FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi and AWEKAS
Can I participate?
Yes, if you are running FreeWX or FreeWX-Wi and are uploading data to your website you can contribute your data to AWEKAS without needing to modify the program. Your data will appear on the relevant AWEKAS map.
How do I participate?
There a a number of very simple steps to get going with AWEKAS. Firstly, you need to generate a very simple template for FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi. This is a text file which is named wxtexttemplate.txt. This text file looks like this:
~~WEBOUTTMPC~~
~~WEBOSHUMID~~
~~WEBBARMBHP~~
~~WEBRNTODMM~~
~~WBNWNDASKP~~
~~WBNWINDGSD~~
~~WEBTIMENOW~~
~~WEBDATENOW~~.~~WBNMNTHNOW~~.~~WEBYEARNOW~~
Note that the first line of this file is actually a blank line. To make things simpler you can download a copy of the template file from my server at: http://insvr1.midcoastwater.com.au/wxtexttemplate.zip
Once you have this template file you should save it in the folder where FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi is running ... usually c:\FreeWX or C:\FreeWX-Wi. Every time that the program performs an upload to your website the program will read the template file and will produce a new file named wxtext.txt in which the web tags will have been replaced with the values that they represent.
Now you need to tell FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi to upload this file. This is done from the "Internet" menu item under the "Settings" main menu item. FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi allows you to select additional files to upload when FTP uploading takes place. You can select these files by clicking on the "Browse" button in the "Additional file(s) to be uploaded via FTP) area. Simply click the "Browse" button and navigate to and select the wxtext.txt file in the FreeWX folder. Now, each time the program uploads data to your site, the wxtext.txt file will be uploaded as well. Of course you will need to have allowed FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi to perform at least one upload before the wxtext.txt file will exist because the file is created from the template at each upload.
As far as FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi is concerned, that's all there is to it!
Now we need to turn our attention to AWEKAS itself. The first thing you need to do is to register your station with AWEKAS. Simply visit the AWEKAS registration page at: http://www.awekas.at/en/benutzer.php?mode=new
You can choose your username and passord. Take care when entering your latitude and longitude. If you are south of the equator you must use a minus sign before the degrees as in -32 instead of 32. (Sample Australia: 145° 40' / -16° 56' Sample USA: -77° 34' / 39° 8')
You will see a box in the registration form labelled "Path to the datafile ...". Here you must enter the path to your website and the wxtext.txt file that you are now uploading. Note that you don't include the "http://" part ... that will be automatically added for you. As an example, if your website is at http://mysite.com you would enter "mysite.com/wxtext.txt" in the box.
On the registration form you will also see a box labelled "Report mode". Use the drop-down arrow for the box and select "FreeWX" from the available choices. Submit your registration form and you're done!
If you have any questions about using FreeWX/FreeWX-Wi and AWEKAS then please feel free to post on the FreeWX support forums at:
http://forums.freewx.net.