How-To-Add-Weather-Stations.md

August 10, 2022 · View on GitHub

This guide assumes a working SmartMet Server with observations already in use, and is for adding new stations only. This is not a guide for the initial configuration of observation engine.

Configuration File

Locate the settings file for observation engine. You can see it's location from SmartMet Server's main configuration file in the block engines

engines:
{
	observation:
	{
		disabled        = false;
		configfile      = "engines/observation.conf";
	};

In the example the observation.conf file is in engines-directory realative to the main configuration file.

Station types

Weather stations can be grouped by their qualities or by whatever is necessary.

Directive stationtypes is an array that contains the names of station groups.

These names work as values for the producer field in query string when using a timeseries request. See: smartmet-plugin-timeseries

stationtypes:
[
        "local",
        "foreign"
];

This example defines two station types. These names alone are not enough for the configuration to work.

Meta Data for Station Types

The metadata directive can contain additional information and/or limits to describe station types.

meta_data:
{
    bbox:
    {
        foreign = "-180.0,-90.0,180.0,90.0,EPSG:4326";
        default = "18.0,59.0,33.0,70.0,EPSG:4326";
    };
    timestep:
    {
        foreign = 1;
        default = 10;
    };
    first_observation:
    {
        foreign = "20190325090000";
        default = "190001010000";
    };
};

Example has defined the area where the stations are located with bounding box coordinates with bbox for station type foreign, and a default value for others.

Defined timestep for station type named foreign, and a default value.

The first available point in time for station types observations with first_observation.

For some reason, the station types are divided in two setting blocks, oracle_stationtypelist and postgresql_stationtypelist. The station types are listed here a second time, and are now defined as objects with special attributes.

The stationGroups is an array containing names matching things in the database. The producerIds is another array containing numbers matching things in the database. Somehow these two define what is being searched from the database. It seems that same stationGroup can point to multiple producerIds in the database, but this is definitely not a requirement.

In order to add new weather stations available in smartmet-server, add the stations' group name in the database to stationGroups array in the configuration file. But also add the identity of the weather station to producresIds array.

oracle_stationtypelist:
{
        local:
        {
                useCommonQueryMethod = true;
                cached = true;
                stationGroups = ["ASDF", "EXTASDF"];
                producerIds = [1,13,17];
                databaseTableName = "my_database_table";
        };
};

PostgreSQL Table Definitions

This may or may not contain stationGroups attribute ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

postgresql_stationtypelist:
{
        foreign:
        {
                cached = true;
                useCommonQueryMethod = true;
                producerId = 1;
        };
};

More Oracle Things

The station types need to be defined a third time (Say what? -ed.)

Even more settings are needed for each station type. This oracle_stationtype is a thing.

oracle_stationtype:
{
        local = "-5";
};