Radar - Nontraditional Application Question...Can ANYONE Help?

[Skyking69]

All,


I made a post over in another thread (here) on this site back in May. With no replies I reached out to several people affiliated with the site asking to perhaps split and/or move the post. I keep getting pointed from one perston to another and so I am just going to repost it here with a new thread. If this runs afoul of multi-posting rules, please report it to a moderator to have the other one deleted...because I can't find anyone that seems interested in helping with that or my original post.


Here is my original post:

All,

I emailed FURUNO and did not even get the courtesy of a reply. I also emailed to a link at https://navigationlaptops.com/marine-radar-on-pc/. At the suggestion of Ivan G at that website I am posting here about a non-traditional marine radar application I am trying to develop. I do NOT want to hijack this thread, so if my post is doing so please get a forum moderator to move it to a standalone thread or delete it and tell me to repost.

I will paste a slightly modified version of an email I have sent to some people. I urge all of you to read the Washington Post article that I mention and link to below. Much thanks for any feedback. If there are any suggestions at all, to quote Ross Perot "I'm all ears."

Best Regards,

Phillip


--------------------------------------------------------------------------


To Whom It May Concern:

I am an officer in the Red River Valley Amateur Radio Club (RRVARC), a small ham radio club in Northeast Texas. We are in a doughnut hole without radar coverage. The topic in general was greatly written up by The Washington Post and with permission reprinted on our Club website at Radar gaps threaten millions as severe weather season ramps up in U.S. Further, even if a source becomes available they will be commercial interests wanting to control what we do with the data; too much expense and too much control. To try and solve our problem for ourselves we are in the initial stages of researching something like the Furuno DRS12AX or one of the units discussed at this link Marine radar on PC.

We are looking at options to populate a Google Maps web page displaying ham radio operators, geographic features and a weather radar layer, among other optional layers. The discussion at the Marine radar on a PC (linked above) kind of leads me to believe it might be possible to do this. My questions to you are:

• Rather than outputting to a proprietary display, is there a radar unit that supplies an output that can be used to supply a data stream via an Internet connection?
• If so, is the data format the details on the Marine radar on PC page (i.e. GMR 624 xHD2, GMR 1224 xHD2, GMR 2524 xHD2, GMR 18 xHD, GMR 424 xHD2, etc.)?
• Google Maps in general plays well with KML and KMZ files. Do you have any suggestions for how to harness the output of a radar and do an inline live data conversion so that it can be served up on a KML/KMZ layer?

I have done a couple of hours of digging and do not find where anyone has done what we are trying to do. It is hard to believe that a potential solution for less than $10,000 hasn’t been fully developed for communities like the one we serve, but it isn’t looking promising at this point. Any answers and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Phillip Beall ( W5EBC)
Secretary, RRVARC
Cell: 214-729-6182

Since making that post I have continued to scour the web looking for any source for answers to these questions. It is kind of nutty, the hardware manufacturers seem to go out of their way - out of their way - to make it hard to contact them. They do not publish email addresses, they do not reply to form based submissions, they even close their forums. Seriously, look at this Raymarine forum. If you don't want to click the link here is the salient paragraph: "Please be advised on July 6th at midnight the Raymarine Forum will be closed to new posts, threads and new members. It will still be available for viewing only. We are transitioning over to our new support platform www.raymarine.custhelp.com." Uh, no, they are not transitioning, they just closed one and don't appear to be interested in that group of their customer base. The old site closed on July 6- who knows what year - and when you click on the new forum address the "new site" does not load. I have written to every manufacturer that I can find an address or form for, I took several shots at FURUNO, and so far zero reply.


So, can anyone here offer a suggestion?


The theory seems pretty simple. Take a marine radar and use the output to populate a weather radar display via an Internet connected data stream. I will explore how to get that data stream into a format that I need, but first I need to locate hardware with a data out port that isn't tied to a proprietary data stream intended for a chart plotter or other piece of marine hardware.


Does anyone have a suggestion?


Thanks,


Phillip

[JPA Cate]

Hello, Phillip,

Welcome aboard CF.

Here's a suggestion from hpeer, another of the moderators: "Sounds like he needs to talk to the OCPN guys. They have a radar display function. Clearly it would take work and may not be adaptable.

But only those gurus will know and if there's any interest it is likely there."

So maybe you could post a new post in the Open CPN forum, with a link to this thread.

If it can be done, it seems that it would be a useful assist for the community.

Ann

[Steelcat]

There is a program OpenBR24 https://sourceforge.net/projects/openbr24/ that will display a Navico (Lowrance,Simrad and B&G) radar on windows that I am using.I don't know if it can be displayed on the internet.

[SailingHarmonie]

Before you spend much effort solving the display issues, do you know that a marine radar can be tuned to actually be a usable weather radar over land? In my experience it is pretty worthless at that, although I have never needed to optimize the display for that.

As for a display, pretty much every mfd these days has an hdmi output to drive an external display. Will that drive the display you are looking for?

[Shrew]

Originally Posted by SailingHarmonie

Before you spend much effort solving the display issues, do you know that a marine radar can be tuned to actually be a usable weather radar over land? In my experience it is pretty worthless at that, although I have never needed to optimize the display for that.

As for a display, pretty much every mfd these days has an hdmi output to drive an external display. Will that drive the display you are looking for?

I have to agree... weather radar uses Doppler, while marine radar is magnetron. These are very different.

About the only thing I can see on marine radar is a wall of rain and sometimes fog.

[Hartleyg]

One other question - how are you planning on licending this radar? Radars are normally licensed to the vessel, but land-based X-band radars ?

[jhall767]

Originally Posted by Shrew

I have to agree... weather radar uses Doppler, while marine radar is magnetron. These are very different.

About the only thing I can see on marine radar is a wall of rain and sometimes fog.

Some newer marine radars have Doppler. Almost all current radars are no longer using magnatron systems they are solid state.

[jhall767]

Here's a portable commercial option

https://ewradar.com/radar/e700-serie...doppler-radar/

[Skyking69]

All,


Much thanks for the follow up. I will explore all the suggestions and very much appreciate them. Aircraft radar used to use magnetrons, but they pretty much are all now phased array flat panel digital units.


We have members of our Club and other resources that are licensed to work with and operate radar, so the licensing issue isn't likely a problem. I am guessing it is tied to vessels because it is easy to keep track of who the owner/operator is. FCC cares about the "control operator" of anything they regulate.


We would probably put the radar up on either our current tower site provided by a local electrical power provider or at the local Emergency Operations Center shared by the city and county.


You good folks have given me some great things to go and start looking at. Thank you much. I will follow up and keep everyone in the loop because this might have some other application I hadn't thought of. If you go and read this licensed reprint of a Washington Post story on our website - Radar gaps threaten millions as severe weather season ramps up in U.S. - it is just a fantastic article. You will see that there are holes in coverage all over the United States. Those holes just cry out for a reasonably priced solution. If one doesn't exist, maybe my efforts will stimulate radar manufacturers to wake up and start offering a turnkey solution that communities could purchase and deploy.


Thanks again!


Phillip