Radar Loop

Overview

This small project is designed for use in digital signage displays. When run, it sits silently in the background and queries the NWS CAP feeds for current alerts. If an alert is active for the configured area, it makes itself visible and downloads & displays a configurable GIF animation. Above the animation, the alert type and duration will be shown for all active alerts.

The intent of the image is for it to download a radar loop animated GIF from either the NWS or another provider. If using another provider, be sure you are allowed to use the data in this way, especially for commercial purposes. NWS data and images are released in the public domain and so are a safe bet.

Requirements

The following extra modules are used in this project:

wxPython
WeatherAlerts (http://github.com/zebpalmer/WeatherAlerts)
iso8601

Configuration

Configurable parameters are stored as JSON in a config.json file in the %ProgramData%\radar_loop folder. See below for the list of options that should all be present in the config file.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
radShiftX	Int	Shift the entire image horizontally. Useful if the configured viewport size is smaller than the loaded image size
radShiftY	Int	Shift the entire image vertically. Useful if the configured viewport size is smaller than the loaded image size
radImgSizeX	Int	The horizontal pixel size to use for the image viewport. This will also be substituted into the URL as the first parameter if one exists.
radImgSizeY	Int	The vertical pixel size to use for the image viewport. This will also be substituted into the URL as the second parameter if one exists.
refreshRadarTime	Int	Time in milliseconds to refresh the image when an alert is active.
refreshNWSTime	Int	Time in milliseconds to refresh the NWS alert infomation. Try not to hammer their servers too hard - 10 minutes between updates is likely sufficient
SAMEcode	String	The SAME code(s) for the area(s) to check for alerts. Note that this is string data. For multiple SAME codes, format this as an array of strings.
radarUrl	String	The URL to query for a radar image. NWS has gif loops for regional radar at http://radar.weather.gov/lite/. See http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/doppler/radarfaq.htm for more details. The height & width of the image can be substituted in the URL. Example: `?width=%(radImgSizeX)d&height=%(radImgSizeY)d`
alertBgColor	String	Background color for the alert text area.
alertFgColor	String	Text color for the alert text.
alertFontSize	Int	Font size for the alert text.
panelBgColor	String	Background color for the entire wxWidgets panel. Normally this won't be seen at all, unless your image is smaller than the given viewport.

License

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: