Author Topic: Release: sWeather (tray-based weather app) (Read 475918 times)

youhim · « **Reply #725 on:** September 23, 2020, 01:14 AM »

Release: sWeather (tray-based weather app)

Shades · « **Reply #726 on:** September 23, 2020, 07:56 AM »

Don't know which weather service provides your other temperature read-out, but the one in sWeather uses Yahoo! (and its affiliated weather service).

With such different read-outs, it is safe to assume these are different. Which implies that they process weather data differently. Then there is difference in available data. Yahoo! is likely using weather satellites that keep track of weather in the US and rely on data from other weather agencies that cover different regions on the globe.

Is the discrepancy between read-out too large for comfort? Yes it is. But explainable, once you don't want to know about temperature read-outs in the US. AccuWeather is what my phone uses here in South-America, where I live. I found that to be a much more reliable source than Yahoo!, but AccuWeather charges quite some money to provide data through their API. Yahoo! doesn't. As sWeather is provided to you at no cost, you can't expect the author to pay for API access to one (or more, for averaging read-outs) weather service.

As far as I know, sWeather had to change to Yahoo!, because other weather services were charging too much or put limitations on API callls, which would make sWeather unreliable for everyone. Now it can be unreliable for people outside of the US, because of Yahoo!'s sub-par quality of weather data outside the US. And as the US is the main "market" for sWeather, I can understand and appreciate the choice for Yahoo! as weather data provider.

Besides all this, there is also the matter of weather satellites. Most of these were shot into orbit 15 to 20 years ago. Of those, many are starting to wear out, but there are not enough new satellites being made to replace whatever capacity is already there. Weather data quality is becoming more of an issue each new day. Weather data algorithms have gotten better since then, so that makes up a bit for loss of measuring devices.

Lots of words to explain that what the weather data you get from Yahoo! is nothing more than "best effort" when asking for temperature read-outs outside the US.

KodeZwerg · « **Reply #727 on:** September 23, 2020, 07:59 AM »

I've just tested this beauty, Europe/Germany/Berlin, works perfect with Yahoo Data.

phred13 · « **Reply #728 on:** January 22, 2021, 10:41 AM »

Hi...

I'm using v1.8.2b1 on a Win10 Pro machine. I remember a year or two ago Yahoo changed their API and sWeather stopped pulling data. I don't know if the API has changed again, but the data hasn't changed for two cities for the past two days. I have exited and relaunched sWeather multiple times and I have also rebooted the PC a few times. Still not updating.

Is anyone else seeing this?

skwire · « **Reply #729 on:** January 23, 2021, 10:23 AM »

I'm using v1.8.2b1 on a Win10 Pro machine. I remember a year or two ago Yahoo changed their API and sWeather stopped pulling data. I don't know if the API has changed again, but the data hasn't changed for two cities for the past two days. I have exited and relaunched sWeather multiple times and I have also rebooted the PC a few times. Still not updating.
-phred13 (January 22, 2021, 10:41 AM)

https://developer.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! are shutting down their free weather API, which sWeather uses for its data. Unless I find another free weather API to use, sWeather will stop working. The problem is that all the free ones I've researched are extremely limited in 1) number of API hits per day and/or 2) the weather data that the free tier offers. I already pay out of pocket yearly for a few other APIs for some of my others apps, so I'm not relishing the idea of paying for yet another one.

Brothbeard · « **Reply #730 on:** January 23, 2021, 12:57 PM »

I'm not sure if this is of any value but OpenWeatherMap.org appears free for the sort of volumes I imagine sweather generates. Apologies if I've accidentally repeated a previous suggestion.

skwire · « **Reply #731 on:** January 23, 2021, 01:12 PM »

I'm not sure if this is of any value but OpenWeatherMap.org appears free for the sort of volumes I imagine sweather generates. Apologies if I've accidentally repeated a previous suggestion.
-Brothbeard (January 23, 2021, 12:57 PM)

Thank you, and, yep, that's one of the ones I'm looking at.

phred13 · « **Reply #732 on:** January 23, 2021, 05:30 PM »

Yahoo! are shutting down their free weather API, which sWeather uses for its data. Unless I find another free weather API to use, sWeather will stop working. The problem is that all the free ones I've researched are extremely limited in 1) number of API hits per day and/or 2) the weather data that the free tier offers. I already pay out of pocket yearly for a few other APIs for some of my others apps, so I'm not relishing the idea of paying for yet another one.
-skwire (January 23, 2021, 10:23 AM)

Thanks for the explanation. I'd be sorry to see sWeather go, but I certainly can understand your not wanting this to cost you more money. Have you considered accepting PayPal donations?

skwire · « **Reply #733 on:** January 23, 2021, 05:37 PM »

Thanks for the explanation. I'd be sorry to see sWeather go, but I certainly can understand your not wanting this to cost you more money.
-phred13 (January 23, 2021, 05:30 PM)

sWeather is one of the few apps I wrote for myself, as opposed to a coding request. I still use it daily, so I plan to make it work with one of the APIs out there.

Have you considered accepting PayPal donations?
-phred13 (January 23, 2021, 05:30 PM)

https://www.dcmembers.com/skwire/donate/

joiwind · « **Reply #734 on:** May 13, 2021, 11:57 AM »

Just to jump in a bit late ! Skwire, have you looked at this ? :

https://openweathermap.org/price

The free option might be enough ?

All the best.

ceefan · « **Reply #735 on:** June 09, 2021, 10:02 AM »

[Select]

{"error": "Sorry this API is now retired and there is no alternative API that we can support. We greatly appreciated the opportunity to have served you in this space. Thankfully, there are many alternative weather APIs freely available for you to consider. While we cannot formally recommend one over others, we would recommend searching the web for %"free weather APIs%" to see several good options and find the best fit for you. If you have any comments or feedback you'd like to share, please feel free to reach out to us at: weather-ydn-api@verizonmedia.com"}

Oh no...

Have you considered having each individual user register for and enter their own API key for something like OpenWeatherMap?

TechTeacher · « **Reply #736 on:** June 09, 2021, 12:56 PM »

PLEASE find a new API to use. If we need to kick in a few bucks it's worth it!

Every day when I boot up the first thing I do is check the lower right hand corner of my screen to see what the weather is going to be.

Your app is the most useful thing in my Task Bar!

Knut AK · « **Reply #737 on:** June 10, 2021, 11:01 AM »

The norwegian weather-service Yr has free weather-data in a JSON-based API, see https://developer.yr.no/

skwire · « **Reply #738 on:** June 10, 2021, 01:46 PM »

PLEASE find a new API to use.
-TechTeacher (June 09, 2021, 12:56 PM)

I'll probably end up changing it to the OpenWeatherMap API mentioned above as it's the best free one out there. It won't be until next week, though.

If we need to kick in a few bucks it's worth it!
-TechTeacher (June 09, 2021, 12:56 PM)

Donations have really dried up over the years, so they're always welcome.

https://www.dcmembers.com/skwire/donate/

smaragdus · « **Reply #739 on:** June 10, 2021, 05:09 PM »

I had been using WeatherMate for years until I discovered sWeather which is the best weather program I have ever used. When I noticed that sWeather had stopped working I came back to WeatherMate only to discover that it was no longer working either. I contacted the developer- Ravi Bhavnani, who responded that he was working on a fix. So being deprived of my two weather programs which had been for the most part reliable, I started searching for alternatives. I came upon Tray Weather, which is open source and written in C++ but not portable and without reading the description I installed it only to find out that one needed to get an API key from OpenWeatherMap. After having a look at their Privacy Policy I decided that I didn't want their key and that Tray Weather was not for me so I uninstalled it without even testing it (at first glance I saw that it was bulky, it was not portable, it was limited). After researching some other alternatives which are not even worth mentioning I concluded that for the time being there is no real good alternative to sWeather and that I would have to rely on the inconvenience of web services like wttr.in (GitHub) which at least seamingly do not abuse user privacy (if such a beast has ever existed). If sWeather adopts OpenWeatherMap API I will have to ditch it. If someone has discovered a decent alternative to sWeather I would be grateful if they share their finding. On a side note I want to mention that Yahoo is really fabulous and proverbial- it ruined, burned and destroyed all the assets it once had.

TechTeacher · « **Reply #740 on:** June 10, 2021, 11:11 PM »

Check your PayPal account!

sportman12 · « **Reply #741 on:** June 20, 2021, 11:21 PM »

skwire your going to us OpenWeatherMap API mentioned above as it's the best free one out there. Can I use it on Windows 10 when will it be ready please get back to me

TechTeacher · « **Reply #742 on:** June 21, 2021, 02:04 AM »

Any updates? My system bar looks so empty...

AusDemFF · « **Reply #743 on:** June 24, 2021, 10:12 PM »

Hello,
I'm also a long time user of this little piece of software, and would like to see it working again.
I was looking for free services, and I found these two here:

- from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute:
https://developer.yr.no/
https://hjelp.yr.no/...d-our-privacy-policy
Examples: https://www.yr.no/en...many/Hamburg/Hamburg
https://www.yr.no/en...orgia/Fulton/Atlanta
There are even several language outputs...

- Open Data API for the German meteorological service (Open source!):
https://brightsky.dev/
https://brightsky.dev/demo/

Hope that helps to offer at least two alternatives... or even implement both and change by click.

skwire · « **Reply #744 on:** June 25, 2021, 12:57 PM »

Many thanks for the donations and apologies for the lack of replies -- lots going on this summer around here. I hope to start work on sWeather, this weekend.

skwire · « **Reply #745 on:** June 25, 2021, 01:02 PM »

- from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute:
https://developer.yr.no/
-AusDemFF (June 24, 2021, 10:12 PM)

This one looks promising. I'll keep it in my back pocket.

- Open Data API for the German meteorological service (Open source!):
https://brightsky.dev/
https://brightsky.dev/demo/
-AusDemFF (June 24, 2021, 10:12 PM)

I took a look at this one as well, thanks, but it doesn't appear to work for locations outside Germany? Maybe I missed something?

Hope that helps to offer at least two alternatives... or even implement both and change by click.
-AusDemFF (June 24, 2021, 10:12 PM)

Yes, thank you for your research. It's much appreciated. At this point, I want to get one data source working.

AusDemFF · « **Reply #746 on:** June 25, 2021, 03:13 PM »

Thanks for your answer. Since both are linked to public services, and not private companies, it seams a better solution, perhaps even more sustainable?

I took a look at this one as well, thanks, but it doesn't appear to work for locations outside Germany? Maybe I missed something?
-skwire (June 25, 2021, 01:02 PM)

I thought so, too, at first, but I tried coordinates of other countries, and it gave accurate returns. I tried also for Atlanta:
https://api.brightsk...&date=2021-06-25
It returns less lines, less data, but picks a station in Altanta (bottom of page, 'source')
But it's also an open source project in development, so... it picks the data which is proposed from the open data of DWD.

Thanks for this soft and your time to get it work again :-D

mhh · « **Reply #747 on:** June 27, 2021, 07:40 AM »

Request to https://brightsky.dev/ works in several ways: you can either enter latitude and logitude or the WHO station ID when requesting data

If you want to request with latitude and longitude data you can do it the way AusDemFF did
https://api.brightsk...&date=2021-06-27

If you want to request a wheater station directly you can do it e.g. for New Orleans using
https://api.brightsk...&date=2021-06-27
In this case you need to know the New Orleans station ID 72231

I have tried several locations around the world and got data for all of them even the source is a German site from the "Deutscher Wetterdienst" (=German Wheather Service), a higher federal authority of the German Federal Ministry of Transport.

On https://github.com/jdemaeyer/brightsky you can find some information about the site and how to access

AusDemFF · « **Reply #748 on:** July 09, 2021, 11:57 PM »

I just tried https://brightsky.dev/ for Morocco, there is no data on the german DWD server. :-(
I think that the world wide data is not quite so complete as everyone using sWeather would like.

On the other hand, the public norwegian weather service does give a result for Morocco:
https://www.yr.no/en...%20Province/Taounate
(43°C today, ouff, hot, but also quite normal for this region)

I think perhaps this second one is the best free solution at this moment, without giving away user data and without a personal API key, like OpenWeatherMap.

I'm quite excited to see the next version of sWeather soon. I look so often to the empty icon on my taskbar... missing it so much :-D

gmusgrave · « **Reply #749 on:** July 13, 2021, 07:12 AM »

I also love this weather app and greatly miss it. Any news on when it will be fixed? Thanks.