AWIPS II

[CurtisWeatherman]

Anyone tried it out yet since its release?

[Eskimo Joe]

I didn't even know it was live.  Thought 2015 was the target time.

[weatherwiz]

It's out?  

 

Checked the status a few weeks back and thought it wasn't going to be until 2015

[bdgwx]

Interesting...it appears like it was released today for public beta testing.

 

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/awips2/

[heavy_wx]

Started playing around with the beta release this morning. Since only RedHat/CentOS are supported for AWIPS 2, I had to install it on a virtual machine. It's a bit slow using 8 gb memory and two cores but I think the performance would be decent on a modern desktop with a CentOS/RedHat partition.

 

As of now, I haven't been able to produce color-filled contours of gridded model data, only monotone contour lines. Also, the data server provided by unidata has only radar mosiacs and no single-station radar data.

 

The relative ease in producing cross-section analyses is a definite plus as well as the D2D multi-panel display. I think it's also a bit easier to load specific model fields into the display compared with the legacy gempak GUIs (GARP/NMAP).

 

[bdgwx]

When I get a chance I'll download it and start playing around with it. I'll have to get CentOS installed on a VM first though. How difficult was the AWIPS II install? is it mandatory to have an EDEX server installed to use the CAVE client?

[heavy_wx]

When I get a chance I'll download it and start playing around with it. I'll have to get CentOS installed on a VM first though. How difficult was the AWIPS II install? is it mandatory to have an EDEX server installed to use the CAVE client?

 

I used virtualbox on Ubuntu to install the 64 bit version of CentOS. To install AWIPS 2, I essential followed the instructions here

 

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/awips2/doc/cave_install.html.

 

Everything is set up using the yum repository so it's very straightforward. The only issue I ran into was making sure the 'awips' user running the CAVE client had write permissions in the specified directory.

 

After installation there is a window that asks for the address of an EDEX server. Using the address found in the above instructions worked for me.

[bdgwx]

I used virtualbox on Ubuntu to install the 64 bit version of CentOS. To install AWIPS 2, I essential followed the instructions here

 

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/awips2/doc/cave_install.html.

 

Everything is set up using the yum repository so it's very straightforward. The only issue I ran into was making sure the 'awips' user running the CAVE client had write permissions in the specified directory.

 

After installation there is a window that asks for the address of an EDEX server. Using the address found in the above instructions worked for me.

 

I'm used to using VirtualBox as well. I got everything installed. It was actually pretty straightforward like you said. I only assigned 4GB to my VM so it was a little slow, but ran nevertheless. The Unidata website recommends 16GB.

 

One issue I'm seeing is that I get a message saying that there was an error setting up the alert server, but it seems to come up and run anyway.

 

Also, I couldn't get any gridded data to load onto the maps when it is NCP mode. If I change the display to D2D mode it loads up just fine. Honestly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time with it yet though.

 

How do you load arbitrary GRIB files into it?

[heavy_wx]

I'm used to using VirtualBox as well. I got everything installed. It was actually pretty straightforward like you said. I only assigned 4GB to my VM so it was a little slow, but ran nevertheless. The Unidata website recommends 16GB.

 

One issue I'm seeing is that I get a message saying that there was an error setting up the alert server, but it seems to come up and run anyway.

 

Also, I couldn't get any gridded data to load onto the maps when it is NCP mode. If I change the display to D2D mode it loads up just fine. Honestly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time with it yet though.

 

How do you load arbitrary GRIB files into it?

 

In NCP mode, the "+Data" button opens a window that has preloaded grid fields for a variety of models under "Grid". I don't think you can open local grib files with the CAVE client; I think it has to come in through the EDEX server. I haven't tried it but it appears you can load GIS data into the display. In the D2D perspective, you can open individual fields from the available models using the volume browser located in the "Models" menu.

[CurtisWeatherman]

Is anyone willing to put an installation cd together to install awips ii on a virtual machine that runs linux? If so, how much would you charge?

[bdgwx]

Is anyone willing to put an installation cd together to install awips ii on a virtual machine that runs linux? If so, how much would you charge?

 

I'm not sure it would be worth it at this point. You have to point to the Unidata EDEX server and it may only be setup for OAX (Omaha) right now. I'm not sure what the long term prospects are for that EDEX server. It may go away after the beta period.

 

It's actually pretty easy to setup. Download and install VirtualBox (free). Download CentOS 6.5 (get the LiveDVD iso) and boot from in VirtualBox to install. The CentOS install is pretty straight forward. Then follow the instructions from the link heavy_wx posted. If you follow the steps exactly it should work. The only thing missing in those steps is assigning a password to the "awips" user that it has you create with the command line. But, you can do that via the CentOS GUI tools rather easily.

[bdgwx]

In NCP mode, the "+Data" button opens a window that has preloaded grid fields for a variety of models under "Grid". I don't think you can open local grib files with the CAVE client; I think it has to come in through the EDEX server. I haven't tried it but it appears you can load GIS data into the display. In the D2D perspective, you can open individual fields from the available models using the volume browser located in the "Models" menu.

 

Thanks. I have most of the stuff figured out now. It looks like some of the stuff via +Data is available and some isn't. It seems hit-and-miss. I think that's why I first thought it wasn't working. In D2D mode I got the cross-section, time-height, and sounding displays figure out too.

 

One annoying thing was getting the VirtualBox guest additions installed in the VM. CentOS 6.5 and VB 4.3.14 still have an issue somewhere so you have to perform special steps to get it installed. Without the guest additions you can't run the VM in full screen mode which is a must to view the skew-t charts correctly because they take up a lot of real-estate.

[CurtisWeatherman]

Just curious from those that have tried AWIPS II.....what kind and how much ECMWF data do you get to view?

[weatherwiz]

Would like this program but definitely would have it get a desktop to support system requirements. Just curious but how much would I have to spend on a desktop in order to smoothly run the program?

[bdgwx]

I didn't have too many issues running it on a VM with 4 GB of RAM so I think you'd be fine with a fast 8 GB machine and a dedicated CentOS boot partition.

 

To answer the other question, there are no ECMWF products available.

[cja1987]

I finally got AWIPS 2 up and running.

 

I too am having issues with any kind of color fill of gridded data. You just get one flat color even though you can overlay the contours of the same field and know the data should look different based on the displayed default color bar.

 

Has anyone been able to produce color filled maps of gridded data? This is one of the best features of AWIPS, you can make some pretty damn cool looking stuff.

 

I'm running it in a VM on CentOS 6.5. I'm also finding loops of any field to be completely useless, they are running wayyyyyyy too slow that its not even worth it. Ive got 16 GB! of RAM allocated to my VM and its still painfully slow to loop anything and barely even loops at all. Is this everyone elses experience or am I doing something wrong?

 

As it stands now, this is pretty disappointing at least in a virtual environment. Its an amazing piece of software. Ive played with AWIPS I and FxNet back in the day and it is by far the best operational WX software going. AWIPS II from what I can pick through it seems even more powerful.

 

Are you guys getting any use out of it in a VM? That has got to be the reason its slow, FxNet used to run fine for me on a desktop pushing data over a web server, orders of magnitude faster than this is going.

 

Might it just be time to bite the bullet and buy a separate box and dedicate to CentOS?

[ohleary]

I finally got AWIPS 2 up and running.

 

I too am having issues with any kind of color fill of gridded data. You just get one flat color even though you can overlay the contours of the same field and know the data should look different based on the displayed default color bar.

 

Has anyone been able to produce color filled maps of gridded data? This is one of the best features of AWIPS, you can make some pretty damn cool looking stuff.

 

I'm running it in a VM on CentOS 6.5. I'm also finding loops of any field to be completely useless, they are running wayyyyyyy too slow that its not even worth it. Ive got 16 GB! of RAM allocated to my VM and its still painfully slow to loop anything and barely even loops at all. Is this everyone elses experience or am I doing something wrong?

 

As it stands now, this is pretty disappointing at least in a virtual environment. Its an amazing piece of software. Ive played with AWIPS I and FxNet back in the day and it is by far the best operational WX software going. AWIPS II from what I can pick through it seems even more powerful.

 

Are you guys getting any use out of it in a VM? That has got to be the reason its slow, FxNet used to run fine for me on a desktop pushing data over a web server, orders of magnitude faster than this is going.

 

Might it just be time to bite the bullet and buy a separate box and dedicate to CentOS?

Wow FX-Net! I worked at a test bed for it and actually wrote the user manual as an online source. Search FX user manual. Gonna look onto it.

[cja1987]

Wow FX-Net! I worked at a test bed for it and actually wrote the user manual as an online source. Search FX user manual. Gonna look onto it.

 

haha, nice! Id take it back over this, I dont have access to anything like that anymore.

[bdgwx]

Glad you got it running cja!

 

It's definitely slow for me, but usable. It's takes forever to launch and loading gridded data is slow too, but that is attributed to the EDEX server being over the internet I think. I haven't played around with looping very much yet, but I didn't think it was that slow. I'll have to try it again. Have you checked to make sure you allocated more than one CPU to your VM? Maybe that would help.

 

Did you figure out the cross-section tool? That is really cool. AWIPS II is the only tool I know of that allows the geostrophic momentum and thete-e technique for diagnosing conditional symmetric instability. That might be fun to use this winter. Time-height and skew-t charts look great too.

 

Here are my issues so far. #1 is a huge issue for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

 

1. I'm having a problem getting it load all frames of the model data especially for the GFS. For example, it will load hours 00 and 06 and then skip to 30 or something like that. Sometimes it will even skip the first 180 hours and start at 192. It's really annoying and totally unusable. The NAM seems to work better, but still suffers from the missing frame issue.

 

2. I haven't figured out how to do color fills either. I also haven't figured out how to draw wind barbs.

 

3. When I try to localize the installation to LSX (instead of OAX) it doesn't seem to do anything. The D2D view still wants to center on Omaha. The strange thing is that the points and baselines do seem to default to the correct location.

 

4. No site specific radar data. I'm a GR2AE and GRL3 user so I'm not too concerned with this really.

 

I do see a possible market for commercial hosting of an EDEX server (maybe the likes of AllisonHouse) so the long term prospects are interesting. 

[cja1987]

Glad you got it running cja!

 

It's definitely slow for me, but usable. It's takes forever to launch and loading gridded data is slow too, but that is attributed to the EDEX server being over the internet I think. I haven't played around with looping very much yet, but I didn't think it was that slow. I'll have to try it again. Have you checked to make sure you allocated more than one CPU to your VM? Maybe that would help.

 

Did you figure out the cross-section tool? That is really cool. AWIPS II is the only tool I know of that allows the geostrophic momentum and thete-e technique for diagnosing conditional symmetric instability. That might be fun to use this winter. Time-height and skew-t charts look great too.

 

Here are my issues so far. #1 is a huge issue for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

 

1. I'm having a problem getting it load all frames of the model data especially for the GFS. For example, it will load hours 00 and 06 and then skip to 30 or something like that. Sometimes it will even skip the first 180 hours and start at 192. It's really annoying and totally unusable. The NAM seems to work better, but still suffers from the missing frame issue.

 

2. I haven't figured out how to do color fills either. I also haven't figured out how to draw wind barbs.

 

3. When I try to localize the installation to LSX (instead of OAX) it doesn't seem to do anything. The D2D view still wants to center on Omaha. The strange thing is that the points and baselines do seem to default to the correct location.

 

4. No site specific radar data. I'm a GR2AE and GRL3 user so I'm not too concerned with this really.

 

I do see a possible market for commercial hosting of an EDEX server (maybe the likes of AllisonHouse) so the long term prospects are interesting. 

 

I should clarify, gridded data, once loaded, loops great. Satellite data loops at about 1 frame every 6 seconds and skips frames randomly despite them being loaded, aka its not operationally useful.

 

I just upped my VM from 1 processor to 4 which is the most it would take and that helped a bit. Thx for suggestion, my dumb self would not have figured that out.

 

I'd like to say the "pushed over the internet" is the reason for slow satellite loops, etc but I'm just not buying it. I used to use FxNet and a commercially available clone MetwiseNet (since abandoned as far as I can tell) both of which were AWIPS emulators that pushed data over the net from a server in Colorado Springs. I used to have multiple overlays of model data/sat/radar data, etc loaded and could call up and loop smoothly in a matter of seconds. This was on 2007/2008 technology and my little old windows xp laptop with 2 GB RAM.

 

You are not kidding on the Mg/Theta-E X-Section capability for CSI, its amazing. People have "brute forced" the calculations and plots in GEMPAK and GrADS as far as I'm aware but its not as clean or nice looking and you can't cook one up nearly as fast. Look here for what AWIPS is capable of X-Section graphics wise when operating at full potential:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/Image/ict/studies/jakub/x-sect.png

 

The other frustrating thing I'm seeing is the inability to change line weight and style (dash/dash-dot/solid, etc) for each individual field loaded. Say you load up 500 mb heights, 1000-850 thickness and a QPF image (images so far not working but pretend). In Metwise I used to have the heights show up a bit thicker than default and the thickness be dashed lines. This could be achieved by right clicking the field in the bottom right once it was loaded. Now that option only brings up color. You can do Options -> Display Properties in the CAVE menu and mess with line styles and weights but that applies your selection to ALL fields that are loaded. No good.

 

1) Same issue in general, also if you have not, look in the volume browser once you get a field in the "product selection list" right click it and then click "show detailed inventory" for me I'm only getting a few frames at times spaced at odd intervals or for the GFS sometimes only like F300+ hrs. I think its a matter of what data is actually coming in vs internal to program.

 

2) There has got to be a bug with color fills, its dead easy in Metwise and FxNet and this is the same basic interface. Try to plot a vorticity image then plot it as a contour plot over it. Look at the values on contour lines, the data is correct and the color bar that pops up shows you what you should be seeing but you probably just see one plain color, right? Thats what I get.

 

Wind Barbs if you go through Models -> Volume Browser and select plain old "wind" in the drop down menu under wind, you should get barbs. Should. It works for me anyways.

 

3) Same thing

 

4) Ditto again and dont care that much with GR but I'm sure this will be fixed with later versions

 

Overall, I think its Beta for a reason, alot of things are screwed up. I honestly am quite upset by this. Rant warning but the first time I saw AWIPS II run was at the AMS conference in 2009 on some Raytheon guys laptop. Case in point, its been a while. This release I find pretty much unusable compared to the functionality I was used to in Metwise and FxNet. Being able to customize maps by changing individual fields line weights and styles is important. Ditto for making pretty cross sections. Images of gridded data? HELLO!?!?!? Its 2014 not 1984 very important and pretty poor form to push a version that does not do that right. I hope future releases are alot more robust and give the user proper flexibility. If somebody can come up with a multi platform emulator that allows about 70% awips functionality with circa 2002 technology (FxNet/Metwise) and runs fast on a simple windows or mac platform, id expect a little better out of this release given 6+ years in the making.

 

I hope unidata and anyone else involved in pushing this to the public get their acts together in subsequent releases. To me it seems this was forced out. In the meantime, I hope people do not write off this software, Ive played with the real thing a little bit and FxNet and MetwiseNet alot and it is amazingly capable software for operational meteorology, just pure WX porn like nothing else when operating at its full potential. In the unlikely case that anyone here does not realize that, google images will show you what we are still missing. When operating at full potential, you will not find a more user friendly way of making highly customized WX graphics.

[cja1987]

This might be stupid but has everyone just installed the "CAVE client only"???

 

If so, that might be the root of our problems wrt color fills, slow loops, etc

 

From the unidata site: "Non-EDU domains (.com, .gov, etc.) will need to install and configure their own EDEX Data Server"

 

Also, looking at the flow chart CAVE works in concert with a seemingly LOCAL EDEX server and IDD is what ultimately serves up the data.

 

When I get some extra time to play with it, Im gonna go through the install of EDEX and AWIPS II and see what happens

[bdgwx]

This might be stupid but has everyone just installed the "CAVE client only"???

 

If so, that might be the root of our problems wrt color fills, slow loops, etc

 

From the unidata site: "Non-EDU domains (.com, .gov, etc.) will need to install and configure their own EDEX Data Server"

 

Also, looking at the flow chart CAVE works in concert with a seemingly LOCAL EDEX server and IDD is what ultimately serves up the data.

 

When I get some extra time to play with it, Im gonna go through the install of EDEX and AWIPS II and see what happens

 

Super late response here. I'm not sure I would be able to host a local EDEX server and have it download data. Don't you have to have special permission to use the backend data feeds provided by NOAA?

 

I saw another forum that AllisonHouse may be looking into hosting an EDEX server which we could then subscribe to for a fee. I might consider springing for it for it ever happened.

 

I definitely think the EDEX server hosted by Unidata is intentionally limited in various ways. Not showing all forecast hours for the model runs is the most severe right now.

[FWX-Keith]

Even though the unidata azure server is down you can register to use AWIPS data here http://fwx.co/data.html