New marine weather android app for North America

[Kelkara]

Stuck 500 miles from my boat ... I thought I'd try and do something useful.

I've written a little app that collects marine weather data from both Environment Canada and NOAA (and even some data from the Mexican met office) into one place.

- Text based forecasts for all marine waters around North America.
- Ocean buoy weather reports
- Coastal weather station reports
- Lighthouse weather reports (BC only)
- Current weather radar images
- All the WeFax charts: synoptic charts, forecast maps, 500mb charts etc.
- GOES IR satellite images
- Probabilistic wind/wave modelling maps
- Ocean ice conditions (just in case anyone is planning on heading north)

Quick access to favourite data is stored on the "home screen".

Obviously I'm only really interested in the north Pacific coast WA, BC and AK, but once I had both US and Canadian data involved, there was no reason not to include the rest of the continent.

I wrote it because I'm hoping I'll find it useful ... but I've made it public and free just in case any of you do also ...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...orish.marinewx


sorry not available for iPhone.

[Kelkara]

Thought I should add a few screen-shots

[svMarite]

Cool, let me give it a whirl

[sv_pelagia]

damn, wish I'd seen this before cruising this past Summer. Thank you for this!

Have been using once-excellent "Canada Marine" app, but it stopped working a year ago. (Dewey promised to fix it, but so far hasn't.) Since then I have been using direct URLs to EC test forecasts:
https://sailing-pelagia.blogspot.com...itish.html?m=0

So, with your new app, it will be interesting to see which method (app or text forecast URLs) using least amount of cell data.

(A nice thing about text forecasts is they are easy/fast to download via SSB/HAM/Pactor or Sattelite.)

[Kelkara]

Originally Posted by sv_pelagia

damn, wish I'd seen this before cruising this past Summer. Thank you for this!

Have been using once-excellent "Canada Marine" app, but it stopped working a year ago. (Dewey promised to fix it, but so far hasn't.) Since then I have been using direct URLs to EC test forecasts:
https://sailing-pelagia.blogspot.com...itish.html?m=0

So, with your new app, it will be interesting to see which method (app or text forecast URLs) using least amount of cell data.

(A nice thing about text forecasts is they are easy/fast to download via SSB/HAM/Pactor or Sattelite.)

The "Canada Marine" App stopping working is what motivated me to write this ... but i also wanted to include NOAA forecasts for US waters.


The data use should be very similar to downloading text files, since that is all the app does: download the relevant text file, and then a little processing to help make it more readable. What it doesn't do is save the file, so if you flip between forecast zones it will reload the same data. I did think about saving the data, but couldn't think of a good way to ensure that stale data didn't get displayed ... not a problem using cell-data since the files are mostly very small, but if you're using HF or satellite it might be worth trying to add.

[jackdale]

Thanks Henry

I will check it out.

Jack

[seadrift]

Excellent all in one place on my phone. No buoy data from eastern Canada?

[Kelkara]

Originally Posted by seadrift

Excellent all in one place on my phone. No buoy data from eastern Canada?

I get the buoy data from here:
https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/
If the buoy isn't actively reporting data it isn't included in the datafile.

Just at the moment it seems as if they are not getting data from any Canadian Buoys ... western Canada seems to have no data either.

check again later ... I hope it's just temporary.

If you know a Canada specific URL for buoy data, I can look at including that.

[sv_pelagia]

Canadian buoys: Pacific coast

Found in the top half of each of these:

https://weather.gc.ca/marine/weather...&stationID=VTF

https://weather.gc.ca/marine/weather...tationID=46183

[seadrift]

E.g. Environment and natural resources /Weather information Marine /Marine Forecasts/ Banquereau

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by Kelkara

If you know a Canada specific URL for buoy data, I can look at including that.

Buoy weather is available on the Environment Canada site

https://www.weather.gc.ca/marine/for...2&siteID=14301

There are drop down menus for buoys and land stations for each area.

[Kelkara]

Originally Posted by sv_pelagia

Canadian buoys: Pacific coast

Found in the top half of each of these:

https://weather.gc.ca/marine/weather...&stationID=VTF

https://weather.gc.ca/marine/weather...tationID=46183

Thanks ... yes, I'm using those pages for the land-station data ... can't remember why I didn't use it for the buoys ... probably because I had already written the code to process the data supplied from NOAA, and that was working.


I'll look into using these pages for Canada ... certainly if the problem persists.


thanks guys.

[Kelkara]

Originally Posted by jackdale

Buoy weather is available on the Environment Canada site

https://www.weather.gc.ca/marine/for...2&siteID=14301

There are drop down menus for buoys and land stations for each area.

I don't really want to go that route, as that requires a separate page for each buoy/station, and increases the work/maintenance on my end, and I'd like to maintain sufficient motivation to keep the app running both ends of the country ... but I can definitely use the pages Pelagia posted if they are more reliable ... expect an update before spring.

[Connemara]

Tried it. Could be that I'm using Android 7, but it does not seem to work. All I get is a plus sign that says MORE. Nothing further.

Connemara

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Connemara

Tried it. Could be that I'm using Android 7, but it does not seem to work. All I get is a plus sign that says MORE. Nothing further.

Connemara

Hit the word "more" (next to plus sign) and start selecting (again, touch words, not symbols)

Works great (!) for me. Thanks Henry!