DA scripts
The manual explains how nbsp can be configured to produce a directory layout and data file format that can be used with Digital Atmosphere (DA). DA is actually a scriptable application, and the scripts can be scheduled to run periodically, at specific times, and so on. The scripts can not only ingest the data (and download it if necessary), but also can upload the resulting files to a specified remote site.
The DA scripts project is a small collection of example scripts that have been tested with local and remote nbsp installations, which could be useful for those interested in such uses of DA, and can serve as a starting point for more complete and sophisticated scripts.
The current collection can be downloaded from the Software section. There are examples scripts that show how to generate various maps (e.g., surface maps), as well as radar images, and some sample output maps are included as well.
DA sat scripts
Digital Atmosphere (DA) does not have the native ability to produce and display images from satellite (GOES) data. David Taylor has written a simple tool GINIview designed such that it can be easily invoked within DA, via its scripting capability, to automatically produce and display images from the satellite data files received by noaaport. The sample scripts provided in the dasatscripts package are meant to illustrate how this can be accomplished.
The current collection of scripts can be downloaded from the Software section, and they complement the original scripts for producing various maps (e.g., surface maps), and radar images. The package dasatdata.zip contains a couple of sample data files and the images produced from them by the scripts.
Note
GINIview takes as input the data file in uncompressed form. This is not the raw data file received from noaaport, which consists of many frames each one individually compressed and is the type of file that, for example, Gempak takes. The files must be processed after being received and saved in uncompressed form before the scripts can use them.
In an nbsp installation this step is carried out by the rstfilter. This filter does two things: it creates the satellite images (this is carried out natively by the nbsp tools, independently of GINIview or DA), and it uncompresses the data files. The satellite images are sent over the network or whetever, while the uncompressed file is saved for future reuse. This is where the DA/GINIview scripts get it from.
In the current nbsp distribution, the step of saving the uncompressed file is not enabled by default. The next version of nbsp, which will be available soon, will have this feature enabled by default, so that the scripts will work with an out-of-the-box nbsp installation, without further requirements.
DA Shell
The idea behind this project is to make windows-cygwin version of nbsp work seamlessly with Digital Atmosphere (DA), in a sense as a module of it. This relies on the ability of DA to launch any program through the spawn command in a DA script (a dsf file).
With this in mind, the windows-cygwin package of nbsp contains a set of scripts that allow nbsp to be started and stopped from with DA itself. The run menu command of DA opens a file selector window, and starting or stopping nbsp is just one click away by choosing on the appropriate script name, as shown in this screenshot.
In addition, the layout of the various directories is different than the unix version. All the elevant user files are in the directory
c:\noaaportThis Windows Explorer screenshot illustrates the layout. The ``digatmos\data'' subdirectory holds the data files already processed by the dafilter in a format suitable to be used by DA, by means of scripts of interactively with the various data analysis menu commands. The ``digatmos\dsf'' subdirectory contains a few sample DA scripts to illustrate some features of this setup.
Any of the DA scripts mentioned in other sections of this web site, and in particular any of the DA sat scripts, can be adapted to be used with this layout.