WeatherView Android app

[Welly]

Hi all

I've not posted before, but I've been working on an app for android phones to display your weather data plus a forecast generated by WXSIM forecasting software.

A user bought the Elite version before realising that it only supported the Weather Display software (Boo hiss, I hear you say:) ).

I have been working with him to add compatibility for Cumulus users and he is now testing the beta version.

The app collects Cumulus data from two sources. CUtags.php for a Saratoga template site and Realtime.txt for the Cumulus template site.

Now here's my question: The CUtags.php file gives me all the data I need, but the Realtime.txt is missing things like station name, latitude, longitude, almanac and current conditions. Is there another file uploaded for the Cumulus template users which would give this information?

Although WXSIM is not readily supporting Cumulus, I'm using the station latitude/longitude to give a forecast got from World Weather Online. At the moment I'm having to use the phones location to provide the forecast, but I'd prefer a more specific site forecast.

Anyway a brief outline of the soon to be released WeatherView 4 features:

Station data collected from:
Cumulus Saratoga template sites(CUtaps.php), Cumulus Template sites (Realtime.txt), Weather Display sites, Current location (using phones latitude/longitude from World Weather Online)

Scrolling forecast screen from WXSIM or World Weather Online

Current Conditions, Wind details, Rain details, Temperature details, Atmospheric details and Almanac details.

Widgets: Small (1 x 1), Medium (4 x 1), Medium (2 x 2) and Large (4 x 4)

Status bar temperature and new forecast notifications.

Sorry for the unashamed plug, but I'd like the app to be opened up to more users.

There is the free version (ad supported) and an Elite version where you can add your site to the database and also get hold of the script to incorporate your WXSIM forecast (no ads).

If anyone had any feature suggestions or comments then please post.

Thanks for reading

Welly

[steve]

Now here's my question: The CUtags.php file gives me all the data I need, but the Realtime.txt is missing things like station name, latitude, longitude, almanac and current conditions. Is there another file uploaded for the Cumulus template users which would give this information?

You can create your own additional file, using web tags - http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/Webtags - that's how the CUtags.php file works.

Although WXSIM is not readily supporting Cumulus

WXSIM does work with Cumulus, but is there something missing from the support that you need?

[Welly]

First of all, let me apologise for my rash statement about Cumulus and WXSiM , I stand corrected

Secondly, I realise that Cumulus offers really good support for tags. I'm just trying to get an "out of the box solution" where users can just add their site with no extra requirements, which is where I was going with seeing if another file existed for the extra information.

If this requires an extra tag file being created, then that's ok. My thoughts were that there's a tag file for this and another tag file for that. I would like to keep things as simple as possible for the end user and utilise what information is readily available.

Sorry if I've offended

Welly

[mcrossley]

Why not just use the CUtags.php file?

It is already there on sites that use the Saratoga templates as you say, but anyone could use it whether or not use use PHP for anything else.

I have a JSON equivalent of CUtags.php on my site that I am cutting everything over to using from both PHP and client side JavaScripts.

[steve]

Sorry if I've offended

Not all; I don't know how you got that impression, I was just trying to be helpful. I'm sorry that it didn't come out that way.

Like Mark, I was also going to suggest that you could just use the CUtags file, but I wondered if that was perhaps overkill for what you need. It's very easy to create a small file with just the tags you need. The CUtags file isn't a 'standard' file anyway; people who use that had to set up Cumulus to upload it, so which ever way you go, your users who don't currently use the CUtags file would still have to configure an extra upload in Cumulus.

[Welly]

This may be going a little off topic.

I agree that another tag file is a pain for users to implement and I'm very interested in this JSON equivalent. After reading up on Wikepidia it looks to be a easy file to produce and is easily read by humans and devices

WeatherView initially was created with a bespoke XML tag file, which itself is easy to adapt for cumulus users.

But I'm wondering about whether it would be a good idea to collaborate with other script/app developers to create a JSON master file, perhaps based around CUtags. This could be used by all script writers as a source for data from any station.

Perhaps it's wishful thinking, as other developers have spent a huge amount of time and effort developing and may want to keep things "in house".

Be interesting to hear from other developers.

[steve]

My concern about a 'one size fits all' approach would be the size of the file, as with the CUtags file, if a particular application only needed a few of the items.

The existing Android apps that work with Cumulus just use a very small file with only the required info that isn't already in realtime.txt (like latitude and longitude). The file is provided for the user, so all they have to do is add the file details to the files tab in Cumulus. They've already configured their ftp details in Cumulus, so adding a new file is no more difficult than what they've done already.

But I'm not an app/web developer, so I'm probably seeing things from a different perspective. I can see the benefits, though, of a single 'standard' file in an agreed format (e.g. JSON) which contained everything that most app/web developers might need (which I assume is the purpose of the CUtags file for PHP developers).

[mcrossley]

Steve, the CUtags.php file does contain a lot of tags that don't make much sense or values that can be derived from others. It is still a work in progress, but what I am planning on doing is having a fairly comprehensive set of data updated at the web interval, and a much smaller sub-set updated at the real time interval.

But I am weighing this against using SQL queries from the day data which makes sense for much of the historic values, but some are either expensive to compute or only readily available from Cumulus, or require trawling a log interval table. So I am thinking about what additional tables would you need to store these 'expensive' values so that you can perform quick look ups when needed, and only compute them say once a day. Back to the question a while ago - what would an ideal weather DB schema look like? I know the principle is store once, but practicalities sometimes mean you bend that rule.

[steve]

I know the principle is store once, but practicalities sometimes mean you bend that rule.

Yes; this was what I tried to do in Cumulus 2, but it soon became clear that retrieving derived data from a single table was too slow, particularly on lower powered systems.

I still think that the Weatherlink schema would make a good starting point, which is pretty much what I used in Cumulus 2, but with additional tables giving summaries such that they don't need to be retrieved from the 'detailed' table - rather like dayfile.txt in Cumulus.

[Welly]

I think I'll keep the idea of auto detecting supported files and I'll also convert the tag file for any cumulus user who wants to use it as it will make the file download size a little smaller.

I've just released version 4 of WeatherView which now supports Cumulus weather sites.

It will look firstly for CUTags.php and if it doesn't find it then it will look for Realtime.txt.

If you want to use a WXSIM forecast then you will need the custom files. I'll post them when I've converted the tags file, but for now the forecast will be from World Weather Online which will update every 2 hours.

You can either put your website path to your files in the custom site location, or, if you buy the Elite version, then you can add your site to the list (This will also give you access to the php file for WXSIM integration).

Alternately you can email me a link with your preferred station name and location and I'll add you to the database manually.

South Franklin Huon Valley Weather is the only Cumulus site at the moment, so you can download WeatherView Free from Google play to take a look.

Any question, please don't hesitate to ask.

Rob

[steve]

Rob, I've got an Android tablet, will it work on that, or only on phones? I know very little about Android devices, I got a tablet recently just to play with. If so, I'll give it a try tomorrow.

[Welly]

Version 4 for Tablets is not released yet (I need to do some layout changes and the beta version had a crash yesterday). Hold fire for a few days because the current tab version will not work with Cumulus. I'll let you know when the tablet version is available.

[Welly]

Hi All

I know this is a little impertinent of me as I've not posted for such a long time but I've been a bit quiet on all the forums as of late because I've been putting all my spare time into re-writing my WeatherView app for android phones.

I've just released on update to version 5 of WeatherView and you can now add your Cumulus site, as a premium site and have it listed within the app for free.

Another addition is the ability to search for a location anywhere in the world. This gives basic weather information for that area with a 5 day forecast, but is nowhere near as comprehensive as a premium personal weather station.

There are now 4 widgets available, a 1x1 basic widget along with better 4x1 and 2x2 widgets and also a resizable 4x4 widget.

WeatherView works by firstly looking for a tag file called WeatherView.php. This file incorporates the WXSIM forecast and an optional custom tag file, if the tag file is not available then WeatherView looks for your CUTags files and then Realtime.txt.

If you don't use WXSIM then all you need to do is put in the location to your Realtime/CUTags files and there you are - your weather site online with forecasts from World Weather Online. This also means you won't have to upload anything else to your web site - which is always a concern if your ISP limits uploads.

The free version is ad-supported but there is the Elite version which has no ads.

Version 5 is now on the Google play store. A link to it is:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... r&hl=en_GB

Best regards to all.

Welly