The wait continues!

The features for the site is open for comments either post them in the comments below or use the feedback tab on the site. I’ll be posting some more news in the feature about progress being made.

Its been 2 years since I touched the code base of PickMyRig, the original system was heavy based on a script I had written in Prolog back while I was in University then ported to PHP and the user interface was very quickly put together to get a working concept then left it alone.

So this last 3 weeks I spent some considerable time giving it a major overhaul, first up was the interface which was somewhat lacking making sure that the search features are always visible regardless of the page the visitor was currently on also the new design makes it look far more professional.

I also improved the search results display and each item now also has a product page giving a much more through overview at what the radio can do all the images displayed are from Flickr using their very comprehensive API there’s still some tweaking to be done on this but its a much better solution then uploading a photo of the radio onto our system.

The main logic behind the site is still very much the same just with a few minor tweaks, the major parts which have been added is the users ability to submit radios which are missing (after all there’s 1000s so can’t please everyone) and for us running the site everything is editable within just a few clicks of a button.

What I’m wanting to do next is link to amateur radio shop websites to help the user long in their purchase, this is still in being planned but if any radio shops are reading this drop me a email/comment.

I hope that all the changes will make it a much more enjoyable experience and allow new and current radio amateurs to find a radio suitable for them.

Go check it out http://www.pickmyrig.com

With issues of privacy which completely baffles me as the Radio Society of Great Britain make the data available via a paperback yearbook and PW Publishing make a CD and supply it for a couple of pounds. and nearly every other country makes this data available look at USA (FCC) and Australia.

Then last week I got an email from Ofcom saying that they’ve decided to suspended further distribution of the callbook data, whilst they explore options with the Information Commissioner’s Office. This oddly enough came the same week the RSGB confronted Ofcom over license database publication due to breach of the Data Protection Act, if this is the case are the RSGB not also at fault? or is there some licence which makes them “OK”. Either way I think personally that it comes down to the fact that if its made available it would effect there profits with the yearbook and callseeker cd.

So the wait continues the actual programming side of http://www.callbook.org.uk is finished, its just missing data I am tempted to import the US FCC data and at least get the callbook live and allow others to add there details but that really wasn’t what I had planned to do.

Its rather frustrating that Ofcom supplied a method to apply for the data under strict licence then revoke it within a month. I’ll keep everyone posted to how things plan out I definitely will not be giving up and will get the site online as soon as I can without breaking any laws myself

Either way I will not give up, and have registered http://www.callbook.org.uk in anticipation of getting the data hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

If your interested in knowing when the site is like just use the form on the site and I’ll drop you a note once its live.

What TweetWX does is searches twitter for the weather terms “Wind, Barometer, Temperature, Rain, Humidity” then shows the tweets in a timeline  this refreshes every 40 seconds with any new weather tweets available.

Each time it reads a tweet it also checks to see if we’ve stored it in our database if not it collects its profile data and stores it so its available as a list on the site for users to find all the current stations available!

The whole site took 1 day to code using the PHP framework CodeIgniter, You can check it out by visiting http://www.magicbug.co.uk/tweetwx

Tweets get sent out every Wednesday at 13:30 UTC I decided on this day because it was mid week, when people are starting to think about the upcoming week if anyone disagrees leave a comment.

Each contest for the coming weekend gets its own tweet with the contest name and the url to find the rules. So if your a twitter user follow @DXAnywhere plus you’ll get a wealth of other useful radio data in your twitter stream!

After this I set about developing the system further adding the Great circle lines and the ability to select a band you’d like to monitor for spots, the system actually displays the last 10 spots and refreshes every 20 seconds so the information is relativity current. Both the spotter and the dx station is plotted at the moment this is using the same style of pins but I hope to change this to ones a bit more amateur radio related.

After watching it for a couple of hours its been interesting to see whos being working K5D visually instead of looking at a data table. You can find the cluster map at http://www.dxanywhere.com/cluster/map while your there do take a look at the rest of the site theres lots on offer! more so when you register.

Since August the development of DXAnywhere has increased a fair amount and from when I gave an overview to the project at the RSGB HFC the system has changed, and the features have improved.

The current system is focused on 3 sections you have the dx cluster, which provides access to the cluster network allowing you to pick out the spots your after either by watching the main list, or you can select the band you wish to look at. Within this section you can also set DX alerts these can either be sent via email, twitter and soon SMS, the system checks the database every 5 minutes using a perl script then sends out any alerts which need actioned.

Example of a Tweet

DX Cluster also allows you to view the solar data in graph format either in monthly or yearly format, giving you a good idea about whats happening with conditions or perhaps the lack of conditions. We are also sending the solar data to twitter using @DXAnywhere this is done on an hourly basis.

Total Spots Graph

You can also find a number of statistics graphs showing total spots, bands and spots, you can easily spot the major contests on the yearly spots graph!

The next section is Profile, this is the social hub on DXAnywhere which still has a long way to go, the basis of this section was my final university project so theres plenty of bugs to fix but it allows you to create a profile and become friends with other users.

After this we have the Applications section which will evolve over time currently you can use the prefix guide if you forget a prefix, and there’s a very early beta of our mobile logger which allows you to quickly store QSO details and download the ADIF for your main logbook later.

None of all this development hasn’t problem free the nature of the system consumes a lot of processor power and memory with the large amounts of data flowing around, the alerts system has had a number of rewrites I finally switched the script from PHP to Perl which fixed the major issues, which has stopped the server from crashing!

Currently in development is the sms system this is not only for alerts but will also be integrated within the rest of the site, allowing you to send details of prefixes and even when someone makes a comment on your profile, this will be subscription based but the costs have been kept to a minimum. Next due a new iteration is the mobile website, which will integrate all the features of the browser based desktop version.

To sum things up development of DXAnywhere is strong, features are being added on a weekly basis so its worth signing up and taking a poke around to see what you can do.

You can follow by going to http://twitter.com/oxfordwx which updates on an hourly basis. Tim (G4VXE) has also added his weather station at Longworth you can find it at http://twitter.com/LongworthWx