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EuroGA Airports Database Telegram bot

Notam truncation should be fixed.

New wx features:

satir – returns satellite IR image (probably 15 mins delayed; the image shows the time)

sferics – returns sferics (stormscope, real time)

radar – not done yet but will be soon

Yes these are identical to those on Autorouter bot. They would be; almost 10 years ago I paid someone to write the php code to implement them (on a private wx site) and then gave the sources to Achim.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Radar is now working.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Does anyone have any feedback on the telegram bot?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Except that it works, no other feedback from my side.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

No news is good news

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

One bit of advice when using this bot (and this applies equally to any other telegram bot):

If you ask for wx only (tafs/metars) then you need only the most brief or poor quality internet connection, to get a load of tafs/metars.

But if you ask for a bigger object, say the radar/sferics/IR image, that needs more time to download, and if the connection is never good enough (say, over France, FL100, you may never get a usable connection for more than 1-2 secs) that request will block all subsequent ones and it can remain blocked until you land. I’ve had that many times with the Autorouter bot.

So if possible, get the bigger stuff before you get airborne, and when airborne use the bot for tafs/metars.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

that request will block all subsequent ones and it can remain blocked until you land

Is there a possibility to prioritise responses in bot queue, e.g. send back shorter ones first from the stack? Is it worth to add some command for canceling requests?

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

I just looked at this for the first time.
I’ve never used telegram; downloaded onto my PC, opened the app and all I get is an opportunity to send message.
What am I missing?

Last Edited by Stickandrudderman at 13 Sep 10:53
Forever learning
EGTB

Is there a possibility to prioritise responses in bot queue, e.g. send back shorter ones first from the stack? Is it worth to add some command for canceling requests?

There could be but I think the issue is that the outbound data stream is blocked by the inbound data stream. The Autorouter bot can get clogged up with just one wx image request and is totally useless until you land What might be possible is for the server, having received a request for an image, to do some sort of check for connectivity, but I don’t know if the bot functionality allows a quick query of the client, without the query being visible to the user. I will check. It might have to be implemented so that the server keeps checking periodically, but again I see a problem there: in flight, 3g/4g connectivity can be as brief as a few seconds only.

I just looked at this for the first time.
I’ve never used telegram; downloaded onto my PC, opened the app and all I get is an opportunity to send message.
What am I missing?

@Stickandrudderman If you type

@euroga-airports

into the Search box, it should take you to the bot. There is currently no authentication.

Are there any other functions which people here would like to see? Some things are easy, while some are complicated

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Some improvements have been done to the bot to help with the “jamming” issue found in poor connectivity situations.

The three graphics functions

radar
satir
sferics

now return a lot smaller image, but with quality plenty good enough for the job. This makes it less likely to get “jammed up”.

Also there is a URL-only option on these

radar url
satir url
sferics url

which returns just the URL of an image, which you can then retrieve when convenient

The URLs will be valid for 1 month, so this is useful for getting a snapshot of the wx for later use, without filling up the medial storage on the client device.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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