Slashdot Mirror
Weather Radar Case Mod
Bill Kendrick writes "What do you get when you take a laptop LCD, a Mini-ITX case and an old marine weather radar? A self contained wireless weather radar PC appliance!" And No, it's not just squeezing a motherboard into an object smaller than that motherboard -- this is a functional weather-watching device.
Cool!
All I can say is some people have a lot more free time on their hands than I do.
Full mirror here.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
My Personal Weather Radar Project
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
And No, it's not just squeezing a motherboard into an object smaller than that motherboard (emphasis mine)
And how would one do that, exactly (and ensure the board still worked)?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
It looks like he was running his web server on that motehrboard. It's toast!
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
http://hackaday.com/entry/1234000850048287/
dave.
I'm giving away my secret here, but Network Mirror is more useful than just mirroring. It lets me read stories that only subscribers can, before they are posted to the masses. That's how I have time to research and come up with my witty and interesting comments as first post.
What do you get when you take a laptop LCD, a Mini-ITX case and an old marine weather radar? A self contained wireless weather radar PC appliance!
You get slashdotted? But found it on the mirror above... interesting project. But i can't find any decent marine weather radar on ebay.
That's not a mini-itx case on that page. It is a Shuttlex which is not normally a mini-itx form factor.
Nice! Is that what they're running the website on?
The fun of watching every shmuck with a radar detector slam on their brakes as they speed past your house?
An radar machine didn't see the storm of slashdot coming.
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/rma0061l.jpg
My first reaction was: "how the hell did he get the commercial web-based storm predator software to work with a marine radar?" but then I saw where he claims to have used a special build of the program with help from the original programmer. OK, as far as that goes... The thing is, TFA contains no images of realtime data from the "marine radar" and indeed barely mentions the marine unit at all. All the pretty pictures are of data taken from NWS nexrad sites which anyone can access over the internet. I question whether the marine radar is really of any practical use with this admittedly pretty custom display.
Still, it's a neat project.
What do people do with this kind of stuff after it is all finished being built? Do they actually use it? I assume most people build it just to see if they can. So you can, now what?
I ask for a car and I get a computer. How's about that for being born under a bad
Gag. Another Pointless Case Mod Article.
/. create another section, pointlesscasemods.slashdot.org, and put these sort of things there?
Here I was, thinking that maybe this guy had done something truly nifty, like interfacing the marine radar to the computer and having it serve the radar images.
Here in Tornado Alley, such a thing would be pretty damn interesting - I know a couple of storm spotters who might just be persuaded to add that to their chase vehicles.
But no - all this guy did was put a PC in a Radar case, and use the PC to look at radar data from the Internet.
Now, had he fabricated a fake radar unit from sheet metal, that would have been somewhat interesting.
Had he gone whole-hog like the guy who did the HalfLife case mods - that would have been interesting.
But this?
Can I have the seconds of my life back I spent looking at the article?
May I suggest that
Or at least a "Pointless Case Mod" icon?
I mean really - computers are getting to be like digital clock modules were in the 1980's - "Let's put them into everything! Here - let's put one in this banana!"
www.eFax.com are spammers
What do you get when you take a laptop LCD, a Mini-ITX case and an old marine weather radar?
A slashdotted web server?
More like attempting to squeezing a huge bandwidth through a pipe much smaller than that bandwidth...
This same exact thing found its way onto hackaday.com, and I swear a few other things featured on slashdot were there first also. Just thought it seemed strange...
Can someone here enlighten me -- marine radar units are designed to detect other ships and fixed objects that have good reflectivity. How did he just convert one of these to detect *weather*?
Or does rain happen to be responsive to the same microwave frequencies?
The most reliable weather device ever: go outside and see what it's doing! Everything else is just a SWAG, and mostly wrong.
SWAG = Scientific Wild Assed Guess
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
We now power the thing on and... damn... I just made myself sterile.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
He can just check the thermostat in his parents' basement, right?
The site got replaced by a domain harvesting site... I suppose that's one way to avoid a /.'ing. Just redirect your site to one of the many domain harvesters and let them bear the brunt while your site is down.
Arrested and prosecuted by the owners of The Wacky PC and Seafaring Supplies Warehouse?
Oh no, wait, this is /., I know this one...
"Horny at the possibilities."
The first noticeable effect if you stand too close to the radar is it will cause localized RF burns (very painful) and possibly turn your eyes into poached egg whites (cataracts). Long before it turns your nuts into raisins. Besides the vehicle roof is a pretty good shield. These radars are frequently installed on not-terribly-tall poles on boats.
More usefully, it's a waste of money since you'll get better data via the internet. Marine radars - at least the sub-multi-$thousand ones, just aren't that good at picking up details of precipitation at ranges of more than a mile or two. The whole point of having a marine radar is to see through precipitation!
And if I was considering traveling to Tornado Alley to ride in a tornado chase vehicle I'd doubt the wisdom and sanity of anyone with a marine radar on their car. Some of these guys are pretty loony.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
REAL researchers use C-band. And 100KW of power! See my web page or the "official" web page.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Different band.
Please help metamoderate.
Cut it in half and solder wires between the areas where you cut the traces. I've seen it done to fit a mobo into a case smaller (in all dimensions) than the board would fit into uncut. It worked. I wouldn't want to try it myself, but it's possible to do it as long as you pick where you cut carefully.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
..the number of post replies are proportional of (server speed / average image size) + the odd_factor (look at the zombie dogs below). I cant see any 1:1 picture from that site except for the mirror thumbs..
No more I say.
...squeezing a motherboard into an object smaller than that motherboard...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
If you read the article, you will see that he doesn't use the RADAR part of the marine radar, just the housing of the display.
Damn, I live in tornado alley, Oklahoma. Do you have any fucking idea how easily someone could DIE becuase of a dumbass claim like yours? Wi-Fi would not WORK in a bad storm, nonetheless get life or death info on tornadoes miles outside of it's range. I'm glad I'm literate enough to know to call you on it and flame you, because others may not know enough. It's a bad idea and false advertising. Here's an idea, how about we put YOU in a storm chase and make YOU depend on this kind of crap. Go somewhere else and sell your spam. We don't want it.