Davis | News


		Davis Instruments Weather Club December 1999 ===== Here's a quick preview of this month's contents: ===== A new homepage for the holidays...In pursuit of the America's Cup...and help for Unix Users. Enjoy! ===== Davis: A New Homepage For The Holidays ===== As many of you noticed, we missed last month's E-newsletter. There was a good reason for our silence. Throughout November, we were working fast and furious to finish up our redesigned website. We quietly went live with the new site on December 3. Please visit our new site and give us your feedback. The url remains the same --http://davisnet.com. You'll find the site packed with more information than ever before. For example, you can access more product information, download manuals and specification sheets, and even order online now. Not all the sections are finished. The marine and DriveRight product and support sections should go live on December 20th. As with all web projects, we're continually working to update the site and correct any broken links that slipped by. You can help by sending us e-mail if you come across any missing links (no ape jokes, please) or find something that isn't working. We'd also like to hear if you like the new organization. ===== Cool App: In pursuit of the America's Cup ===== Boating and weather go hand in hand. Chris Bedford, the meteorologist for the Young America team, one of five US teams vying to compete in the America's Cup finals, has been using a Wireless Weather Monitor II for the America's Cup trials this fall. While the trials were in the third phase, Chris sent us this report: Sailing teams from eight nations are competing in the waters of the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand. Five teams from the United States, and one each from Japan, Australia, France, Spain, and Switzerland are all racing for the opportunity to challenge Team New Zealand for the Cup in February. Elimination races among the challengers began in October and will continue through February in order to select the team with the best chance of beating Team New Zealand. Davis Instruments is playing a role in yachting's most prestigious event by providing instrumentation to one of the leading U.S. teams, Young America, for monitoring the weather conditions at their base camp on the Waitemata Harbor in Auckland. The need for better tracking of these conditions became very clear last year during a Young America training session. A fierce wind storm blew through Auckland, causing damage to several buildings on the compound and knocking down a two-story scaffolding used to service one of the training boats. Fortunately, no one was injured and damage was minor; however, the scare clearly demonstrated the need for better tracking of conditions and improved awareness of the risks involved. The races have been quite eventful this year. Young America went into the trials with two boats (#53 and #58). On November 8th, one of the boats, #53, folded about mid-ships and took on water. Luckily no one was hurt. The team was allowed to sail their second boat and continued on in the trials. Chris, the meteorologist, had been tracking the weather using our Weather Monitor II and was able to predict favorable racing positions based on the wind speed and direction. Young America also used the weather information to expedite repairs on #53. Sad to say, Young America did not made it into the final round. After the third round robin, they found themselves in 7th place. Only the first six advance to the semi-finals. So, our wandering weather station may be home for Christmas. If you want to see how the America's Cups trials are going, check out http://www.americascup.org/. You'll find the racing schedule, articles, and up-to-the minute race coverage. You can even build your own virtual boat and try racing it! ===== Follow-up: Unix Users ===== Back in October, Chris Snell asked if anyone else out there was using Unix to collect weather data. Well, the response was immediate. For anyone looking for code, here are the replies from those who have some. Tom from Tempe, AZ writes, My website uses Java running on Linux to poll my Weather Monitor II. My Java code is very crude and is too tightly coupled with my code that posts samples to a database. If someone is interested in helping to clean this up with me, I could supply the mass code. (Tom's website is http://www.tom.org) Vern from Auckland, Australia is running Linux too. He says, I have had my weather station (a Weather Monitor II) connected into a linux machine for some 3 years now. I wrote the C programs to interface from the weather station to the linux OS via the serial ports and the final result is at http://snoopy.falkor.gen.nz/~weather/weather.shtml The weather data is read every 10 minutes and transferred onto my website. In the background I use Gnuplot to produce the graphs. Benoit in Munich, Germany wrote offering his site as a resource. I have my Weather Monitor II on Unix since a quite a number of years already (1993 I guess). I recently put together a couple of Web pages that summarize my application. Maybe those out there in need of a more flexible, custom solution will be interested in having a look at http://arcdev.hq.eso.org/~bpirenne/weather.html. Chris, we hope this gives you and the other club members looking for Unix code some new resources. And many thanks to you -- Tom, Vern, and Benoit -- for offering your sites as examples of how our weather stations are working on Unix platforms. ====== Just a Reminder: Y2K Compatibility ====== As we approach the end of 1999, visions of Y2K bugs may be dancing in your head. If they are, check out the March 99 newsletter at http://davisnet.com/news/e_news_archive/march_99.asp. You can also download our Year 2000 Compliance statement at http://davisnet.com/about/y2k.asp. ====== That's it for December's E-news! We hope all of you have a safe and happy holiday season. See you in the next millenium! To subscribe to this e-newsletter go to: http://davisnet.com/news/e_club_signup.asp