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Weather Software => GRLevel X Software => Topic started by: carterlake on August 17, 2006, 07:38:32 PM

Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: carterlake on August 17, 2006, 07:38:32 PM
Since this is the first post in the new forums, I just wanted to say that any weather hobbyist should give GRLevel3 a very serious look.

I use it for three reasons:

1) Learn more about how NOAA radar works and how doppler radar in general works. This product will really educate on operations of NOAA radar.

2) Awesome real-time interactive radar. You can pan around... zoom in or out... pull up NOAA archives going back to 1997 and view old data. Flip around the country to look at other radars. My wife loves the program for storms. She puts it up on her laptop and it auto updates the radar.

3) Finally, you can publish your own radar data on the internet... to your website. Here is where I wish GRLevel3 had a few more features but it still does a very good job. I still have Weather Underground as a backup but people see CarterLake.org radar first and foremost.

Here's my Radar FAQ page:
http://www.carterlake.org/radarinfo.php

And here's the main radar page:
http://www.carterlake.org/wx5.php

GRLevelX - Download the trial version... it's crippled but gives a good idea of the features.
http://www.grlevelx.com/
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: anchorageweather on August 17, 2006, 08:04:48 PM
I have considered investing in something like this for a long time.  I've been looking for a product that  has a "good" street level depiction.  How does GRLevel3 look when really zoomed in?

I'd love to see a screenshot on max zoom.  Maybe next time there is some weather, you can grab one  :wink:
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: carterlake on August 17, 2006, 08:13:35 PM
Quote from: "anchorageweather"
I have considered investing in something like this for a long time.  I've been looking for a product that  has a "good" street level depiction.  How does GRLevel3 look when really zoomed in?

I'd love to see a screenshot on max zoom.  Maybe next time there is some weather, you can grab one  :wink:


GRlevel3 is a true GIS (geographic information system), so you can install street level data available from the US Census Bureau. Keep in mind though, while the data is "live", the radar data only updates at most every 4 minutes so it's not like you can use it to see exactly when it will hit your house.  :wink:

(http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/4530/grlevel3mw7.png)
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: katlon on September 09, 2006, 07:16:48 PM
This is the greatest radar software that I have seen yet. The zoom factor is unbelievable.

(http://pulliamjr.com/closeup.png)
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: anchorageweather on September 13, 2006, 05:20:23 PM
Quote from: "carterlake"
Quote from: "anchorageweather"
I have considered investing in something like this for a long time.  I've been looking for a product that  has a "good" street level depiction.  How does GRLevel3 look when really zoomed in?

I'd love to see a screenshot on max zoom.  Maybe next time there is some weather, you can grab one  :wink:


GRlevel3 is a true GIS (geographic information system), so you can install street level data available from the US Census Bureau. Keep in mind though, while the data is "live", the radar data only updates at most every 4 minutes so it's not like you can use it to see exactly when it will hit your house.  :wink:

(http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/4530/grlevel3mw7.png)


If you don't mind me asking - which background are you using here?
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: carterlake on September 13, 2006, 05:54:59 PM
Quote from: "anchorageweather"
If you don't mind me asking - which background are you using here?


AllisonHouse.... http://www.allisonhouse.com/grlevelx/maps/

Colorized and Shaded Enhanced Topographic with Green/Yellow Shifted

I did tweak the color just a bit in Photoshop. I imagine, i'll go to the brown in the later fall/winter but maybe not.
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: anchorageweather on September 13, 2006, 07:22:00 PM
Quote from: "carterlake"
Quote from: "anchorageweather"
If you don't mind me asking - which background are you using here?


AllisonHouse.... http://www.allisonhouse.com/grlevelx/maps/

Colorized and Shaded Enhanced Topographic with Green/Yellow Shifted

I did tweak the color just a bit in Photoshop. I imagine, i'll go to the brown in the later fall/winter but maybe not.


Thanks.
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: n3ouc on September 18, 2006, 03:14:44 PM
Hello CarterLake,
How are U able to screen capture the latest radar files. I have downloaded and registered GRlevelX3 and cannot seem to find any capture to file abilities within the program itself. Would love to publish the information on my site.
Thank You,
Mike Stanton

http://home.ptd.net/~n30uc/index.htm
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: NoQuitters on September 18, 2006, 05:55:41 PM
File/WebPublishing/Start fill out the info just like you did for the ftp for your weather info. It will upload either individual shots or the loop in a sequence.
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: n3ouc on September 19, 2006, 07:54:47 AM
:cry: Is this within the GRLevel3 program itself? I cannot seem to find it at all. I have only 3 choices under the file menu...Polling, Stop polling and save image but can only save manually. Thank you for your help.
Mike
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: NoQuitters on September 19, 2006, 08:15:38 AM
What version of GR3 are you running? If you go to the owners forum, http://www.grlevelx.com/owners/ and go to GRLevel3 News then read the first 2 posts, you will be able to upgrade to the most recent version. Sounds to me like you are running the older version that doesn't have the upload capability in it.
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: n3ouc on September 19, 2006, 12:43:13 PM
:lol: Thank You... That did the trick!  I had registered the demo version that was posted and didn't know how to upgrade. Really appreciate your help. Now have everything up and running with ftp updates.
Take Care
Mike

http://home.ptd.net/~n30uc/index.htm
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: NoQuitters on September 19, 2006, 01:43:12 PM
Glad you got everything figured out! :D
Title: Re: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: Anole on February 02, 2007, 01:17:02 PM
Just wanted to throw in a "me too" on GRlevel3. Now that I've had a chance to play with it a bit and tweak it some more to my liking I have to say it's a pretty spiffy tool. In combo with the Allison House feeds it's really nice.

I'm still doing some tweaking but you can see the results on my page at
http://weather.anolecomputer.com/

Just click on the radar thumbnails on the page. You can animate by clicking the link or the full size static image.

Here's the setup for how I'm doing the various zooms thumbnails etc. It's a bit convoluted but much of that convolution is part of my process of eliminating some of my ftp connections to my hosted server. Currently I'm running as many as 8 connections at one time from various programs. I'm trying to get that down to 2. Regardless, here's what I'm doing to get the radar like you see it.

1) I have an AutoIT script setup to open up 3 instances of GRLevel3 at three different zoom levels with some other tweaks for each instance. I posted about this in this thread:

http://wxforum.net/posting.php?mode=quote&p=3219

2) Since each instance of GRLevel3 has to do it's own FTP jobs, and since it currently cannot save the files locally, each instance of GRLevel3 ftp's it's images to a local server (running Windows SBS 2003).

3) A php script runs every minute on the local server to generate the thumbnail images for the radar.

4) WS-FTP Pro 2007 has a sync job setup on the local server to ftp the fullsize and thumbnail graphics to the hosted web server every 5 minutes.

At some point all of my data except WD clientraw will be setup in the same manner so that I can update the entire site from 4 different programs with one FTP job + the clientraw "stream".


EDIT: Fogot to add I'm using Slideshow  (http://www.maani.us/slideshow/) to do the animation.
Title: GRLevel3 - a great addition to weather hobbyist
Post by: wmiler on February 02, 2007, 02:52:26 PM
Quote from: "katlon"
This is the greatest radar software that I have seen yet. The zoom factor is unbelievable.

Cool, I can see my mom's house from that picture :)