Pelican Parts Forums - Bryan's Weather Project of Death (tm)

This is sortof a continuation of my PIC Programming thread: http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/215277-pic-programming-anyone.html?highlight=PIC

Basically, my project took a wild turn. It was taking way too long to learn PICs, so I decided to just buy a whole weather station, preassembled and all. So, tonight I ordered a station from www.peetbros.com.

Warning, the following is boring, don't read unless you are a weather nerd.

Before going too far, I'll explain this project a little bit. At my previous job I was programming for a network of radio stations. They were getting weather info from some satellite service, I forget who, but it sucked really bad. They ordered a satellite dish and demodulator, and I built a program that used the free EMWIN (Emergency Management Weather Information Network) data stream. Long story short, after two years, I had the program working perfectly. After I left the station, though, they abandoned the deal, since I wasn't around to keep it updated.

So, just for kicks and giggles, I've decided to start over and build another EMWIN program on my own. The weather station fits in with the satellite dish setup, because I want to integrate current, local conditions in with the huge collection of EMWIN data.

So, I have a satellite dish, but need to buy an EMWIN demodulator. When finished, I'll have $300 in the weather station, $450 in a satellite dish and demodulator. IF all goes according to plan, I'll market it to radio stations, tv stations, and other emergency mangement types. It will run on all OS's, but will be happiest on Linux/OSX. Right now there are some programs that try to do this, but they are Windows ONLY and totally suck. They're all VisualBasic and look like they were put together by a 9-year-old. Whoever designed the current solutions had no idea how radio stations (specifically) work during severe weather.