martykan
[Feature request] Radar view to the map page & possible additional data source
I understand that Forecastie gets map data from OpenWeatherMap, there's layer for clouds, rain, wind and temperature. I wish there could be also clearly visible radar view (those views mentioned arent clearly visible especially at area edges etc. ).
Since that data is from OpenWeatherMap, there's probably not much you can do without adding additional data source. There are some, but some might be for certain locations only. Sure if I were probrammer myself I would try to implement this myself too, but since I'm not I can only suggest as feature request. Here's one API to use but this is mainly if not only for Finland:
https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/open-data-manual
https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/open-data-sets-available
Tested and radar seems unfortunately work only for Finland, but here's a link you can see how clearly radar data is visible when comparing current map view of forecastie.
https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/local-weather/helsinki (scroll down for radar view)
Sure there would be some others available too which are good, like yr.no
https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/categories/200450271-About-Yr-the-API-and-our-privacy-policy
I don't know is there currently any way to get reasonable radar view available for Forecastie in easy way. By quick glance ( http://en.blitzortung.org/contact.php ) I think ligtning data from Blitzortung could be added but that would require main dev to join as part of Blitzortung network to be freely use lightning data, but even that wouldn't obviously fix radar view issue. On the other hand those local services like FMI offers also lightning data with radar views to use.
At the end, is this issue too complex to fix when considering that one of main goals for app is to be simple and lightweight?
With that said, I might next just Focus some transalation related things. Thanks for this great app!
If OWM offer radar maps, I am certainly interested in adding them, it's relatively trivial. Until/unless we offer more weather providers (see #126), this is unlikely to happen. For what it's worth, this would be useful to me as well, radar rain maps in NZ (from metservice.com) are pretty useful for predicting rain in the next few hours.
You've realised an important block/complication: each country/state is likely covered by a different provider, working out the API, getting permission to use the images and adding them to the app would be no small task.
I'll close for now, we can reopen in the (unlikely, I'm afraid) event we incorporate yr.no, met.no, yahoo weather, dark sky, etc. into Forecastie.
I'm not planning to reopen this, unless commenting will do that automatically...
Just commenting that I'm not coder so I don't know, but was just thinking that could possibly work done at service https://www.sataako.fi/ be used as alternative radar view for the Forecastie?
That is open source project, using most accurate radar data from FMI if I'm not mistaken. Source code for that service is available at: https://github.com/heikkipora/sataako-fi
But again like said, don't know does it help when that service is webpage, eventhought it's PWA which is possible to "install" to mobile, and you have actual app. How much of that code would be reusable and how much work would it need. Those + the earlier mentioned fact, that data seems to cover just Finland + small parts of surrounding countries.
Interesting, thanks for this. At the very least we could scrape the images, although they may not apprentice that. It might break their terms and conditions. More investigation I think.
It occurs to me that using radar, etc. images from other providers is likely easier than using forecast data. I will reopen, this is interesting.
Hopefully this leads somewhere forward with offering better radarmap. :)
For data, I was thinking that for my personal usage it would probably be best to join as weather station https://openweathermap.org/stations to provide local data, thus at the end probably improving forecasts etc. That if having only some data from RuuviTag would be enough...