1. Deconstruction of the Wilderness Weather Station Case Study

2. Introduction
Over the course of this class we will be performing several exercises involving the Wilderness Weather Station Case Study and its components.
It is therefore important to explicitly define those components and their characteristics for our analysis

3. Overview
A government (Canada) will deploy these Wilderness Weather Stations across a wide area in remote areas.
The overall software that defines this system is composed of three major and distinct parts.
There are three major sections to this system:
Satellite Box
Control Panel
Database Application
Note that these sections may be designed, developed, and configured independently.

4. Satellite Box The first component is the “Satellite Box”.
This is the component that is deployed in the field in a large weather resistant container.
This system will have a variety of weather sensors, including temperature, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, humidity, and rain fall, among possible others.

5. Satellite Box (Continued)
This will communicate with the “Control Panel” application by way of a Satellite communication link with a Geosynchronous communication satellite.
Assume that communication through the satellite link is billed per MB of data, and is EXPENSIVE. Keep communications as simple as possible.

6. Satellite Box (Continued)
The box will contain a battery and a computer system running the software we design for this system.
There are two types of this box. The first uses solar panels to recharge the battery. The second uses a wind turbine. The wind turbine is better for the northern areas of the terrain as well as places with lower levels of sunlight (valleys and north side of mountains).

7. Satellite Box (Continued)
Overly strong winds can damage the wind turbines if they are not put into a “safe mode”. The Control Panel will be responsible for monitoring forecasts and communicating to the Satellite Boxes that need it to go into safe mode.

8. Satellite Box (Continued)
The satellite boxes should normally communicate with the Control Panel application every 6 hours and relay weather information as well as system status information (battery level and any issues with the sensors).
If the satellite box can’t reach the control panel it will save its weather data for the next time it can do so.

9. Control Panel Application
In the central headquarters, there will be one control panel (optionally, a primary and a backup) that will receive information from the Satellite Boxes and send commands to them.
This will have a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for use by the Park Ranger who will manage it.
NOTE: The Park Ranger who manages this application will likely have other duties so this must be easy to use and low maintenance.

10. Control Panel Application (continued)
Among other features, this application will display a map of the area with dots for all of the satellite boxes.
This application will attempt to parse weather forecasts for the area and place wind turbine boxes in safe mode automatically.
The operator can override the safe mode feature (either putting some or all boxes into safe mode or taking them out).

11. Control Panel Application (continued)
The operator may receive text messages for important system events.
NOTE: There will be several hundred satellite boxes. The loss of one box is an inconvenience, not a disaster.
The Control Panel will receive weather data and status information and store this in the database application (see below)

12. Database Application
The control panel will feed the weather data into a database.
This database will then expose the data through web services to various interested customers (national weather services and universities – possibly including private citizens).
The application may have a GUI, but most of the code will be related to the web services.

13. This is only a starting point…
Remember that this description is only a starting point. If a specific assignment (in your opinion) requires you to make up other specific details about this system – then just make them up – but state what it is you have made up.