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Day 4 Recap Video


mark2atsafe
Safer
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Hello balloonists.

Here’s a recap from day 4 of the 12 Days of FME. Today I explain the important topic of oxygen supplies, and how to time your balloon commands to get the most out of these precious resources.

 

Don’t forget to check the video timeline for markers for the different sections. The oxygen discussion starts at 08:45, for example.

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10 replies

jdh
Contributor
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  • Contributor
  • December 6, 2024

Curious how complicated it would be to have the auto commands be set to 12 hours after last manual command on a per balloon level, as opposed to noon and midnight.  It would have the benefit of spreading out the queries to the forecast api.


jonas_nelson
Enthusiast
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  • Enthusiast
  • December 7, 2024

I must say this is the most fun I’ve had with a 12 Days of FME! Thanks A LOT to everyone involved in creating this! Can we have this every year? :-)

And I just have to share a screen shot of my close shave of Belarus. Inside or out? Well, the dataset used for countries (blue line) says out, so… 
 

 


ian_moore
Participant
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  • Participant
  • December 8, 2024

Is it possible that there’s an issue with the “Max Speed” calculations when competitors cross the dateline? Based on the coordinate data from the “Downloads”, I’m calculating about 360 kph at the location where the website is showing 466 kph.


mark2atsafe
Safer
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  • Author
  • Safer
  • December 9, 2024
ian_moore wrote:

Is it possible that there’s an issue with the “Max Speed” calculations when competitors cross the dateline? Based on the coordinate data from the “Downloads”, I’m calculating about 360 kph at the location where the website is showing 466 kph.

I was just thinking the same thing. I’m going to look into it tomorrow (it’s late Sunday night here). What’s annoying is that I went through the workspace with one of our developers, to make doubly sure the length calculations were correct where it crossed the dateline. But it’s very suspicious so I will check into it for sure.

Mark


mark2atsafe
Safer
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  • Author
  • Safer
  • December 9, 2024
jonas_nelson wrote:

I must say this is the most fun I’ve had with a 12 Days of FME! Thanks A LOT to everyone involved in creating this! Can we have this every year? :-)

And I just have to share a screen shot of my close shave of Belarus. Inside or out? Well, the dataset used for countries (blue line) says out, so…

Excellent. I’m glad you’re enjoying it! It’s possible that we might run this again during next year’s conference in Seattle as well.

I generalized the data so it wouldn’t take as much processing and data transfer time. I may have overdone it! Next time I’ll use a more accurate dataset. Sorry about your close shave.

Mark


mark2atsafe
Safer
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  • Author
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  • December 9, 2024
jdh wrote:

Curious how complicated it would be to have the auto commands be set to 12 hours after last manual command on a per balloon level, as opposed to noon and midnight.  It would have the benefit of spreading out the queries to the forecast api.

 

It’s something I considered, but it ended up being easier to run in bulk. I don’t think I’ll be able to update it for now, but maybe the next time we run this contest. I have been slightly concerned about breaking the forecast api, though I put in a Decelerator to slow down the requests.

I wonder how I could do it. The obvious way is to use the Rest API to create a new schedule for each balloon. Another way might be to have a task run every minute to poll the database for check for a scheduled command. That way might be less “official”, but I suspect it would be easier.

Mark


mark2atsafe
Safer
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  • Author
  • Safer
  • December 9, 2024
ian_moore wrote:

Is it possible that there’s an issue with the “Max Speed” calculations when competitors cross the dateline? Based on the coordinate data from the “Downloads”, I’m calculating about 360 kph at the location where the website is showing 466 kph.

I am absolutely stumped by this one. 

  • I tested my code with some fake data. It all works fine.
  • I tested my code with the actual data in the database. It all works fine.
  • I tested my code with the data download data. It all works fine.
  • I tested my code with some fresh API responses. It all works fine.

And yet, the numbers in the database are incorrect. Here’s an example:

Where it crosses the 180 line the speed is recorded in the database as 386kph. The same code now tells me it’s just 265kph. 

I honestly can’t see why it happens. That’s the only workspace that writes to the positions table. But because I can seemingly get the correct result now, I can run a post-process to correct them. 

Apologies (to everyone). I’ll sort out a process to fix them asap.

Mark


markrmunoz
Contributor
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  • Contributor
  • December 10, 2024

Hi Mark, Excellent 12 Days idea this year and very much looking forward to what folks come up with for visualizations! I’m wondering about the closest to safe’s office category, as I can’t see who is within 100km of Vancouver? Am I just missing something?

Thank you!! 


mark2atsafe
Safer
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  • Author
  • Safer
  • December 10, 2024
markrmunoz wrote:

Hi Mark, Excellent 12 Days idea this year and very much looking forward to what folks come up with for visualizations! I’m wondering about the closest to safe’s office category, as I can’t see who is within 100km of Vancouver? Am I just missing something?

Thank you!! 

Hi Mark

No, you’re not missing anything. That was another workspace that worked fine in the testing phase, but not when we went live. Such is life I suppose! I updated it to give the correct results, but the report does take longer to process now. Still, better slower than incorrect.

Cheers

Mark


jdh
Contributor
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  • Contributor
  • December 11, 2024
mark2atsafe wrote:
jdh wrote:

Curious how complicated it would be to have the auto commands be set to 12 hours after last manual command on a per balloon level, as opposed to noon and midnight.  It would have the benefit of spreading out the queries to the forecast api.

 

It’s something I considered, but it ended up being easier to run in bulk. I don’t think I’ll be able to update it for now, but maybe the next time we run this contest. I have been slightly concerned about breaking the forecast api, though I put in a Decelerator to slow down the requests.

I wonder how I could do it. The obvious way is to use the Rest API to create a new schedule for each balloon. Another way might be to have a task run every minute to poll the database for check for a scheduled command. That way might be less “official”, but I suspect it would be easier.

Mark

You’re polling the database every 20 minutes anyhow for position updates as I understand it.  I would just add a check of last command issued and if it’s more than 11.5 hours ago make the auto command.


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