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NZ blue water cruisers ssb weather operator tracking site


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Hi Cruisers,

 

Having just returned from our first successful trip to the islands, we discovered a need for radio net operators, such as Gulf Harbor Radio, to have yachts report their current position via email, as too much precious time was being taken up with yachts reporting their positions over ssb during the radio net propagation window. Those that did report via email were being recorded in a book - a very laborious manual process which I thought could easily be automated.

 

So I have just started today and hopefully will have a system up and working in the next few weeks where yachts can email a position report to report@yit.co.nz (Yacht In Transit) containing their position, current weather conditions, course, speed, revised ETA, and a quick status update.

The report automatically gets assigned to that yacht's account, which needs to be pre-registered before departure with details of the boat, a photo and, if desired, approved access to a Facebook account (if you login via Facebook, it automatically creates an account on the YIT site and pushes status and location updates to Facebook).

 

This then appears in the radio operator's list of yachts they are currently giving weather to or taking passage check-ins for. This should make life easier for radio operators dealing with lots of boats in the long run. Radio operators can choose to respond via email or SSB and may cover groups of yachts in close proximity with a single response. Added spin-offs are that family and friends can get automated position and status updates via Facebook, and other cruisers can get them via email from yachts they have chosen to 'follow' on YIT.

 

By the end of March I should hopefully have it all up and running and would love to get some testers to help iron out the bugs and make it as user friendly as possible, so if you're keen please let me know and I'll keep you up to date with progress.

 

cheers

mike

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How will this be different to the service http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps_intro offers?

 

It's different in the fact that this is aimed primarily at radio operators as an interactive tool to manage radio nets. It shows lists of yachts currently checking in with them during each radio sched, which allows them to free up valuable time otherwise wasted on error prone position reporting during ssb transmissions. The other functionality is just a by product of the way it will operate.

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How will this be different to the service http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps_intro offers?

 

It's different in the fact that this is aimed primarily at radio operators as an interactive tool to manage radio nets. It shows lists of yachts currently checking in with them during each radio sched, which allows them to free up valuable time otherwise wasted on error prone position reporting during ssb transmissions. The other functionality is just a by product of the way it will operate.

 

[cant edit page grr]

I see now the reporter software may do the above as well. Then the only difference would then be that this would be a more modern web based application with the associated benifits [for ground based stations].

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One of the reasons I go cruising is to get away from email. I kind of like the social aspect of the SSB yacht check in and being able to fix the positions of our cruising friends. I generally use the Rag of the Air rather than some fusty official site. But then my cruising philosophy is probably a bit different from most.

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One of the reasons I go cruising is to get away from email. I kind of like the social aspect of the SSB yacht check in and being able to fix the positions of our cruising friends. I generally use the Rag of the Air rather than some fusty official site. But then my cruising philosophy is probably a bit different from most.

 

 

About time you changed your Avatar before a storm or earthquate gets you.

 

Apart from that I agree with you 100% except the e-mail part. I thought you got e-mail warnings from met service. To use a web site u must have a sat phone or sat connection and you can't access a web site vissually by ssb. Russel radio are great at predicting times and weather wind changes and on the minute actual weather conditions that are actually happening as you listen to the other yachts in the area or far away. Plus when you have given your details a astute weather operator will ask for info on the next wind change and time, taking into consideration your course heading and boat speed and you can also ask can he fore see any unuasal weather developements happening before the next sked. Russel radio on numerious occassion have predicted the time and direction on a wind change that allowed us to take advantage off and make minerva reef when all the other vessels that did not have the info missed, to the all and sundry crew displeasure on the vessels that they had been promised after paying there contributions and expenses to get there by the skippers. Minerva reef is a experience that only minerva reef gives and be able to join the unofficial minerva reef club - obtain a much sort after and valued minerva reef t-shirt prize.

 

OC

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Ok since i'm unemployed I decided to carry on and build this for gulf harbor radio anyway, since I did promise to do it for them and they provide such a wicked free weather service for yachts in the islands.

 

So easter is the big test. Those that want to can use it, those that don't dont have to. Its totally free as I built it as a favor.

 

Current Features done as of now for one incoming email:

-Position report, plots on google map and draws lines following your progress. Shows position, speed and heading.

-Optional status from email is shown on position update. (TODO push to facebook)

-Optional blog to the site from same email. (TODO push to facebook)

-Optional as many dive sites added to the dive sites on the site with gps and description.

 

Features ready for testing over easter:

-Request public blogs, public status updates and/or private blogs and status for boats you are following.

-Request dive sites, when given a postion returns an email with sites within 30mile radius sorted by distance

-Request help file with all commands and information how to register, add status, blog, dive sites etc

-Register from email.

 

Will post up the details closer to easter for those that want to test. All feedback will be appreciated. This site is going to be used by yachts using the gulf harbor weather service and hopefully yachts that dive. The dive locations would have been handy for us as we are divers and have heaps of locations to add after scrambling around trying to find them in the islands. We also know a few other dive yachties that have a lot of dive sites to add.

 

Stuff like this makes being unemployed fun :mrgreen:

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Ok well I've got it sort of all working now. Still heaps to do but its up and running and very usable (as far as my testing has shown). I've had to put it live now as the wife wants me to find a job and stop living off her :crazy: I thought I'd try and extend last seasons cruise as long as I could :mrgreen:

 

Visit the live site at:

http://www.yit.co.nz

 

Everything on the site has been submitted by email, except the photos. You can pull down everything off the site via email (except the photos). You can pull down a whole bunch of weather reports via email which include but not limited to:

:tonga (gets tonga marine)

:fiji (gets fiji marine)

:fiji-towns (gets fiji-towns)

:pacific (gets pacific high seas : NZ metservice)

:niue

:kiribati

:nauru

:tuvalu

:cookis

:swpacific (fiji metservice)

:subtropic (NZ metservice)

 

anybody can request one of those and they dont even have to be registered. Just send an email to get@yit.co.nz with no subject with the following:

[weather]

:tonga

:subtropic

 

you can get diving, snorkeling and walking locations via email and not even be registered. Try it for tonga, send an email to:

 

get@yit.co.nz

no subject

[position] 18 39.862s 173 58.292w

[diving] 50

[snorkeling] 50

 

 

This gets you diving and snorkeling locations within in 50 miles of the given gps co-ordinates. Try it for savu savu as well. The same applies for position based blogs.

 

To build up the base of walking treks, diving and snorkeling locations its best if people register and submit them so others can enjoy 8) There are no costs, its all completely free to use and will always be.

 

You can get the whole help file by sending a completely blank email to

help@yit.co.nz with no subject and no body.

 

All feedback is welcome and would really be appreciated. You can email it to mike@ore.co.nz if you like.

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Well I've been beavering away tidying up the site somewhat and think it's pretty usable now after several yachts ironed out the bugs and stuck with it last season.

 

A couple of improvements as requested by those cruisers that used it last season:

 

* You can subscribe to weather areas for any number of days now. ie fiji: 14 (gives 14 days of fiji weather)

 

* New weather area Norfolk for yachts on passage to New cal, subscribe for 3-5 days or so and then it stops automatically. norfolk: 5 .

 

* New weather area brett for yachts coming in to NZ, 3 days out add this to your weather requests and you know what you're heading into coming back into NZ.

 

*New weather area newcal, transalated on the fly via google into english. The local weather translated and sent via email in english instead of having to have internet to get the translated version.

 

* Weather from yachts that report it, within 200 miles. Great on passage and also shows where other yachts are around you in relation to you.

 

* Friends and family can now subscribe to your yacht so when an update or blog comes in they receive an instant email with the update text and link to the site to see the map and any photos.

 

* photos can now be sent with statuses and blog updates. So now you can queue any photo blogs up and send when you have internet. You can still add them later and just send the text versions over ssb and sat.

 

* Gulf harbour radio will be coming online soon (if not already) and will be using the site to keep track of yachts around the pacific. So if you use these guys for weather then it would be recommended that you use the site to help them help you. There will be an option to not be viewable on the public site but be on there weather list.

 

I should get more updates and improvements up onto the site through out the year as time permits. But as with any hobby sometimes other things get priority such as rust and leaking hatches :(

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Hi there,

 

I've been looking for a platform like this which will work with emails from our isatphone. The phone is limited to 160 character emails (including the length of the email address) because emails go via text message. The upside of this is that receiving emails is free as long as they are within the 160 charater limit.

 

I know a lot of other cruising yachts use isatphones and it would be great to be able to take advantage of a service like yours, but none of them seem to be designed to work with short emails (which would be an advantage on any slow email connection, not just an isatphone.

 

Sending messages is expensive so it would be best to condense an entire update down to one or two 160 letter messages. For example, the message format for updates could be condensed by using some shorter tags like [P instead of [position].

 

There is no limit on the number of messages we can receive for free so the important thing is to split the information into 160 letter chunks and condense it as much as possible.

 

Would you possibly be able to implement support for isatphone emails for this season? We would use it for sure and I reckon many others would too because there is nobody else out there supporting automated updates from the isatphone but it's popular and cheaper than iridium.

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It's quite easy to code in the support for this, I'll just double up the tags as you suggest. If you guys don't mind testing this functionality this season then I'll definitly add it for you no sweat. It's not much work and if it means your friends and family will follow you then thats awesome for them. I'm not sure how the format of the emails will come in so if your phone is active now can you test by just sending a test email to mike@ore.co.nz with the following.

 

[p]mypwd

p:175 35.41e 24 45.94s

Not sure how many characters this is but I will stop it at 160 characters.I still have 60 more and I'm running out now.12345

 

That is 160 char according to a char counting site on the net.

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Ok spent the day putting part of this in and its working on the live site, just need someone/chris14679 with a isatphone to test it. It works via normal email fine.

 

so to do an update use the following.

 

s@yit.co.nz (email address)

boatname (email subject)

 

[p]mypwd

p:36 25.6037s 174 50.4068e

This is a test update with a position for kawau island.

 

Now recieving weather updates which maybe 500 chars or larger. I can split out the body into a series of 160char chunks ( I presume the address on sending doesnt enter into the char count does it? ) on the server and send one after another to your isatphone email address. This would push the weather update out in 3-5 emails. Is there a time limit on these like an hourly limit that you know of? Fiji weather, such as towns, can be quite long sometimes.

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Ok spent the day putting part of this in and its working on the live site, just need someone/chris14679 with a isatphone to test it. It works via normal email fine.

 

so to do an update use the following.

 

s@yit.co.nz (email address)

boatname (email subject)

 

[p]mypwd

p:36 25.6037s 174 50.4068e

This is a test update with a position for kawau island.

 

Now recieving weather updates which maybe 500 chars or larger. I can split out the body into a series of 160char chunks ( I presume the address on sending doesnt enter into the char count does it? ) on the server and send one after another to your isatphone email address. This would push the weather update out in 3-5 emails. Is there a time limit on these like an hourly limit that you know of? Fiji weather, such as towns, can be quite long sometimes.

 

Sorry about the delay replying, I forgot to turn on notifications of replies and only just re-found the topic.

 

I don't have credit on the satphone at the moment but will be topping up for an offshore passage soon so we can test it then. I think when you reply to the isatphone then your email address is included in the message and does count as part of the 160 character limit.

 

I'm not aware of any limit on the number of free text messages we can receive.

 

Cheers,

Chris

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Hi Chris,

 

Do you have a date for departure so I know when to have the weather splitting in the site by? The other stuff is working as I didn't need a sat phone to test that.

 

The site has been quite busy with boats on the way to the islands and I've been ironing some issues out as a result and havn't had a chance to build it. Gulf Harbour Radio is getting localised weather information from yachts on passage and is taking that into account for its weather it's predictions. eg a yacht that other day reported winds 10kn NNW and a yacht 58 miles away reported SE 15. So in your sat updates i'll make is so you can add weather as it is extremely useful for the forecaster.

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Hi Chris,

 

Do you have a date for departure so I know when to have the weather splitting in the site by? The other stuff is working as I didn't need a sat phone to test that.

 

The site has been quite busy with boats on the way to the islands and I've been ironing some issues out as a result and havn't had a chance to build it. Gulf Harbour Radio is getting localised weather information from yachts on passage and is taking that into account for its weather it's predictions. eg a yacht that other day reported winds 10kn NNW and a yacht 58 miles away reported SE 15. So in your sat updates i'll make is so you can add weather as it is extremely useful for the forecaster.

 

Thanks very much! Glad to hear the system has been popular and useful , I will email you later with details.

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Thought it might be time to update this post since there have been quite a few updates on the site, and quite a few new yachts (400 total now)

 

So I've been busy in my spare time building more functionality into this cruisers tool. 

 

1) New Chrome, Android and IOS Apps now available to work across most devices, except microsoft phones (hopefully chrome apps will run on those soon).  These apps allow use from ipads and such and talk directly to the site thus not loading any html or css or js and the only communication is the stuff necessary to get your update on the site. Great for poor 3g connections etc. I wanted to take this a step further and have it talk to Irridium GO directly but stone walled there in getting access to their api's.

 

2) But, Iridium GO is now supported, not like predict wind which has it's own integration (and most likely a team of developers to achieve this) but you can just send an email to the YIT server and your positions are automatically plotted on the map. I did email Irridium asking if I could use their interface to connect directly with the YIT app but they didnt even answer my inquiry. I guess hobby software doesn't feature anywhere in their corporate priority list. 

 

3) Satellite images can be downloaded directly into the app. Say you are cruising around the Asawas and a reef pops up in front of you that isnt on the chart (which is so friggen scary!) how do you know which way to go? Easy you just pull in a satellite image from your position (or position where you want to see) and boom you can see the reef in all its glory and 

tapu.png

 

3) Internet radio streaming of GHR in the mornings. Due to the SSB skip from Gulf harbour to Opua, cruisers awaiting weather windows to the islands could not hear GHR weather report in the mornings. One cruiser emailed in asking if we could stream it to the website. So I set it up so there is a live stream from the GHR radio room (booming weather out to the pacific over SSB) which now has listeners in San Fran and OZ. I try to record the weather portion of the broadcast so that is saved and people can listen to it at a later stage. This streaming is only available to logged in users (Which are yachts) as the server won't handle to many people on due to there being a chat room as well for questions and feedback from those on the streaming and not on the SSB.

 

4) Comments on yacht status updates. I reluctantly put this on due to potential spam issues, but it seems to be a big hit with friends and family. If boats set their main YIT email address to their boat email address then they get the comments on passage in email form. Hence you can see why I was worried about spam. I had to make sure it was easy to post comments but no spam could get through. So far so good (touch wood).

 

As you can see from the site (www.yit.nz) it is starting to get messy due to the numbers of boats now using it, so I've had to start a complete rebuild of the front end (there goes all my spare time again) so it can accommodate the big lists of yachts. 

 

One of the biggest decisions I had to make was whether to build the IOS app. The chrome and android was a no brainier, not costs involved except my time to build them. The IOS on the other hand requires money to build. $150/year every year from now to the end of time and if you don't pay the app is removed from the store. Apple takes 30% of that, then tax etc. So every year 20+ new boats have to buy the app just to pay Apple. I took the gamble and released it. This year we have cleared the 20, but next year or the year after who knows how long it will last. Google is great, one small fee - 1/7th of one year for Apple and it's for life. 

 

Anyway the site has turned into a labour of love and by the time my wife and I go cruising again hopefully the system is bug free (tested by the current cruisers), looks awesome and generally perfect (yeah right).  I welcome all thoughts and suggestions as there have been a few from here that I've put into the site and that have worked out well. 

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Well done Mike and thanks for all your efforts.

 

I suspect you may have done some work on the 'manual' also - I must go and download that again and work through the instructions to get the most I can out of your services!

 

Please persevere with Iridium Go!

Unfortunately, most of the YIT services are no use to me because you can only use the Iridium Go! to access content from their own walled garden. This frustrates me no end, and makes a lot of bad words stream through my usually calm mind.

 

Also, FYI: It took me a LOT of effort and technical wizardry to find the Chrome App.

 

I'm tempted to buy the android app... mainly just to support the good work you do. Unfortunately, once again, I can't get unrestricted internet access via the Iridium Go, so the only way to use the app is via local wifi and/or local SIM... ok, i'll go and buy it.

 

For anyone else who cares, my main use of YIT is for tracking.  ie configure Iridium Go to send updates to YIT and family and friends can see where we are and make smart remarks about our sailing angles. :)

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