singl
program can use as much resource and dozens of human users, and I do not have the capacity to support this
sort of use. I will be monitoring for inappropriate access and blocking IPs where I find a problem.
Can I use findU for special events?
Yes! There are a bunch of examples, from the Big Ride (3000 mile, 6 week bike
trek across the US) to balloon races and road races. The easiest way (from my
perspective anyway) is for you to write your own web pages and insert findU images
like plot, breadcrumb, and radar-find using IMG tags in your html. There are
other things I can do, like writing a custom web page, as I did for the Big
Ride or the
America's Challenge Balloon Race.
Both of these pages looked better when there was real data! This sort of thing
takes time, so I need to limit it to things that will get some main-stream publicity
(I love to show off what ham radio can do). Please, if you want this, contact
me as soon as possible, as my schedule sometimes gets tight! The more lead time you give me,
the more likely I am to produce something really cvool for you.
Your images don't show on my browser!
This site uses PNG images
(Portable Network Graphics) for the dynamic images rather than GIFs.
This was because UniSys held a patent
on the compression used in GIFs, PNG is an improved format without patent problems.
All of the latest browsers accept these graphics, and ones that are a bit older
can handle them through Apple's Quicktime plugin. Recently these patents have expired.
The library I use to create these
images, GD, is now available in a form that will create GIF images. Had this been the case when I first
created findU, I certainly would have used GIF. At this point, PNG is close to a universal
format, and I do not feel converting my code to GIF would be worth my effort. If you have a different
opinion, please feel free to share your reasons with me.
Why are some maps not displayed, namely those from MapBlast showing a lot of stations or a lot of points?
You are probably currently using Microsoft's Internet Explorer v 6.0 and up. MS unlilaterally
shortened the length of URL it will accept (because their web servers have a
lot of security holes, and web exploits almost always depend on long URLs to
overflow buffers). MapBlast URLs get very long when a lot of stations or tracking points are to be displayed on the map,
so at some point, the URL gets so long that IE 6+ will reject it. As far as I'm aware, no other browser does this, nor did IE prior
to version 6.0.
I will not decrease the utility of findU to support this "feature" of
IE. Some CGIs, like track1.cgi, can be made to work by decreasing the length
of time plotted, or like map-near by decreasing cnt. Others cannot be made to
work, if you want to use them you need to get a better browser, I recommend Safari for the Mac, and Opera and FireFox
for all platforms.
I'm with SuperMegaWeatherSite.com, I want to use your data!
First, this is not my data, and I do not feel I have the right to allow other people's data
to be used for commercial purposes.
Technically the data is not copyrighted, it is legal to write a your own APRS parser to extract the
data from the live APRS internet stream, but because commercial use of
findU would increase the load without giving anything back to the APRS community,
I must insist you not use my server to harvest the data.
About the findU server
APRS is a registered trademark of APRS Software and Bob Bruninga,
WB4APR.
gipoco.com
is neither affiliated with the authors of this page or responsible
for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.
gipoco.com
is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible
for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.