KF8BSS Hamdashboard

A personal situational awareness dashboard for amateur radio operations and family emergency communications, built for KF8BSS (Dudley Irvin) in Westerville, Ohio.

Built on VA3HDL's Hamdashboard This project is a fork of VA3HDL/hamdashboard by Pablo Sabbag. The original dashboard engine, tile rotation system, and sub-dashboard architecture are VA3HDL's work. See UPSTREAM_README.md for the original documentation.

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What This Is

A browser-based dashboard that displays live weather imagery, radio propagation data, NWS alerts, traffic cameras, and emergency reference information — all in one place, refreshing automatically.

It is hosted on Cloudflare Pages at https://kf8bss-radio.com and deployed automatically whenever this repository is updated.

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Dashboard Layout

Main Dashboard (4×3 grid, 12 tiles)

Row	Tile	Content	Source
1	1	Radar — CONUS / OH (KILN) / MD (KLWX)	NWS Ridge
1	2	Satellite — GL GEOCOLOR / NE GEOCOLOR / IR	GOES-19 NESDIS
1	3	Heads Up — SPC Watches / WWA / Storm Reports / QPF	SPC + NWS + WPC
1	4	Forecast — WPC Surface D1 / D2 / D3 / Hazards D3-7	WPC
2	5	D-RAP — Ionospheric absorption	NOAA SWPC
2	6	MUF/LUF — Columbus & Annapolis propagation paths	KC2G
2	7	Solar Summary — SFI, K-index, band conditions	hamqsl (N0NBH)
2	8	Solar Conditions — Indices, NOAA scales, flares	hamqsl + SWPC
3	9	OH Alerts — Franklin, Delaware, Marion, Union, Madison	NWS API
3	10	MD Alerts — Anne Arundel County	NWS API
3	11	OH Cameras — SR-161/Sunbury, I-71/Polaris, US-23/Cheshire, I-71/US-36	OHGO
3	12	MD Cameras — US-50/St Margarets, US-50/Rowe Blvd, US-50/Severn River, I-97/Benfield	CHART MD

Sub-Dashboards

• satellite.js — 2×2 satellite and radar views (SATS tab, left)
• weather.js — 4×2 dedicated weather products dashboard (WEATHER tab, right)

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File Inventory

File	Purpose
config.js	Main configuration — tiles, tabs, RSS feeds, rotation timing
index.html	Dashboard engine (VA3HDL, modified)
satellite.js	Satellite sub-dashboard configuration
weather.js	Weather sub-dashboard configuration
alerts-oh.html	Live NWS alert monitor — Central Ohio counties
alerts-md.html	Live NWS alert monitor — Anne Arundel County MD
solar.html	Solar conditions dashboard — hamqsl + SWPC data
family.html	Family emergency communications plan (print-ready)
redirect.html	Opens iframe-blocking sites in a new browser tab
docs.html	Operations and maintenance guide
AzimuthalMap.pdf	Azimuthal map centered on EN80nc (Westerville OH)

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Key Customizations vs VA3HDL Original

• Custom alert tiles (alerts-oh.html, alerts-md.html) — live NWS API county-level alert monitors with color-coded severity
• Solar conditions tile (solar.html) — fetches hamqsl XML via Cloudflare Worker proxy, displays band conditions table, NOAA R/S/G 3-day forecast, and recent M/X flare events
• Family emergency communications plan (family.html) — contacts, repeaters, NOAA weather radio frequencies, evacuation destination matrix, Go/No-Go threat matrix, communications plan — print-ready
• Weather sub-dashboard (weather.js) — 8-tile 4×2 grid of confirmed NOAA/NWS weather products
• ext| URL prefix support in index.html — tabs using ext| open in a new browser tab instead of embedding (bypasses X-Frame-Options blocking)
• Custom RSS labels — third element in aRSS entries provides short labels for the ticker; NWS observation titles stripped of airport name suffix for cleaner display
• Cloudflare Worker (hamqsl-proxy.kf8bss.workers.dev) — CORS proxy for hamqsl.com solar XML feed
• Dual-location awareness — tiles, alerts, cameras, and propagation maps cover both Westerville OH and Annapolis MD

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RSS Ticker Feeds

Label	Source	Refresh
KCMH	John Glenn Columbus International Airport	5 min
KBWI	Baltimore-Washington International Airport	5 min
KPIT	Pittsburgh International (Columbus predictor)	5 min
KIND	Indianapolis International (Columbus predictor)	5 min
KTVC	Traverse City Cherry Capital Airport MI	5 min
SPC WATCH	SPC Tornado/Severe Thunderstorm Watches	5 min
SPC MD	SPC Mesoscale Discussions	5 min

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Architecture

Browser → kf8bss-radio.com (Cloudflare Pages)
              ↓ serves static files from
          github.com/kf8bss/hamdashboard
              ↓ tiles fetch images from
          NWS / NOAA / SWPC / KC2G / OHGO / CHART MD
              ↓ solar.html fetches via
          hamqsl-proxy.kf8bss.workers.dev (Cloudflare Worker)
              ↓ which fetches from
          hamqsl.com (N0NBH solar data)

Deployment workflow: Edit file locally → push to GitHub → Cloudflare auto-deploys (1-2 min) → refresh browser.

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Tabs

Left — Ham Radio Operations

SATS, DX HEAT, SOLARHAM, VOACAP, APRS, WINLINK, POTA, CONTESTS, PSKREPTR, AZ MAP

Right — Situational Awareness

FAMILY (red), WEATHER, NWS ILN, NWS LWX, NHC, SPC, OHGO, CHART MD, AEP, BGE, VERIZON, SPECTRUM, XFINITY, WATER

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Documentation

Full operations and maintenance guide: https://kf8bss-radio.com/docs.html

Includes architecture overview, tile descriptions, step-by-step maintenance procedures, recovery instructions, and weather URL reference patterns — written for users of any technical level.

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Credits

• VA3HDL (Pablo Sabbag) — original Hamdashboard engine, concept, and open-source release
• N0NBH (Paul) — hamqsl.com solar data widget and XML feed
• KC2G (Andrew) — prop.kc2g.com MUF/LUF propagation maps
• NOAA / NWS / SWPC — all weather, alert, and space weather data
• OHGO — Ohio traffic camera images
• CHART Maryland — Maryland traffic camera thumbnails

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KF8BSS — EN80nc — Westerville, Ohio