GEMPAK for Windows!

8. January 2009 edit

  • I had planned on waiting until Des Moines to announce this, but I've had enough people ask me to set things up before storm season gets too far into gear -- so the release is now ready!

    Did you ever want a full-fledged weather display system, but not have the resources to dedicate a PC, or get scared off by Linux, or want to hook up your cellphone and run GEMPAK on the road? Relief is in store...

    Thanks to the free VMWare Player (http://vmware.com/products/player/), you can use a pre-configured player file to seamlessly integrate GEMPAK into your Windows-based machine! For just $145 (only $120 through the end of March) you will receive the software completely ready to run on DVD, and be able to load GEMPAK and display the data without any knowledge of Linux...

    For a typical system, we recommend that you have a 500MHz or faster processor and 512MB RAM minimum (1GB RAM recommended). You must have enough memory to run Windows, plus the memory required for GEMPAK.

    Use this if you don't want to dedicate a machine for full-time operations, or if you want to take your laptop on the road and use GEMPAK while mobile!

    The full version for Linux computers is still available, and that offers the option of generating web images and running your own WRF... And for the month of March, the Workstation WRF will be installed and completely configured to your specs -- for free!

    The Skywatch GEMPAK system is completely ready out-of-the-box with web-based data sources. If you are a student at a weather-related university, you likely have access to IDD data distribution which is MUCH more robust. If that's the case, LDM can be configured at no additional cost!

    For more info, hit the webpage or drop me a note.

    http://skywatch.org/gempak/gempak.htm


  • To clarify - this will run on Vista, XP, 2000, and Server.

    I've not tested - but there's no reason it shouldn't work on Mac's running VMWare Player either.


  • This sounds like a nice development. I have a couple questions:
    Does this require an LDM running locally to ingest data? If so, is the LDM software windows compatible.

    Since you are using vmware, does this mean that you are still loading linux? Or, is your release a native version of gempak ported to windows?

    Thanks.


  • Initial deployment is going well, so I'll keep the StormTrack discount going through May... And if anyone feels up to making a nice graphic to use as a banner ad (fitting the http://www.stormtrack.org/advertis.htm dimensions) I'll give an additional price break!


  • It uses FTP and HTTP to pull the data, instead of relying on LDM's push.

    If you have an IDD source (local university maybe?) then I can set LDM up for you -- certainly that's preferable but not open access like the pull routines.

    It is Centos v5 (equivalent to RHEL) with GEMPAK running, so it's a full Linux distro.


  • I have a boatload of scripts in there, some aren't used any more but you're more than welcome to play around. I'm also setting up a forum on the website to keep things interactive.


  • Interesting. Esp since its a requirement of OU SoM to learn GEMPAK. They first expose student to this in the intro courses through various assignments, etc... I struggled at it mightily as at the time (METR 2413--no longer around) they pretty much gave us the assignment and threw us to the wolves, so it was up to me to get help thru my classmates and half of them hadnt a clue as to what to do and those that did were too snotty to help. Thus I failed the class with a D. Anyways I just learned this semester that it comes back Sr yr thru your capstone project b/c in order to generate the weather maps needed, you have to run programs through GEMPAK. I know this is huge with SPC as most of their graphics (Md's/surface obs) run on GEMPAK. So will definately look into this GEMPAK for PC little more, esp once the semester is over and I have more time to devote to this.
    FWIW heres my GEMPAK from METR2413 way back in spring 04:
    http://weather.ou.edu/~jwhite







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