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Android App

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ocala:
I'll add the stations and test it out.

graniteapps:
For quick reference to use the MesoWest station list you press the menu button at the top right, then tab options, then select the alternate station list.

If you see -- for temperature it means that the app didn't find temp in the data it downloaded, but there are 4 places the app downloads data from so this is part of the simplification i was referring to before.

By default the app will use the NOAA provided information contained in the file it downloads for the forecast data at for example https://f1.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40&lon=-120&FcstType=dwml which should match what you see at https://www.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40&lon=-120 from the web. I assume this will not show CWOP data. You will often see -- here when NOAA does not provide any station information for that location, but in those cases the app will say "No Data" as well which I would expect to be more common than only the temp missing and other data present.

In the case where NOAA provides no station information for a particular location, the app does NOT automatically select a nearby station. You have to select one from the list yourself. This again, is done so the default behavior will match the NOAA website but it will also impact the original question of the thread. If you use the status bar notification or widget set to auto-locate it will stop after loading this initial file so if I'm correct that NOAA doesn't put CWOP data in that initial file, than you probably can't do exactly what you want with the app.

After NOAA moves to their new API which is at api.weather.gov, I think this will work much better. I could get it working now, but I have been burned too many times building new functionality on top of messy or disappearing APIs as well as new beta APIs. Until I am sure the direction NOAA is going I will probably keep things mostly as they are.

If you select a different weather station the app will then associate that station with the selected location, and that will affect the widgets and notifications as well. Note that you can then select a different station as much as you want but you cannot revert to the original NOAA default. A trick if you really want to do that is the following. Go to where you enter in a location in the app and instead enter "clearSavedStations" and press search. You will see "Preference Set" if it works.

If you select a station yourself, the other 3 resources are used currently in the following order. I'll use F3708 as the example.

1) The app tries one of NOAA's production APIs which gives no data in this case.
https://w1.weather.gov/xml/current_obs/F3708.xml

2) The app then tires NOAAs beta API.
https://api.weather.gov/stations/F3708/observations/latest
Success. This is good news for the future, suggesting NOAA's new API will work with at least some CWOP stations.

3) The app would then query MesoWest.
https://api.synopticlabs.org/v2/stations/latest?stid=F3708&within=300&vars=air_temp,wind_speed,wind_direction,wind_gust,relative_humidity,altimeter,dew_point_temperature,visibility&token=[my_token]
I won't post my token here. You may be able to use a demo one from synoptic labs website. These requests can get expensive for me to provide when used at scale. its not a free API. This is partly why I use it only if the other requests fail. Its possible in the future MesoWest/Synoptic could be used more but perhaps placed behind an in-app purchase to cover cost.

This is a long post already so I'll stop there. Happy to answer more questions.

Paul

ocala:
Thank you for the long explanation. Nice to know the thinking that goes on behind the scenes.
You're right in that the GPS option I was looking for won't work. Don't want to have to look for it manually. I took a drive today to some mesowest stations by me. Waited the 15 minutes for the update but it just updated my home location. It does that just fine.
I understand about putting a band-aid on it to get it to work temporarily. No point in doing that.
Hopefully when the api is updated it will do what I want.
Appreciate the explanation and I'll keep it installed so I'll be notified of any updates.

galfert:
Yes I too really appreciate the explanation of how the app works. Nice to see that it has several attempts in different ways to get data. Hopefully the new API will be finalized soon by NOAA and prove to be the way to go.

ChanelClark:
Hey there! I stumbled upon this old forum post and wanted to check if there've been any updates since then. Maybe there's something that fits the bill now. Also, I recently found out about OCR, a way to scan documents with your phone and convert the text into an editable format. It's super helpful for work or school stuff. There's a website called https://smartengines.com/ that has an automatic and eco-friendly document scanning and OCR service that's pretty awesome. I know it's been a while since this post was made, but I hope my suggestions are still useful. Cheers!

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