Chandler Burning Index

[gemini06720]

Graeme, what Beau is trying to find out (if I understand his questions properly) is what kind of file information is being produced by Cumulus and used by FwiCalc - reading the documentation supplied with FwiCalc here is what it says:

• Data File: This file will be created by some other third party software that interfaces directly with a remote station. Most weather software available on the market today comes with this capability (in most cases it will parse another file containing specific "control tags" paricular to that software).
  
  This file must be in ascii/text format. All data MUST be separated by a "delimiting character or line feed", the type used is selectable in the "Data Delimiter Character" drop down menu. The data must be in the following order... Date, Temperature, Humidity, Windspeed and Rainfall (24hr or total) . The file can be named anything.

The documentation is not very clear about which date format should be provided to FwiCalc, how the temperature, the humidity, the wind speed and the rainfall should be provided to FwiCalc - with the unit of measure (ie: C, %, km/h, mm) or without, in metric or in imperial measurements?

[n9mfk]

Hi Ray,
what was not clear to me was how to get the data from cumulus to FwiCalc
Beau

[gemini06720]

what was not clear to me was how to get the data from cumulus to FwiCalc

And that exactly the question I asked, or I think this is what I asked...

I read the documentation and other than saying that FwiCalc needed the date, the temperature, the humidity, the wind speed and the (past 24 hours or total) rainfall, little else is mentioned as to which format those values should be sent to FwiCalc - should, for example, the temperature be in metric or imperial, and should the temperature include the unit of measure (such as degree C of degree F).

That is also what I want to find out (understand) - which values and in which format need to be sent (in a plain text file, if I understood the help file) from Cumulus to FwiCalc...

[GraemeT]

Ray & Beau

Yes I agree, the documentation supplied with FWICalc is a bit ambiguous in parts,
but after reading it through a couple of times I realised that the file operations are not
much different to those of Cumulus.

Ray

The documentation is not very clear about which date format should be provided to FwiCalc, how the temperature, the humidity, the wind speed and the rainfall should be provided to FwiCalc - with the unit of measure (ie: C, %, km/h, mm) or without, in metric or in imperial measurements?

It seemed fairly straightforward to me from the program's main page, under the heading 'WEATHER DATA'.
The values required, date format and units of measurement are displayed for us.
The tricky part for me was what values to use for the initial data - FFMC, DMC, DC - so I just clicked 'suggest' and left it at that.

Beau

what was not clear to me was how to get the data from cumulus to FwiCalc

I originally setup a test page which would be loaded at least once a day.

In this webpage, we use cumuluswebtags.php, which provides the data values from Cumulus

Code: Select all

require_once("cumuluswebtags.php");

and the code to build fwi.txt

I later included it as a separate file for ease of editing and use elsewhere.

Code: Select all

require_once("fwitext.php");

The flow of information is :
1/ Cumulus processes the cumuluswebtags.php file
2/ My script processes data from cumuluswebtags.php into fwi.txt
3/ At the time specified in the file options page, fwicalc reads fwi.txt and calculates the various fire weather indices
4/ FWICalc also processes fwiwebtags.txt to form fwiwebtags.php (in a similar fashion to Cumulus)

The Windows task scheduler can be set up to call fwitext.php from a vb script, to automate the entire process.

[n9mfk]

Thanks to all it is now up an running now to let it build up
beau

[gemini06720]

Graeme,

2/ My script processes data from cumuluswebtags.php into fwi.txt

Exactly which information (data/webtags) is passed on from Cumulus to FwiCalc, in which order and with/without the unit of measure?

[n9mfk]

Hi Ray
here what I us
<#date> <#temp> <#hum> <#wlatest> <#ryear>
Beau

[gemini06720]

here what I us
<#date> <#temp> <#hum> <#wlatest> <#ryear>

Beau, thank you. My template file is slightly different as I use the colon as a delimiter, such as:

• <#date>:<#temp>:<#hum>:<#wspeed>:<#rfallY>

But the results are and should be the same.

But, I still have problems with the FWI Calc ... I cannot get the software to operate automatically, such as reading the small text file produced by Cumulus (the one with the date, the temperature, the humidity, the wind speed and the rainfall values).

I have FWI Calc running in the system tray (24/7). It has been setup (as per the default settings) to parse the Cumulus produced text/data file and add it to previous day readings. But, every times the scheduled time arrives, FWI Calc displays the error message stating that "No previous day, or initial FWI data available for calculation!" and "Not enough data provided for calculation!". The main FWI Cals screen displays 8 days of weather data that I had to enter manually (on that main screen). No matter what I have tried (and how often I have read the documentation), I have not been able to automate the data parsing and inclusion into the FWI Calc database/data file nor the FTP upload of the data...

I am really getting very annoyed and about to delete FWI Calc from my computer...

[n9mfk]

Hi ray email me
some screen shot of your fwicalc
an I will compare it to mine
Beau

[gemini06720]

To all concerned, the FWI Calc is finally now running as expected on both my 'development' and 'weather' computers...

The situation I haven encountered was caused by the incompatibilities of some programming software (such as Delphi) to deal with Windows 7 and its date format!

A new version of the FWI Calc has been released (version 6.60.61) that introduces, among other modifications, a patch to work-around Windows 7 date issue: FWI Calc Version: 6.00.61.

I would like to thank both Graeme and Beau for their assistance and suggestions ... than you guys.

The results of the proper operation of the FWI Calc can be viewed on the [link removed] page - Graeme, once again, thank you for the suggested PHP scripts.

[n9mfk]

Hi all ,
i noted im get -2
with a 23 c temp an 87 hum

Code: Select all

$cbi = (((110 - 1.373 * $hum) - 0.54 * (10.20 - $temp)) * (124 * pow(10,(-0.0142 * $hum))))/60;

why? beau

[steve]

That formula gives zero when you put 23C and 87% RH into it. It gives -2 if you put 23 Fahrenheit (i.e. -5 C) into it. So I think you have a problem with temperature conversion somewhere.

[n9mfk]

Hi Steve
the temp was 73.0F what is that in c?
Thanks Beau

[steve]

the temp was 73.0F what is that in c?

23, as you correctly said. But if you put 23 and 87 into the formula you've quoted, it gives zero, not -2. So I think that you aren't putting 23 and 87 into the formula if you're getting -2 as a result. Possibly you are converting from F to C twice: 87 -> 23 -> -5 which would then give you your -2 answer. But I don't know where you're getting your input from.

[n9mfk]

Hi Steve,
here ny test code

Code: Select all

<?php
$ftemp = '73.0';
     $rh = '87';
// Convert F temp to C temp
$ctemp = (5/9)*($ftemp-32);     
$ct = round($ctemp,0);
// Start Index Calcs

// Chandler Index
$cbi = (((110 - 1.373 * $rh) - 0.54 * (10.20 - $ct)) * (124 * pow(10,(-0.0142*$rh))))/60;

echo $cbi;
?>

gives -0.30516388531598
im not sure why the -