WATER GAUGES in APRS 29 June 06 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 March 2011 UPDATE!!!! As of March 24 2011, the standard format used by hundreds of these sensors on FIRENET appears to be: ;09428508 *061713z3401.40N/11424.75Ww3.57gh/82cfs Which is a standard OBJECT report with the text "3.57gh/82cfs". This means water gage number 09428508 with a reading of 3.57 GageHeight and 82 cubic feet per second. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Most of the details from this page have been folded into a generalized APRS1.2 addendum on all new additions to the WEATHER formats in APRS. Please see: http://aprs.org/aprs12/weather-new.txt or The full APRS1.2 addendum: http://aprs.org/aprs12.html WATER GAUGE INFO: In June 06, water level gage information was added to APRS. There are two symbols, one for H2O "/w" and the other for FLOOD "\w". The device can choose to send either of these symbols depending on its own threshold for "flooding". Or instead, if additional weather data is avaiable it can simply add the water level information in the Fxxxx format to a weather report. As of March 24 2011, we have seen no gages use the weather format and all appear to be using the standard format used by hundreds of these sensors appears to be: ;09428508 *061713z3401.40N/11424.75Ww3.57gh/82cfs Which is a standard OBJECT report with the text "3.57gh/82cfs". This means water gage number 09428508 with a reading of 3.57 GageHeight and 82 cubic feet per second. In 2006 we also defined a water gage/flooding format for inclusion in weather data. In that case, the height above or below flood or tide level in inches was to be included in the position text (or weather data string) as Fxxxx and that string is chosen to be compatible with the standard APRS weather reporting parameters. In addition, a voltage field Vvvv was also added. Thus, the usual APRS complete weather report string similar to: DIR/SPD/Gggg/Tttt/Rrrr/Pppp etc is extended by adding these additional parameters for Fxxxx water level above or below flood stage or mean tide in tenths of a foot. Values can range between +999 and -999 in tenths meaning -99.9 to +99.9 feet. Meters are not used for the on air format because it gives too little or too much resolution to fit in the fixed length 4 bytes that are required. Vxxx battery volts in tenths 128 would mean 12.8 volts Zxx Device type These fields can be added to a WX station report where the WX symbol would continue to be used, or to heighligh that the weather station has a water gage, it can use the weather station overlay character of "F". The standard WX report allows for any field to be indicated as not available either by omission or by replacing the value with "...". Since the wind direction and speed and temperature are required fields, this means the minimum weather report with flood info is WX symbol -plus- .../...t...VxxxFxxxx Notice that if water data is added to a WX report, then only Fxxxx and optional Vxxx are added to the WX report. Examples are: Weather reports: DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhW_ddd/sss/Gggg/Tttt/Fxxxx... DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhW_ddd/sss/Gggg/Tttt/Fxxxx/Vvvv... DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhW_ddd/sss/Gggg/Tttt/Rrrr/PppppFxxxx... Water Gage reports: DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhWwFxxxx/ZFA DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhWwFxxxxVvvv/ZFA DDMM.hhN\DDDMM.hhWwFxxxxVvvv/ZFA DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhWwddd/sss/Gggg/Tttt/Fxxxx/ZFA DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhWwddd/sss/Gggg/Tttt/FxxxxVvvv/ZFA DDMM.hhN\DDDMM.hhWwddd/sss/Gggg/Tttt/FxxxxVvvv/ZFA Notice that two of these indicate the FLOOD symbol (\). Also notice that existing software needs to now consider parsing the appearance of any WATER or FLOOD symbols to see if they also include Weather. Also, everyone's weather parser needs to look at the WX fields for the optional additional Fxxxx or Vvvv fields. de WB4APR, Bob