Poll

What is your primary reason to upload your weather data?

So that I can see it live
1 (5.6%)
So that I can see it as it changes over time
2 (11.1%)
So that others can see it live
10 (55.6%)
So that others can see as it changes over time
2 (11.1%)
I want it to be used to improve weather forecasts
3 (16.7%)
I want it to be sold and make a profit
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 18

Author Topic: WU Alternative?  (Read 8084 times)

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Offline webcams.travel

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #50 on: January 30, 2018, 04:03:48 AM »
The following is my opinion and only my opinion.  Webcams.travel specializes in webcams. If you do not have a webcam or a webcam that you feel the world may want to see, then this new project is probably not for you. As far as selling the data? I doubt it. This will be a niche market at best. 
      How many complaints on the board about WU and their total failure in regards to webcams? How about WU limiting upload size to .15mb? Low quality image at best. People care about their webcams and want them on the internet. Would I pay WU for low quality images that don't show up anyway with the knowledge they do sell the info, No. Would I pay a few dollars for high quality images on a nice weather page. Probably.
      WU and their moronic decisions now cost me $17.00 dollars a month + an additional $200.00 roughly to get my own site up and running. I only need WU to feed data to my other site or else I would have dropped them like a hot potato.

You are right, our main benefit will be the high quality webcam (real time and archive) images. However, we also want to round up the service by doing the same for the weather data.

This is very interesting. What do you mean exactly by "I only need WU to feed data to my other site"? Would this be something we could offer you as well?

Offline webcams.travel

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #51 on: January 30, 2018, 04:08:41 AM »
Just my take - but I think it all depends on what you are interested in with regards to services/features. For me, the appealing thing about WU (when it was actually working) - was the ability to figure out what was coming my way weather-wise. I do a lot of duck hunting in December on the St. Lawrence R - which can be decently dangerous if you get caught out there in unexpected wind. We also get a fair amount of freezing rain here in the winter - and it's nice to be able to see temperatures/conditions locally. We lose power a lot - so its nice to pump the heat up if there's a chance of an outage.

So, basically, what I would be looking for is hyper-local conditions in real time - not necessarily forecasting. The weather network/channel forecast is hit and miss - but good enough to get the general idea of what is likely to happen - at least around here.

To get the hyper-local conditions you need lots of members and lots of stations uploading reliably - which was why WU appealed to me. Nice to be able to see the cams as well. I'd pay for that service if it was reliable and easy to use.

Thank you for your very insightful and helpful feedback! Yes, we will focus on reliable and easy to use service for sure.
And we will do our best to gain as many weather station members as possible, but we will be very small in numbers at first. However, we will do our best to grow as fast as we can, and of course, we count on your support to let others know about our service as well - which is why we want it to be as satisfying for you as possible.

Offline webcams.travel

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #52 on: January 30, 2018, 04:12:47 AM »
For hyper local forecasts I absolutely love DarkSky. I found a page of widgets that can be embedded in webpages. Possibly webcams.travel could incorporate one into their new web page template.

https://darksky.net/widgets

Thank you for sharing this! It does remind me a bit of https://www.windy.com - do you know/use that site as well?

Offline ConligWX

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #53 on: January 30, 2018, 06:17:16 AM »
webcam.travel

Can you tell me do you add webcams yourself to your own site from users websites, just curious as to how mine appeared on your website when I dont seem to have an account with you linked to any of my email addresses.
Regards Simon
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Offline jas340

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #54 on: January 30, 2018, 10:07:29 AM »
WU and their moronic decisions now cost me $17.00 dollars a month + an additional $200.00 roughly to get my own site up and running. I only need WU to feed data to my other site or else I would have dropped them like a hot potato.

I take it you cannot upload to another site? Met Office WOW, Awekas, Weathercloud, CWOP, PWS, Weatherbug are a few that accept data and at least 3 of them already take webcams images from Personal Weather stations.

I upload to all of those except Weathercloud. Unfortunately, just like WU, I do not own or control those companies/sites. They could decide to shut down or just go to hell in a hand basket just like WU. They are also lame websites. Now that I have my own website, it does what I want it to do. I pay to keep the lights on so to speak. The one thing my site does not have is name recognition and exposure.
I am very content with my new site. However, I also applaud webcams.travel for coming on the forum to see if they can make a business model that will work. I support the concept of what they are trying to do.
PS I dislike WU, they have been frustrating me and many of us for years. They took us all for granted for too long.

http://horseshoebendidahoweather.com/template/indexDesktop.php

Offline jas340

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #55 on: January 30, 2018, 01:48:35 PM »
"This is very interesting. What do you mean exactly by "I only need WU to feed data to my other site"? Would this be something we could offer you as well?"


My personal website uses Meteotemplate. It is a template created by Jachym. He is very active on this forum and extremely knowledgeable. My personal knowledge is very limited and I needed a lot of help getting my site/his template up and running. With that caveat, yes if you have a WU account you can feed the data to another template using an API from WU. The limitation IIRC is that you are limited to uploads every 5 minutes.
Another option may be to buy Cumulus by Sandysoft and modify it to add your site to upload to. Again IIRC the development of the program has ended due to the developer moving on to other things in his life. Someone, please correct me if I am incorrect on any of these points.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2018, 01:01:22 PM by jas340 »

Offline PaulMy

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #56 on: January 30, 2018, 09:59:36 PM »

Quote
Another option may be to buy Cumulus by Sandysoft and modify it to add your site to upload to. Again IIRC the development of the program has ended due to the developer moving on to other things in his life. Someone, please correct me if I am incorrect on any of these points.
I don't think you can buy Cumulus just yet.  Steve is on long term vacation and there is no new development for quite a while but he still monitors his forum and usually provides quick support.  What the future holds is uncertain.

However Cumulus as it is currently can provide data to other sites through the regular processing and uploading of template files.  Example: AWEKAS.
Enjoy,
Paul
« Last Edit: February 02, 2018, 12:08:42 AM by PaulMy »

Offline webcams.travel

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #57 on: January 31, 2018, 04:25:04 AM »
webcam.travel

Can you tell me do you add webcams yourself to your own site from users websites, just curious as to how mine appeared on your website when I dont seem to have an account with you linked to any of my email addresses.

Thank you for asking this. Actually, it is possible for everybody to add a webcam - however, the webcam owner can claim ownership of his webcam anytime (with the according proof, of course).

Offline webcams.travel

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #58 on: January 31, 2018, 04:27:48 AM »
I upload to all of those except Weathercloud. Unfortunately, just like WU, I do not own or control those companies/sites. They could decide to shut down or just go to hell in a hand basket just like WU. They are also lame websites. Now that I have my own website, it does what I want it to do. I pay to keep the lights on so to speak. The one thing my site does not have is name recognition and exposure.
I am very content with my new site. However, I also applaud webcams.travel for coming on the forum to see if they can make a business model that will work. I support the concept of what they are trying to do.
PS I dislike WU, they have been frustrating me and many of us for years. They took us all for granted for too long.

http://horseshoebendidahoweather.com/template/indexDesktop.php

Thank you for your kind words!

Offline webcams.travel

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #59 on: January 31, 2018, 04:31:56 AM »
My personal website uses Meteotemplate. It is a template created by Jachym. He is very active on this forum and extremely knowledgeable. My personal knowledge is very limited and I needed a lot of help getting my site/his template up and running. With that caveat, yes if you have a WU account you can feed the data to another template using an API from WU. The limitation IIRC is that you are limited to uploads every 5 minutes.
Another option may be to buy Cumulus by Sandysoft and modify it to add your site to upload to. Again IIRC the development of the program has ended due to the developer moving on to other things in his life. Someone, please correct me if I am incorrect on any of these points.

Thank you very much, this is very helpful. I added "Cumulus support" to our feature suggestion list:
https://feedback.userreport.com/1b124292-6404-4a4d-8a5c-6d897c1aab86/#idea/203936

Offline Intheswamp

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #60 on: January 31, 2018, 07:35:37 AM »

Another option may be to buy Cumulus by Sandysoft and modify it to add your site to upload to. Again IIRC the development of the program has ended due to the developer moving on to other things in his life. Someone, please correct me if I am incorrect on any of these points. I don't think you can buy Cumulus just yet.  Steve is on long term vacation and there is no new development for quite a while but he still monitors his forum and usually provides quick support.  What the future holds is uncertain.However Cumulus as it is currently can provide data to other sites through the regular processing and uploading of template files.  Example: AWEKAS.

Cumulus (1.9.4-b1079) has been up and running since May 2013 here at BeeWeather.  It's like an old mule, just keeps plodding along. Never a glitche (due to it) and does everything I want it to do.  Yeah, Steve is traveling Europe with his wife and I'm jealous...I sent him some green matter to him back around Christmas (something I try to do once a year).  I think he said they were in Spain at the time and that I was buying them supper and a bottle of wine that night! :lol:

Cumulus is a great little piece of software, add in Ken's templates and scripts and SHAZAM!!!, you've got your weather station online and deploying data to multiple other agencies.  Nice.

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Offline webcams.travel

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Re: WU Alternative?
« Reply #61 on: January 31, 2018, 10:50:53 AM »

Another option may be to buy Cumulus by Sandysoft and modify it to add your site to upload to. Again IIRC the development of the program has ended due to the developer moving on to other things in his life. Someone, please correct me if I am incorrect on any of these points. I don't think you can buy Cumulus just yet.  Steve is on long term vacation and there is no new development for quite a while but he still monitors his forum and usually provides quick support.  What the future holds is uncertain.However Cumulus as it is currently can provide data to other sites through the regular processing and uploading of template files.  Example: AWEKAS.

Cumulus (1.9.4-b1079) has been up and running since May 2013 here at BeeWeather.  It's like an old mule, just keeps plodding along. Never a glitche (due to it) and does everything I want it to do.  Yeah, Steve is traveling Europe with his wife and I'm jealous...I sent him some green matter to him back around Christmas (something I try to do once a year).  I think he said they were in Spain at the time and that I was buying them supper and a bottle of wine that night! :lol:

Cumulus is a great little piece of software, add in Ken's templates and scripts and SHAZAM!!!, you've got your weather station online and deploying data to multiple other agencies.  Nice.

Sounds great  :grin:

 

anything