Development Page--Not for Official Use

Hardware for DNR database and processing system

Basic operating system:

• 933 MHz^? Dell Pentium III computer
• 512 MB
• Network card 10/100 ethernet
• two 60GB hard drives in a RAID-1 configuration
• multiport serial board (Cyclades)
  • several radio links (3)
  • external modems
• internal voice modem (not a "winmodem") for doing voice-response system
• Red Hat Linux
• Tape drive for backups (or some other backup system)
  • DVD-ROM could work as a backup solution

Software

• general comments: most of the TCOON software is written in perl, bash, and C
• each subsystem is administered through a separate account
• all software is maintained in CVS (concurrent versioning system)

pobot -- data acquisition subsystem

• "pobot" stands for "polling robot" -- these are the automated programs that are responsible for retrieving the data from the stations and bringing it back to the local system
• In general, there is a separate polling program for each type of station or data source that we are collecting data from
• The polling programs are executed from the Unix cron(1) facility. Through cron(1) we are able to specify when each station or remote data source should be contacted to retrieve available data.

clerk -- data archiving/decoding subsystem

• The clerk regularly checks the "inbox/" folder for new files
• When a new file is detected the clerk archives the new file if possible (if not, the clerk aborts processing of that file)
• It examines the name of the file to determine the correct decoding program to be run and executes the appropriate decoder
• The decoder will analyze the file and convert its contents to the TCOON standard data format (standardized units, time zone (UTC), etc.)
  • If any errors or suspicious data are encountered the decoder will either abort or refuse to process the suspicious data
• The clerk will forward any good data from the decoder to the database via the "sximp" program

mysql - the mysql database

• The mysql database simply handles the MySQL^? database tables
• Each station has its own table (e.g. "sx014" for station 014)
• All of the tables have the same schema (id, date, ser, ten values, source)

cbidb - the CBI database/processing account

• This account contains all of the programs for extracting the data from the various databases, processing the data, and presenting it via the web
• [pm to add this later]

voiceinfo - voice response system

• This is simply a set of perl scripts and .wav files controlled by a perl script that retrieves data from the database (via the CGI scripts in the cbidb account) and converts them to voice outputs

I have no clue what's going on here, but I know the wiki password and now everyone will suffer. Seriously, I'm trying to fill in some of the docs as I learn. --Niall

kiosk - dunno

• Some sort of limited interface to real-time data?

forecasts - predictions based on ANN models?

• Lottery numbers and such.

mesoeta - no clue, looks old though. Andy P? Old version of the NN model?

pharosdb - The nickname for the entire database system? pobot, clerk, and web-interface system (name?).

rdiwaves - Old HF radar project system?