Fego wrote:Thanks for the link Chris. The mirror will end because the fuction has a time limit or is related with the access to the radar?
Whoops, this post got long. It's just about my radar display. Everyone can skip it.
Short answer, the display could change or the bandwidth used by people using it could impact my site.
The file size of the radar images in that display are very large, 250 to 350 kilobytes per image. (high end of the range, maybe even larger, when there is a lot of radar data on the image) Imagery is about every 6 minutes.
I have it set to keep 500 images right now. Imagery is about every 6 minutes. That is 480 images in two days. I only created the DR part of the code this morning. I was downloading imagery manually for the first ten hours overnight. It doesn't have but about a day's worth of data right now.
But if someone were to view even a day's worth of data, right now that would be about 75 megabytes to load. If 100 people did that, that is 7.5 gigabytes of bandwidth. Technically my site has unlimited bandwidth with my host, but that's not really true. There are rules. So I try not to push up against those. My site is on a really old server and I limited by that. To get on a newer server, I would have to upgrade my plan. I currently only pay $82.23 per year for hosting my site. I have for 20 years. If I were to upgrade, then I would not have unlimited bandwidth. They don't have unlimited bandwidth plans any longer. For that plan I am on, the new version, to pay the same amount, I would then only have 10 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. That's it. For $155.40 per year, I would get 100 gigabytes of bandwidth per month and 100 gigabytes of disk space. I would actually need that plan to cover my disk space, which was also previously unlimited, but not really. I use 22 gigabytes of disk space and I am getting emails about approaching a limit of 25 gigabytes. (even though I have an unlimited plan from two decades ago) I also have an extreme amount of files on my site. Maybe around 750,000. I forget. I try not to make waves with my host as I would paying a heck of a lot more elsewhere.
But on most hosts, you pay for bandwidth after a certain amount. (or you pay for a dedicated server, rather than sharing with other sites, and pay lots more) So a large file size feature, with a lot of traffic, could use a lot of bandwidth. While it might not cost anything automatically after a certain amount on my current plan, it's not really unlimited. I have to stay within the rules and don't threaten the stability of the server to threaten how other sites on the server are operating, or they might say so no and turn off the site or certain features as there are restrictions. That includes not using disk space for lots of large photos, which they might consider this to be. I don't know what options hosts have, but then you're subject to your site being popular. If you can't say, shut off my site once it hits this bandwidth, you could get charged a lot if you pay for bandwidth per gigabyte. A lot of people suddenly visit your site due to a viral post perhaps, and you would get swamped with bandwidth and cost if you pay for the actual bandwidth used. I don't want to get into the position, so I try not to make waves and keep the not really unlimited, unlimited plan.
So far the imagery in the display is the same, but notice how it is a screenshot of a desktop computer it seems. I don't even know if that radar will always be live like that. Maybe they will build a display online, maybe they'll keep it that way or maybe they'll stop it once the storm is over. I don't know.
A lot of people might not know DR has a radar. And if they do, they don't know it's online. I only found out online from a tweet they posted. I don't know when it became public.
I was updating my radar database:
http://tropicalglobe.com/radar_database/And maybe thinking about Franklin heading toward Hispaniola got me to check their Twitter profile for it because I knew they have had a new one for years, it just wasn't public. (and a lot of people online were often asking for the data on social media) And they had just posted a tweet an hour before when someone asked about it again.
But I would use 75 megabytes a day in their bandwidth getting the imagery. Maybe 2.5 gigabytes a month, just for me to get the data few might know to find on my site. Or it would use too much bandwidth if it got much usage constantly if I had the opposite problem. Not to speak of if someone wanted to be nefarious and attack it with a lot of traffic. So it's not worth it. And the display might change. Or something that makes it stop. And I already have a high bandwidth feature on my site, my recon system. The Google Earth file and the CesiumJS online display use a lot of bandwidth. And that system is exceptionally demanding, checking and then potentially downloading multiple files every single minute, 24/7/365. Status summary of my recon system's operations:
http://tropicalatlantic.com/recon/recon ... tem_statusThe Bahamas display I had here quit last month and I didn't notice until the past few days:
http://tropicalatlantic.com/radars/live/bahamas/My server is so old, some sites don't allow connections to it because it uses outdated technology. Bahamas must have upgraded their server last month. (software side of it) I had that problem with the NHC in past few years connecting to their recon archive as a backup for getting obs. I have to connect through my friend Jim William's site, HurricaneCity, to gets the obs. My site contacts that site, which then downloads the ob to that server and then my site can download from that site. I had to move my Bahamas radar display to HurricaneCity:
https://hurricanecity.com/radars/live/bahamas/He has a much more reliable server and he said I could have it there. Those images are also a lot smaller, like 40 to 50 kilobytes per image, so that mirror I have had on for a few years now maybe. Now it will operate there. It uses a lot less resources than the DR system.
I never ask to use the mirrored data. I just do it and if they say something then I'll stop. Or at least won't make it available in real time. I might download it and save it for educational uses later. Imagery gets removed from the Bahamas site within a certain amount of time. I forget. It might be 12 or 24 hours or something around that. It's saved longer than what their display has. However, the DR site only has it for an hour. Then it's deleted. I don't know if all the data is saved. I assume, but if it is I don't think it's publicly available, so it's nice to have a public copy for a storm. They might not mind a temporary mirror just for a storm. It reduces their bandwidth. It's not like they make money from people going to their site. If my site crashes under the load, no big deal. If their site did, then people can't get the data.
Brian McNoldy has loops that I love:
https://bmcnoldy.rsmas.miami.edu/tropics/radar/But sometimes he doesn't have some. The new Bahamas radar network had been one initially and the DR radar is so new to being available publicly.
The DR radar display is also a little complex to work with. Imagery comes out every 6 minutes approximately. But the display updates every two minutes. Usually, every three images are the same. And then sometimes only two are the same. They are taking a screenshot of their display. Data may or may not have updated in two minutes when a new screenshot is taken. I had to write a script overnight to get rid of duplicate images along with write the rest of the retrieval system that is specific to how their site is set up. But if they change one thing, my display will break. I can't have duplicate images because my display lets you pause and advance one frame. When there are no controls and it just loops, you don't notice on the DR's site. But without removing duplicate images, you would have had to advance two to three frames to go one frame. But thankfully I was able to work out that issue eventually. (and it saves bandwidth too on wasted imagery that would have been served)
. That looks to be from this afternoon!
Chris, I have no idea what most of that all meant but I've got to tell you.... i'm pretty damn impressed! 
