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1) The first time you use the PDA, click on the <SnowPilot> icon. You will be prompted to enter your username, email address, etc. Your username and email address need to be the same as the one you entered in step 6 on the Downloads page in order for the viewer applet to recognize you as a registered user.
2) You will be taken to the <Preferences> page. This is how you want your pits and data to be entered and displayed. 3) From the Main Menu, tap the top of the screen to familiarize yourself with the drop down menus.
4) Click on <Add Pit>
5) Click on <Layer>
6) Clicking on <back> from the Layers, Test or Temp pages will always take you to the <Edit Pit> page 7) Click on <Temp> on the dropdown menu. <Add Point> when you’re done. 8) Click on <Test>. Select your test from the drop down menu, and then wait for it to load.
9) From the <Edit Pit> page, click on <Pit Graph> to see a simple graph of your pit. Only hardnesses and some tests are displayed. If you had multiple tests per layer they may overwrite one another, but it will not be reflected on the pit you see on your PC or web. 10) When you hot synch the PDA, it will pull the data into your Desktop application. 11) <Add Occurrence> will take you to a detailed form outlining the data to collect when you investigate an avalanche. <Crown Obs> on the drop down menu will take you to the <Add Pit> form. Tips for FIELD USE:
Viewing Pits Online Upon loading the Snow Pilot Web Interface, there will be seen a list of the Snow Pits in the database, and a list of avalanche occurrences in the database. To display a snow pit or avalanche occurrence form either double click on the name, or select the name and click the 'Show Pit' or 'Show Occurrence' button. It will take a few seconds for the pit data to load and render. Use the 'back' button on the form, or reload to return to the main page. The list of available pits and occurrences can be filtered by location name, state-province name, or by Latitude and Longitude, (or any combination of these things) . Simply select the locations, and or state-province you wish to filter by, enter the Lat. and Long. you wish to filter by and hit the 'Filter' button. Upon filtering only the pits and occurrences that meet the filter will be listed. Use decimal format as opposed to minute/second format when entering Lat and Long. For advanced users there is an SQL type text interface that can be accessed by pressing the 'Text Query' button. The text query view allows you to enter SQL type queries to filter the lists. To filter by a query, enter the query and press the 'Execute Query' button. If the query is successful the list will be re-populated with the filtered records available, if the query fails an error message will be displayed in the message box. To enter queries you need to construct a valid SQL (MySQL type) where clause preceded by the alias 'SELECT PITS' or 'SELECT OCCS'. The pit data is stored in the PIT_TABLE, and the avalanche occurrence data is stored in the OCC_TABLE. All fields are in metric units.The table definitions for these are provided here. The database used is MySQL, for help on using SQL on MySQL see the MySQL documentation. Examples of text queries: To select only pits in CA that have layers: To select avalanche occurrences north of 34.5 degrees and south of 40 degrees: Entering Pits Online When you go the Enter Pit page it’ll take a few moments for the applet to load. A screen identical to your PDA will come up, and you enter the pit info the same way. Use your mouse to click on the screen as though you were tapping with a stylus. When you are done with the data entry, click on <Upload Data> from the dropdown menu. This will send your data to the database. A box saying <upload Sent> confirms the process. If you hit the <back> button on the browser you will exit the applet, lose your data, and have to reload it again. Technical Overview General: Components: PDA Application - The PDA application allows for the collection and storage of snow science data in the field. Data on both snow pits and avalanche occurrences may be collected and stored. The data is collected by using custom forms displayed by the application, the data collection process has been carefully designed by both the development and snow science team to be efficient, user friendly, and intuitive. Drop down list are used extensively to provide for more efficient and robust data entry, and form level validation of data is also used throughout. Support is provided for both metric and imperial units, unit preferences can be customized for each user. Viewing of snow pit graphs and temperature profiles is also supported. Snow science data can be stored by the PDA application until it is uploaded to the either the desktop application or to the central database via the web application. The PDA application is being implemented on two different platforms, the J2ME platform and the SuperWaba platform. The use of the these two implementations will allow the PDA application to run on virtually all PDA type devices including Palm OS devices, Windows CE devices, as well as all types of J2ME enabled devices such as mobile phones, Game Boy etc. Desktop Application - The desktop application is a Java AWT application which allows the user to upload and store data from their PDA on their computer. The desktop application can display graphical snow pit information, and send data to the web application. Web Application - The Snow Pilot web application allows for the storage, access and viewing of all data collected from a central database via the internet. This application has two parts, a server side component and a web interface component . The server side component is a J2EE application which communicates with an SQL database. The server side component receives data from either the PDA application or the desktop application and parses and stores the data in a central database. Once the data is stored, the snow pit and avalanche occurrence data can be accessed via the web interface. The web interface is a Java applet that allows one to filter, query, and view snow pit and avalanche occurrence data via the web. Data can either be filtered graphically or via an SQL like text based query interface. The web interface can graphically display any snow pit or avalanche occurrence data selected. Currently the web application server is deployed using the Apache Web server, the Tomcat application server, and MySQL database. The current version is deployed on a Mac G4 running OS X (10.2), I currently am hosting this application from my office in Bishop CA. Development Team: Acknowledgements: History of the Pam Pilot Project: by Doug Chabot, The idea of using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to collect snowpit data isn’t new. Ever since they arrived on the scene a few years ago people started to envision using them as tools in the field, which has been done successfully in other branches of science. However, the main stumbling block to creating a program for avalanche professionals was always money. We knew the brainpower existed to write the software, but it was cost prohibitive. This all changed in October 2002 when Conrad Anker, working with our Friends of the Avalanche Center, secured a grant from the Omega Foundation to hire a programmer to write snowpit data collection software. In addition to this grant, the Friends also received a donation of 175 PDAs from Handspring that we handed out to avalanche centers, researchers and other snow professionals. Best of all, the program will be free. Let’s face it, standing in a snowpit and writing in your notebook, especially in adverse weather conditions, is slow, tedious, and cold! Further, once the data have been scribbled into a pit book and possibly rewritten a second time back at the office, there’s no simple way to share this difficult-to-collect information with other avalanche centers, researchers or with the public. In addition, any scientific analysis of these data is difficult or impossible. Snow Pilot will provide an easy, fast, and standardized way to collect snowpit data, and have the additional advantage of providing researchers with a way to seamlessly share this information. It will bring the recording of field observations, snowpits and stability tests into the digital age, where instead of islands of disparate paper records, there would be a vast uniform database for all to share. This robust scientific data collection system will allow avalanche forecasters and snow scientists to utilize a PDA to easily record snowpit information. Drop down menus and “point and click” entries will allow for rapid data collection and field validation. Once in the office, the data will be seamlessly synched to the user’s PC where information will be compiled into a snowpit profile. These profiles can also be posted on websites to provide the public with additional snowpack information. While this application is a new and innovative way to collect data, the real beauty of the program is that all the information will be sent off to a centralized database. Once in the database, these records will be instantly available to researchers and forecasters via the Internet. I have high hopes for this project. I’m tired of rifling through my pit books, hand-scribing data for different research projects. And I certainly won’t miss redrawing my snowpits once I get back to the office. The program will also allow you to set preferences for different users. Do you like zero at the top of your pit rather than at the bottom? Do you use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius; measure in inches instead of centimeters? No problem, it can accommodate you.
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