January 17th, 2011New Features:
· The user may select the maximum number of history images to download and display. The default (and maximum) is 24 and the minimum is 2.
· The program's communications library has been updated to a newer version to allow authenticated proxy connections. The Display Options dialog now has a button that invokes a proxy configuration dialog that allows users to specify a user name and password for proxy server connections.
Bug Fixes:
· Customers using wireless internet connections reported program crashes. We've worked with several wireless provider representatives and changed communications parameters to improve robustness.
· Recent changes and instabilities in the NWS mirror server hierarchy exposed some weaknesses in the communications archival procedures and those have been revamped for reliability.
· The Beam Settings were ignored in full screen mode under certain conditions.
· On some XP platforms, the program would cause desktop icons to be re-arranged.
· The Thresholds dialog was taking an unreasonably long time to close or apply changes.
April 15th, 2010· The text of mobile device/pager alert messages is customizable, just as the email messages are.
· The user may edit the standard message template ("pager_template.txt") to customize the alert message.
· If the beam was set to one-revolution mode, it would revolve continuously when triggered if the program is in full-screen mode.
· The Save History feature could crash under some conditions.
· Full Screen mode: exiting that mode could cause the desktop background to remain as the radar image.
· Full Screen mode: Vista and Windows 7 platforms would lose the input focus in full screen mode (no response to keyboard or mouse until it is clicked on the display).
October 28th, 2009· Now fully supports Windows 7, with major improvements for Vista support also. SP now installs and works well on either operating system
· Support for Animated GIF files has been added to the Automatic Web Publishing feature
· The installer preserves configuration settings.
· The installer attempts to read any existing configuration file and preserve the settings.
· In most cases the user no longer needs to enter the serial number, user name, and email during the installation.
· Settings made in the program that have been saved in the configuration file are merged with the updated configuration file.
· In addition, the installer correctly sets user permissions on the data storage folders.
· The text of email alerts is customizable.
· The email body text is free-form and may consist of up to 65536 (64 Kb) characters.
· When the user presses the Change button in the Email Options dialog, the program begins editing a template file.
That template (named datadatabaseemail_ template.txt) may optionally contain any of the following tags that will be replaced with values from the program when email is sent:
· $TIME -- the current time
· $DATE -- the current date
· $ID -- the radar site METAR identifier
· $CITY -- the radar site primary city
· $STATE -- the radar site state abbreviation
· $VCP -- the current Volume Coverage Pattern (VCP) that the site is operating in
· $THRESH -- the precipitation threshold setting in dbZ designation
· $VIPTHRESH -- the threshold setting in VIP designation
· $DBMAX -- the maximum detected precipitation level in dbZ designation
· $VIPMAX -- the maximum detected precipitation level in VIP designation
· $SENS -- the current threshold sensitivity setting
· $PROD -- the currently selected radar product
· $DESC -- a text description of the maximum detected precipitation level
· When an alert occurs or the Test button is pressed in the Email Options dialog, the template file is read and any replacements are made, and the result is stored in datadatabaseemail_ body.txt and that file is used as the email text.
· The inclusion of images is not affected by this operation.
· The text of pager/mobile device messages is not affected by this change, that text is currently not customizable.
Changes to existing features:
· The scan zone popup alert window may be optionally disabled.
· This is independent of the audio alerts and email/pager messages, which are also optional.
· All of these alert indicators may be enabled/disabled in any combination.
· The options are set in the Display Options dialog.
· The user may double-click on a site entry in the Location dialog to select a site.
· I have no idea why this was not included in previous releases.
· The inclusion of the scan zone and/or markers in published imagery is optional.
· In the Publisher Options dialog, the user can check boxes to include or exclude scan zones and/or markers in published images.
· Optional delay value for animated GIF files.
· The user may select a value in seconds that the animation will pause at the end of each loop.
· Selecting 0 (no delay) means that the last frame of the animation will pause for the same amount of time as the rest of the frames.
· The option is selected in the Publisher Options dialog.
· In previous versions, the user was restricted to testing either email or pager/mobile device functions, one at a time.
· That's been changed to allow either type or both simultaneously.
· The mail functions have been completely revised.
Please see this post in the General Discussion area of our user support forum for more details:
· http://forums.stormpredator.com/showthread.php?t=372
· Added support for VCP 211, something that was belatedly implemented by NWS/NOAA
· Thanks to PaulC for actually finding a radar site that was in that mode.
· The scan zone popup dialog now displays values in dbZ designation vs. VIP levels.
· The VIP designations have been obsolete for many years, but are included in many radar programs (including StormPredator).
· This display had been using VIP levels exclusively, contrary to the more popular dbZ values.
· Added support for HTML email templates as well as text templates.
· This allows users to send "pretty" messages that include backgrounds, logos, custom fonts and colors, etc.
· New palettes added.
· New palettes are available for mixed precipitation, winter storm conditions, and an interesting cloud cover simulation.
· Many thanks to PaulC for creating these palettes and allowing us to incorporate them into the product.
Bug Fixes:
· Numerous internal memory allocation and structure robustness fixes.
· The Replay History feature would display the VCR-type control incorrectly.
· The installer would fail to set permissions correctly on the program's data storage folder.
June 9th, 2009New features:
· The NWS Legend image is now a selectable layer in the main display.
· Enable/disable the legend overlay in the Layers or Location dialog boxes.
· If the currently selected product is one of the reflectivity products (Short or Long Range Base Reflectivity or Composite Reflectivity) the legend keys are translated to the currently selected custom or stock signal strength colors.
· The user can now elect to save images in GIF format (in addition to JPG and PNG).
· The program will optionally automatically publish images to a web site or local folder/mapped drive.Select options for publication by pressing ALT-G.
· The program will publish images in JPG, PNG, GIF, or Animated GIF formats.
· We've added a radar server selection drop-down selector in the Location dialog.
· The server list is stored in StormPredatordatadatabaseservers.ini
Currently, there are three servers available:
· http://radar.weather.gov
· http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge
· http://radar.weather.gov/ridge
· The SRH server is the default server, select another at any time, if you wish.
Bug Fixes:
· The program could ignore user settings for the duration of audio alerts. Fixed.
Changes:
· Passwords are stored in encrypted form. The encryption is fairly trivial and not secure, it is meant only to keep casual prying eyes from harvesting passwords.
· The installer has been revised so that many of the program elements are optionally installed.
· Files in the optional packages only overwrite existing files if the file in the installer is newer than the one it is replacing.
· The installer also examines the target machine's operating system to determine if the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) runtime library is up to date.
· If the MFC environment is out of date, the installer informs the user and optionally runs the Microsoft installer for MFC.
March 25th, 2009New features:
· Full compatibility with Windows Vista and Windows 7
· There are two new menu items in Mini window mode, to allow the user to start or stop the loop via a menu. The loop can (as always) also be started and stopped with ALT-L in any window mode.
· The communications library has been replaced and updated with a more robust one to handle a wider variety of network situations
· The default NWS server is changed to the SRH (Southern Region) Ridge server, the radar.weather.gov server(s) have synchronization issues
· The user options file is now stored in uncompressed text files. This allows the user to set or change options in the file rather than through the program, if desired.
· The site options file, containing data particular to each radar site, is also uncompressed. This is a comma-delimited text file, and is meant to be imported into a spreadsheet program if editing is necessary.
· The "data" folder and all of its subfolders has been moved to the Common Application Data folder (that destination is different for each Windows version). Along with some of the other changes above, this alleviates the need for the program to be run with Administrator privileges.
Bug fixes:
· The program would sometimes (actually, frequently) fail to connect to the radar.weather.gov NWS server.
· The loop would not resume when the display mode was changed.
· Deleted markers and scan zones could be restored when the program was restarted.
· The default "Radar Site Unavailable" image would trigger an alert if the text of the message fell into a scan zone. The colors for that image have been changed.
· When changing from Mini window mode to Full Screen mode, then restoring to Normal mode would cause the program to restore to Oval mode with a collapsed options panel. The default now is to restore to Rectangular mode with an expanded options panel.
· The audio alert could get interrupted or sound off continuously, ignoring the user setting for that feature.
April 16th, 2008· Composite Layer Mode
· Proxy support
· Radar image smoothing
· Changes to existing features
· Bug fixes
· Notes
September 20th, 2006· added 3D topographic imagery, 9 new radar products
September 2nd, 2006· added 3D topographic imagery, 9 new radar products
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