YoWindow weather app introduction

[par]

Dear members of Cumulus community,
my name is Pasha Repkin, I am a programmer and the author of YoWindow.

YoWindow is an original weather display app for Windows and Mac.
It is free, new and already quite popular (around 500,000 users).

Steve has given me a permission to tell you about our product a while ago in the end of 2010.
But I was so busy with YoWindow development that I have only found the time today.

There are 2 features that distinct YoWindow from all other weather monitors for PC
1. It reflects the weather in beautiful landscapes so you can see it just like out of a window,
even weather forecast, even any place on Earth.

yodesktop_seaside.jpg

2. You can scroll the time to enjoy the weather forecast at any moment. Daylight is changing
as well.

airport_night_500.jpg

YoWindow provides a new way to watch the weather, we are the first who have made this.

If you like YoWindow, you can connect it to Cumulus to enjoy your PWS reports.
It's very easy.
Follow our Cumulus+YoWindow step by step guide, it will take 5 minutes.

There are much more about YoWindow.

• You can add YoWindow to your website or blog.
• You can run YoWindow as a beautiful and useful screensaver.
• Create your own landscape: take a shot of your window, remove the sky and add it to YoWindow. You will be surprised with the result.
• On Windows the current temperature is displayed beside the Windows clock.
• We have put many surprises you will notice while playing with YoWindow over time.

Most our users enjoy the free edition.
But if you like YoWindow and want to support our project you can order Unlimited Edition.
In Unlimited the weather forecast is extended to 6 - 9 days
and you will have 2 more animated landscapes - Seaside and Airport.

I will answer any questions about YoWindow and YoWindow+Cumulus integration on this thread.
Don't hesitate to ask!

Pasha, http://yowindow.com

[robynfali]

https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... dow#p43141


but best of luck with it

[par]

Dear Robyn, I was not expecting for the critics, most people are very kind to YoWindow.
I have given the comments to all the questions.
Thank you for letting me know about this post

[robynfali]

No worries, i used to go on forums, and start new posts, but tend to TRY and hit the search function beforehand these days.

I must admit, i am one of the negative ones I am afraid, but it's down to personal opinion I guess

[par]

That's what guys on our forum are always asking newcomer for.

I should have learned, sorry

No problem, I respect your opinion.

YoWindow is not a professional weather software. We are not trying to be everything for everyone.
All our efforts are put into making the weather to look beautiful and fun.

[robynfali]

One suggestion I do have for you, may seem like a personal one, but definatley viable, purely looking at your weather widget.

It offers either "major cities" or "all locations", the nearest to me is Bangor, North Wales, which is 22 miles from me, now that may seem close enough for some, but weather is Bangor can be extremely different to what we have here, and our closest town (which i would have thought would come under "all locations" is Holyhead.

We also have an "EGOV" weather station 2 miles from my location "RAF Valley", but neither are included, any paticular reason for this?

[par]

It appears there are at least two cities of Bangor in UK.

This must be Bangor in North Wales, the weather is taken from Raf Valley
http://yowindow.com/online.php?client=d ... #ln=Bangor

And this is the other Bangor you have probably selected by a mistake.
http://yowindow.com/online.php?client=d ... #ln=Bangor

So you need to pick the right Bangor and the problem is solved.

Yes we definetly should have highlighted the region of Bangor for each city.
We will take care of this problem.

And you can always point YoWindow to the METAR station you want by specifying current_weather_icao parameter.
See complete list of YoWindow widget parameters for the details.

If you need any more help, don't hesitate to ask, it's ok to be personal

[gemini06720]

Hello Pasha.

It has been a long time since our last communication...

Over the past days, I have read the YoWindow forums to get up-to-date, but I still have a lot to read, lot to catch-up...

I did a search for all the tags used in the XML file (such as '<response>', '<update>', etc.) but could not find any useful information. I want to update the PHP script I have been using for a while to produce the XML file. I would like to add the required tags for sunrise, sunset, day lenght and other. Could you point me to a link where I will find a complete and up-to-date list of ALL the tags used for the XML file. Thanks.

[par]

Dear Ray, I'm happy to read you!

You will find the complete YoWindow XML format description here
http://yowindow.com/doc/yowindow_pws_format.xml

And this is the post on our forum with some additional information.
http://yowindow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=368

However, I should say that there are no sunrise, sunset and day length tags in YoWindow.xml because there was no need in them.
YoWindow computes astronomical events automatically from the location coordinates and the time.


You are very welcome back to our forum

[gemini06720]

Pahsa, thank you for the links ... and the warm welcome...

However, I should say that there are no sunrise, sunset and day length tags in YoWindow.xml because there was no need in them. YoWindow computes astronomical events automatically from the location coordinates and the time.

Sorry to disagree with you on that, Pahsa, but when YoWindows uses the XML produced by a PWS (personal weather station), information for the 'Sunrise', 'Sunset' and 'Day Length' (on the YoWindow screen) are displayed as 'absent'...

May I make a request for adding those 3 tags (ie: 'sunrise', 'sunset' and 'day_length') to the XML file, please - the script I am using (which is a modified version of scripts originally produced by both Jim McMurry and Rainer Finkeldeh) is already calculating those 3 values as part of another function.

Another tag that should be deactivated when the data comes from a PWS is the 'visibility' as no station yet (to my knowledge) offers that possibility - I know the 'visibility' is available from some METAR stations, but unless one lives really close to the METAR station, the 'visibility' information is next to (completely) useless...

[gemini06720]

Pasha, I looked at both the old XML file/template provided by Rainer Finkeldeh and the 'YoWindow XML' page (to which you provided the links) and, it seems, after an absence of many months, the format for the tags of the XML file/template is still somewhat of a mess, no clear and complete template with all the up-to-date tags...

On Rainer's example template there is no information about the 'icon' or the 'mist' tags - on the 'YoWindow XML' page, thought, there are two confusing/conflicting articles about the 'icon' tag:

- when the 'icon' tag is used with a personal weather station ... but no station type is mentioned, such as 'cu' for Cumulus, 'wd' for Weather Display, etc. - so from which weather stations can YoWindow get and use the weather icon number information?

- when used with the 'clouds' tag to indicate clouds-coverage - again, no station type is mentioned!

Could you please clarify when the 'icon' tag can be used, by itself using the icon number provided by the station to represent the weather forecast, by itself using the icon number provided by the station to represent the cloud coverage, or for both, the weather forecast AND the cloud coverage?

How about the 'mist' tag - it it still being used by YoWindow or, as stated in an article dated January 25, 2010, it has been temporarily removed - the possibility of mist can be calculated through a PHP script using the cloud bas and the elevation at which fog/haze/mist usually form?

[par]

Hi, Ray!

I cannot put YoWindow in a condition when PWS is plugged in and there are no astromonical data in the Inspector.
Can you give me a hint how to achieve this?
If there is an error inside YoWindow I need to know how to reproduce it to fix it immediately.
Can I have an access to the output of your PWS script?

I just have plugged PWS to YoWindow as you can see on the screenshot the sunrise, sunset and dayLength are displayed.
http://gyazo.com/9cdcc44ec1c27d97bdc1772f3f34e2ee.png
Weather parameters provided by PWS are highlighted with a deep blue by default.

Regarding visibility.
When a parameter is omitted in YoWindow.xml (by PWS) station, YoWindow can use the parameter from the
closest METAR station.


Anyway I think it makes sense to leave visibility supported in YoWindow XML format since somebody may want to
adapt say TV/Radio weather reports for YoWindow, I mean not PWS source.

[par]

The latest YoWindow XML and up do date format is published on yowindow.com.
You need to refere to this document to make sure the tags are supported.
http://yowindow.com/doc/yowindow_pws_format.xml

"icon" tag was introduced for WeatherDisplay support, because Weather Display is not able to generate clouds/precipitation tags when a template is used on desktop computer (there is no this problem in PHP script variant).
This is Weather Display only.

We can do the same trick for Cumulus templates if it makes sense.
Please let me know since I do not own a PWS and cannot find it out.

You have mentioned weather forecast.
Pay attention that YoWindow can only read current weather from PWS.
Weather forecast is not supported.

Sorry to say, <mist> is not supported.
But it is a subject for the future improvements.

As usual I'm very short on time, trying to improve YoWindow as much as I can.
But there is no doubt YoWindow PWS format will be improved over time.
And I hope some day we will even support PWS weather forecasts.

Pasha

[par]

Hey, guys!

A little update about YoWindow weather widget
We have managed to shrink the file size by 30%
The main module is not 577 KB only.
It loads lightening fast on contemporary networks.

Also we have received a couple reports from people who have had hard time connecting YoWindow to Cumulus on Windows 7. Regular template generation did not work.
Only real time works.
I don't know why though.

We have updated Cumulus + YoWindow tutorial showing how to workaround this problem.

And the last good news is that YoWindow 3 - our second major release - is coming on 29 February.
YoWindow 3 is much faster.
We have added several features and one more landscape.
You can follow our Twitter to keep track of YoWindow progress.