I’m the owner/Trustee of our local Skywarn network. It covers about 8 or so counties. I’m re-building our main repeater node to be more supportive of their Skywarn efforts, including a lot of automation.
My question here is this:
Is it possible (or has anyone tried) to setup and use AutoSkywarn for multiple counties? How might I go about this?
Another problem is that by default the script says “Important weather information: Tornado watch”. This is a problem when you cover 6 counties. It could be bright and sunny in the southern most county and yet storming cats and dogs in the north. Is it possible to change it to “Tornado watch for XX County”?
This may involve going into the ASW source code. Something I’m not afraid of, but would rather not do.
Can anyone think of a better solution perhaps?
(For those that will ask “Why have the alerts go out during a Skywarn net?” - This is for normal operations only when a Skywarn net may not be up yet. When the Skywarn team activates they punch in a macro that turns ASW announcements off, among other things.)
I’m going to give this a bump and let it ride a little and see if anyone has a direct knowledgeable answer.
If not, in a while, I will talk to you more about your particular setup and perhaps we can make a work around.
But you might want to shoot a message to the script author first
If you get tired of waiting, please tell me how many nodes in these 8 counties.
(fill me in on the network)
On the surface, I would say if you can’t get one script to cover 8, then run 8 instances of the script.
Ideally, one on each node in each county if they are there.
And if they are always connected or connect manually on warnings.
I do not use the script and not very aware of it, but I am fair with asterisk/scripting solutions and always try to do my part with ecomm solutions when I can.
The system is a normal RF linked repeater system running Allstar on our main hub repeater (brave I know. EVERYTHING must be tested before I put it on that node. The last thing I need is for it to go down in the middle of a storm or net).
If I had say a repeater per county, each with their own ASL node and linked, then this would be a no brainer. I just install AutoSky on the individual repeaters. On second thought, maybe that’s not a good idea. User in other counties driving to that county could possibly not be aware of the alert.
So anyway, back to the main Question and goal: is it possible to have one instance of ASW run multiple counties / Warning areas?
I took a peek at the readme for autoskywarn and fournd this…
CHANGING THE BASE DIRECTORY
In file autoskywarn.conf you can change the BASEDIR (where the program lives, or
where you wish to put a test, backup or multiple production copy (more later)). A
side effect of moving the BASEDIR is that the shell scripts (A*[1234] AOFF AON)
all expect to source the configuration file from /usr/local/AUTOSKY. If you move
the BASEDIR and you are running multiple copies of ASW, you must edit the
“source” line in the shell scripts to the new BASEDIR.
If you are running a single copy of ASW in a different BASEDIR then you can
either: 1) edit the 14 shell scripts as mentioned above or 2) mkdir
/usr/local/AUTOSKY and copy the autoskywarn.conf file to that location
Definitely some more reading will need to be done, including a script to prioritize the worse warning. Sorry the lackluster and untimely replies, I’ve been pre-occupied with college and other lesser important things than Amateur Radio
