Aprs Weather Beacon

Today I’ve been messing around with an APRS weather beacon. Now Direwolf and Linbpq and Jnos can send an aprs weather beacon. It turns out that this is quite precise, with the format of the beacon.

#!/bin/bash
# The weather beacon have to look like this....
# @220424z5057.81N/00729.37E_094/002g005t043r000p006P006h89b09783
# !5133.52N/00348.15E_073/013g...t048h85b10040wWXD
#
# Jun 01 2003 08:07
# 272/000g006t069r010p030P020h61b10150
# ***********************************************************
# 272 - wind direction - 272 degrees
# 010 - wind speed - 10 mph
# g015 - wind gust - 15 mph
# t069 - temperature - 69 degrees F
# r010 - rain in last hour in hundredths of an inch - 0.1 inches
# p030 - rain in last 24 hours in hundredths of an inch - 0.3 inches
# P020 - rain since midnight in hundredths of an inch - 0.2 inches
# h61 - humidity 61% (00 = 100%)
# b10153 - barometric pressure in tenths of a MILLIBAR - 1015.3 MILLIBARS

My weather station uploads its data to wunderground.com. Now wunderground has the option to read this again with an api key.

https://api.weather.com/v2/pws/observations/current?stationId=IKORTG9&format=json&units=m&apiKey=yourApiKey

You can read here how and what.

After a lot of messing around with a bash script, I am able to create the correct format.

TEMP=-4.9°C Temperature degrees Celsius
WPK=29.4km/h Wind speed in Kilometers per hour
WGK=39km/h Wind guts in Kilometers per hour
GRD=58° Wind direction in degrees
RAIN=0mm Rain in the last hour in mm
RAIN24=0.42065mm Rain in the last 24 hour in mm
RAIN12=0.214mm Rain in the last 12 hour in mm
HUM=74% Humidity in procent
Bar=1004mb Barometric pressure in millibars
FAH=023F Temperature degrees Fahrenheit
WPM=018mph Wind speed in miles per hour
WGM=024mph Wind guts in miles per hour
RNI=000inch Rain in the last hour in inches
RNI=001inch Rain in the last 24 hour in inches
RNI=000inch Rain in the last 12 hour in inches

The file I need to broadcast an APRS Weahter Beacon looks like this.

pd9q@pancake:~/linbpq/wx-project $ cat ~/linbpq/current.txt
Feb 09 2021 13:00
086/004g008t028r000p000P000h75b10007

The config file for Linbpq looks like this, this is in the aprs section of bpq32.cfg

WXCall=PD9Q-7
WXFileName=/home/pd9q/linbpq/current.txt
WXComment=/Weather Station JO11VN
WXPortList=1,5,IS        ; comma separated list 
WXInterval=10            ; mins

For Jnos in the autoexec.nos in the aprs section

aprs wx call PD9Q-7
aprs wx stat "Weather Station JO11VN"
aprs wx pos "5133.52N/00348.15E_METEO
aprs wx data "/home/pd9q/jnos/wx/current.txt"
aprs bc rftimer 10

For direwolf in the file direwolf.conf

PBEACON LAT=51^33.52N LONG=03^48.15E SYMBOL=”weather station” COMMENTCMD=”tail -1 /home/pd9q/linbpq/current.txt”

Direwolf Aprs packet look like this.

PD9Q-7>APDW15:!5133.52N/00348.15E_069/005g006t028r000p000P000h75b10007

BPQ32 Aprs packet look like this.

PD9Q-7>APBPQ1,WIDE1-1:@091338z5133.52N/00348.15E_069/005g006t028r000p000P00
0h75b10007/Weather Station JO11VN

Learned a lot.

2 thoughts on “Aprs Weather Beacon”

  1. Hi,
    I’m currently also trying to figure out how to use Python to create my APRS packets. One question here regarding the position:

    # @220424z5057.81N/00729.37E_094/002g005t043r000p006P006h89b09783
    # !5133.52N/00348.15E_073/013g…t048h85b10040wWXD

    I thought , position is “‘DDMM.SSN/DDDMM.SSE_'”, and you have

    5057.81N/00729.37E_094 are 50 deg 57 min 81 sec N ? What is the “_094” ?

    Likewise for “00348.15E_073”, which should be 3 deg 48 min 15 sec East ? And what is “_073” ?

    I’ve got mine as “position = ‘1942.24N/15558.41W_’ “. Does this look right ?

    Thanks!

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