Pasha, I can finally reply to your message and questions...
1. We have plans to give you an option to associate METAR station with any location in YoWindow. I hope this feature will be done in 1-3 months.
In my opinion this request is important for meteo-people only. Most people don't care about it.
How do you or would you know that most people would not appreciate the METAR option since most people do not know what a METAR is all about.
Maybe, when people find out that they can use a local METAR (a closed by weather station, more so in North America) rather than relying on what 'yr.no' has decided was their local weather provider (not as much choices for North American than there is for Europe), they might prefer to have a local METAR station.
As I have already mentioned to you, for my area, YoWindow offers me 3 choices, all 3 choices being poor and unreliable METARS (one with limited weather data and the other 2 with no night and weekend service). I already suggested that the Victoria Esquimalt Naval Station METAR (British Columbia, Canada) (limited and unreliable weather data at the best of time) be replaced by the Victoria International Airport METAR (British Columbia, Canada) (very reliable weather data including forecasts, human managed, 24/7/365). And you know also about the other two METAR choices offered for my area...
But I just want you to be happy, so I want to add this feature as soon as we have done all the other important work.
I am not the one you must please - I think that if you are trying to enter the north american then you will need services for the north american users.
To really make me happy, you would need to make YoWindow fully flexibility so I can enter where I want YoWindow to get its weather data, not just a choice with the local METAR but also a choice from any local PWS (amateur/personal weather station, such as the weather station that I have been operating 24/7/365 for the past 7 years). There are hundred of thousands of those PWS all over the world and their numbers are increasing quite rapidly with the advent/sale of new low priced weather stations mostly in Europe.
2. There are less than 9000 METAR stations around the world. ... Unfortunately almost half of them are offline or provide the weather during the day-light hours. only. So YoWindow is powered by 4500 METAR weather stations now.
Most the weather information in North America is provided by local METARS. In Canada, that information is being managed by Environment Canada (government owned) and in the USA, the information is being managed by NOAA (also government owned).
Thus my suggestion to include privately owned PWS - in my local area alone, there are 7 such station - most of them more reliable than the local METARS...
3. Yes, we have plans for personal meteo station (PWS) support. We really want to do this.
I think this should be one of your main priority - as I wrote above, the number of those PWS is increasing quite rapidly. I am an active member of one such weather station software forum, called Cumulus (the designer lives in northern UK). Over the past 2 months, the number of new owners has increased 300%...
Do you know is your PWS capable to generate data in XML format and publish them online? Can you point me to some documentation on this format?
This will help me to teach YoWindow to read the weather from your station.
Almost all weather station can, either by themselves or with the assistance of some PHP code, generate an XML file such as required by the YoWindow flash files.
I run 2 different weather software, Weather Display (the oldest and most complete and reliable) and Cumulus (newer and not as complete). Neither of those software 'natively' produce an XML file as that file format is not being used by either software.
But, with the Cumulus, I am producing an XML file that I use for some of the XML-type of weather Web pages - thus it is possible.
But I need from you the required parameters - which bit of weather information do you need, such as the temperature, the wind speed and direction, the barometric pressure, the humidity, the 'feels-like' temperature, the forecast, etc...
There is one problem with PWS for YoWindow. PWS do not know the cloud cover information.
My Weather Display software produces forecasts such as 'scattered clouds' (because my weather station is equipped with both a solar sensor and a UV sensor) but accurate cloud cover information can ONLY be provided by a METAR where humans are involved...
This feature is on our top-priority list.
As I have indicated in a previous message and in this reply, I am willing to help you as long as you provide me with requirements and possibly involve me with the development ... and I am asking for no compensation in return...
I want to ask you for a favor for us. If you happen to know any online weather comminites in Canada. Please tell them about YoWindow.
We are well known in Europe, especially in Germany. But in US and Canada almost nobody heard about YoWindow.
There might be a few forums where I could place a message about YoWindow...
But I will have to wait until YoWindow becomes more flexible, until YoWindow accepts a file produced by PWS... Then, the amateur/personal weather station operators can really promote YoWindow as an extension to our online weather stations - we can tell our viewers that they can get their weather information from their local PWS using the modern and beautifully designed YoWindow desktop/screensaver software...
Note: I have already installed the YoWindow gadget on my Web pages, but since the local availability of weather information is poor and unreliable, I cannot promote YoWindow...
I know I am very demanding, but if you want to access the north american viewers you have to provide a great product - YoWindow has all the substances to become a great product but it is not there yet - not enough flexibility...
Pasha, you replied the following to Chucky:
Chucky, as soon as I'm ready to work with PWS data I will take a look at this meteo-station format.
The link 'chucky' provided was for 'Weather Display Live', an add-on to Weather display. Although WDL uses an XML file for its setup it uses a text file for its weather data - that text file being continuously produced (and uploaded every 5-10 seconds) by Weather Display. The text file is called 'clientraw.txt' and it contains 165 different (bits of) weather information.