MCSELECT

  1. NAME
  2. SYNOPSIS
  3. DESCRIPTION
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. SEE ALSO

NAME

mcselect - extracts GOES satellite images from PC-McIDAS data stream
mctrans - translates a delta-encoded McIDAS image to Candis
mctranspng - translates a png-encoded McIDAS image to Candis

SYNOPSIS

mcselect
mctrans
mctranspng

DESCRIPTION

Mcselect reads a PC-McIDAS data stream on the standard input. GOES satellite images are extracted from the stream, converted to Candis format, and written to disk with unique file names. The format of file names is as follows:
i-sat.itype-year.day.hour.minute-xcoor.xres.ycoor.yres
The meanings of the fields are as follows:

i
indicates that this is a satellite image
sat
number of satellite
itype
type of image; 1 for visible, 80 or 8 for infrared, 200 or 4 for water vapor (GOES and GVAR)
year
four digit year
day
day of year
hour, minute
GMT time
xcoor, ycoor
coordinates of upper left corner of image
xres, yres
x and y resolution of image

Notice that file names for a given satellite and image type will collate in time order. Thus, for instance,
kestrel% ls i-32.1*
will list all visible image files from satellite 32 in increasing time order.

Mctrans works like mcselect except on McIdas images which have already been extracted from the data stream. Mctranspng works like mctrans except on files translated by pnga2area. These programs work on both GOES and GVAR images.

EXAMPLE

Normally mcselect would run in the background, being fed by a program that reads from the serial port to which the PC-McIDAS line is attached:
kestrel% cd mcidas_dir; zin /dev/ttya 19200 | mcselect &

Since mcselect deposits files in the current working directory, one must change to the directory into which files are to be put. Zin is a program that reads a serial port and sends the results to the standard output.

SEE ALSO