SondePredict - A fork of the CUSF Predictor Wrapper

This is a modified version of the CUSF Predictor Wrapper, which features a somewhat improved web UI, custom icons, and a few new features. This fork is targeted primarily at US based users who wish to predict the flight paths of National Weather Service radiosondes.

Reasons for changes

---

I personally found the original CUSF Standalone Predictor difficult to setup and could not get it to work properly. In addition, the software is over 10 years old now, which is where most of the difficulty comes from.

The forked CUSF Predictor Wrapper is better, but still has some shortcomings and poor features.

This version is linux only! The main scripts do not support Windows/OSX. Sorry!

Setup

---

1. Install the Python Wrapper

Clone this repository with:

$ git clone https://github.com/trevor229/SondePredict.git

The wind data downloader script depends on python-gdal, which needs gdal installed. GDAL may need to be installed separately using the system package manager, for example:

Debian/Ubuntu: apt-get install python-gdal

The SondePredict python package can then be installed in the usual Python way:

$ cd SondePredict
$ sudo python setup.py install

This should grab the other required Python dependencies, but if not, they are:

• python-dateutil
• shapely
• fastkml (python-fastkml)
• python-gdal (Which may have been installed via apt-get previously)
• tabulate
• geopy
• smtplib

---

2. Building the Predictor

The predictor itself is a binary ('pred'), which we (currently) build seperately, using CMake. You may need to install cmake and libglib2.0-dev via your package manager before building, i.e.

$ sudo apt-get install cmake libglib2.0-dev

Then, from within the cusf_predictor_wrapper directory, run the following to build the predictor binary:

$ cd src
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ../
$ make

The pred binary then needs to be copied into the 'apps' directory for SondePredict to work

$ cp pred ../../apps/

---

3. Configuration

There are variables within sonde_predict.sh and index.html that must be changed before running, as well as some optional ones in others. Look at this page in the wiki for details.

Don't forget to make the sonde_predict.sh script executable!

$ sudo chmod +x sonde_predict.sh

---

4. Setting up the webpage

Copy the contents of the web folder to a directory that can be served by your favorite web server.

• If running apache for example, copy both static and index.html to /var/www/html

• By default, sonde_predict.sh copies the sonde_predictions.json file to /var/www/html/ so if you do not have your page there then make sure to change the cp command in sonde_predict.sh to reflect your chosen location.

A note on the geolocation option: If the autolocation feature is enabled, when you load the main page it will ask for your current location. If you deny permission, it will zoom out to the continental US and not show you your location. If you agree, it will plot your current location on the map and zoom to a suitable level. This allows you to find your local launch site more easily as well as use the PolyLineMeasure tool much easier.

---

5. Setting up automatic predictions

I opted to use systemd for this since I can never seem to get cron to work.

Create the systemd service file

$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/sondepredict.service

Then add the following, making sure to change WorkingDirectory and ExecStart to the location of where the SondePredict directory is.

[Unit]
Description=SondePredict Service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
WorkingDirectory=<YOUR_WORKING_DIR_HERE>/SondePredict/apps
ExecStart=<YOUR_PATH_HERE>/SondePredict/apps/sonde_predict.sh

Save and close the file. Next, create the systemd timer

$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/sondepredict.timer

And add the following. Note the OnUnitActive time is 6 hours. This is the interval which should be kept for new GFS data to be downloaded without unnessicarily downloading and rerunning the predictor.

[Unit]
Description=SondePredict Service

[Timer]
OnUnitActiveSec=21600s
OnBootSec=10s

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Save and close. Make sure to reload the daemon. Then enable and start the timer.

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable sondepredict.timer
$ sudo systemctl start sondepredict.timer

---

6. (Recommended) Running once to test/startup

Running the sonde_predict.sh script once even after enabling/starting the systemd service is recommended to ensure your configuration is correct and to also give the web application a valid sonde_predictions.json file to load (The map will not display itself without one!)

Just go to your SondePredict/apps directory, and run it

$ ./sonde_predict.sh

If everything is working, you should see an output similar to this

INFO:root:Testing Model: 20201104/06
INFO:root:Testing Model: 20201104/00
INFO:root:Found valid data in model 20201104/00!
INFO:root:Created temporary directory /tmp/tmpoYn4JA
INFO:root:Starting download of wind data...
INFO:root:GRIB request took 4.4 seconds.
INFO:root:Downloaded data for T+000
INFO:root:Processing GRIB file...
INFO:root:GFS data written to: /tmp/tmpoYn4JA/gfs_1604448000_41.0_270.0_10.0_10.0.dat
...
INFO:root:Downloaded data for T+048
INFO:root:Processing GRIB file...
INFO:root:GFS data written to: /tmp/tmpoYn4JA/gfs_1604620800_41.0_270.0_10.0_10.0.dat
INFO:root:Writing out dataset info.
INFO:root:Finished!
Prediction Run: 2020-11-04-0000Z,5.0,5.0
Prediction Run: 2020-11-04-1200Z,5.0,5.0
Prediction Run: 2020-11-05-0000Z,5.0,5.0
Prediction Run: 2020-11-05-1200Z,5.0,5.0

---

To-Do

• Email notifications
• Multi-location launch predictions & plotting
• Discord integration?
• Fix issue where last prediction path gets truncated sometimes
• Prediction archiving/download current prediction(s)?
• Retain previous run and make then appear alongside the current run to address missing prediction issues?

---

Copyrights

The original CUSF Predictor Wrapper software is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. As such this fork is also under the same license

The SVG icons located in the /apps/web/static/images folder were created by me and are hereby also licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0